Genesis
24:1-9
Abraham charges his servant
to seek a wife for Isaac
Abraham
was now old and well advanced in
years, and the Lord had blessed
him in every way. He said to the
chief servant in his household,
the one in charge of all that he
had, "Put your hand under
my thigh, and I will make you
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."
The
servant asked him, "What if
the woman is unwilling to come
back with me to this land? Shall
I then take your son back to the
country you came from?"
Abraham
said to him, "Make sure
that you do not take my son back
there. The Lord, the God of
heaven, who brought me out of my
father's household and my native
land, and who spoke to me and
promised me on oath, saying, 'To
your offspring I will give this
land'--he will send his angel
before you, and you will get a
wife for my son from there. But
if the woman is unwilling to
come back with you, then you
will be released from this oath
of mine. Only do not take my son
back there." So the servant
put his hand under the thigh of
his master Abraham and swore an
oath to him concerning this
matter.
Matthew
7:7-12 Ask, seek, knock
Ask
and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find; knock
and the door will be opened to
you. For everyone who asks
receives, and everyone who seeks
finds, and for everyone who
knocks, the door will be opened.
Which
of you, if your child asks for
bread, will give a stone? Or if
the child asks for a fish, will
give a snake? If you then,
though you are evil, know how to
give good gifts to your
children, how much more will
your Father in heaven give good
gifts to those who ask him!
So
in everything, do to others what
you would have them do to you;
for this sums up the Law and the
Prophets.
Arcana
Coelestia #3017 Being blessed
When
it says that "the Lord
blessed Abraham in every
way," in the inner sense it
means that the Lord from the
Divine itself rearranged
everything in his human side
into divine order. . . .
When "being blessed"
refers to human beings, it means
being enriched with spiritual
and heavenly goodness. We are
enriched in this way when the
things within us are rearranged
by the Lord into a spiritual and
heavenly pattern, and so into
the image and likeness of divine
order. Our spiritual rebirth is
nothing else.
The
Lord, the God of heaven . . .
will send his angel before you,
and you will get a wife for my
son from there. (Genesis 24:7)
For
the next few weeks we will focus
on one of the most beautiful
chapters in the Bible: Genesis
24, on the marriage of Isaac and
Rebekah. Though the Bible is
full of references to marriage,
there are not many good love
stories in the Bible. Genesis 24
tells the simple and beautiful
story of how Abraham's son Isaac
and Rebekah, his wife-to-be,
were brought together under the
Lord's divine providence, and
were married.
And
I do want to emphasize that this
took place under the Lord's
providence--which will
become clear in the next few
weeks as the story unfolds. In
Swedenborg's book Marital
Love, there is a story in
which an angel talks about how
married couples come to be:
Provision
is made for couples to be born
who are well matched in
marriage for each other. Under
the Lord's continual guidance
they are brought up with a
view to their marriage, though
neither the boy nor the girl
is aware of this. When in due
course the young woman, as she
is then, is of an age to be
married, and the young man, as
he is then, is ready for
marriage, they meet somewhere
as if by fate and see each
other. Then by some instinct
they at once recognize that
they are well matched, and
they think to themselves, as
if by some inward prompting,
the young man 'She is the one
for me,' and the young woman,
'He is the one for me.' After
allowing this to sink into
their minds for a while, they
resolve to speak to each
other, and they become
engaged. We say as if by fate
and by instinct, but we mean
by divine providence, because
when this is not known, it
looks like fate. (Marital
Love #316)
Of
course, this is an angel
speaking, and angels see
marriage as it unfolds in an
ideal way. Here on earth, where
things are much murkier and more
confusing, we may not always
manage to meet and marry our
partner in such a simple and
beautiful way.
Still,
love at first sight, which is
what the angel describes, is a
reality for many married
couples. It was the reality for
Isaac and Rebekah, as we will
see later in the story. And it
is a reality that, according to
our teachings, does not come
about "by fate or
instinct," as it may appear
to us outwardly. Rather, it
takes place under the guiding
hand of the Lord, who prepares
us for the moment we will meet
and marry our soul's
partner--whether that wonderful
event happens while we are
living here on this earth or
after we have passed into the
spiritual world. For those
hoping and longing for a happy
marriage, our church has a
message of hope and joy: the
Lord has someone in mind for
you.
But
let's be honest: our path toward
happy marriage is often not an
easy one, and it may not take
place on the schedule we hope
for. Some people go through
unhappy marriages, divorces, and
other painful experiences with
relationships before finding
someone with whom they can
"live happily ever
after." Some marry only
late in life. Some do not find
their partner here on earth, but
must wait out this lifetime and
find their partner in the next.
We
do not know what the Lord's
providence has in store for us.
And that can be hard to bear for
those who do not see their
heart's wishes fulfilled for
many years. Still, whatever our
"fortunes of love" may
be, we can prepare ourselves for
the marriage that the Lord has
in mind for us. Although the
emphasis in our culture and in
our own minds--and even in our
story from Genesis--is on finding
the right person, it is even
more important that we be
the right person: the kind of
person who can be in a mutually
loving and growing marriage.
We
will look into this reality more
fully over the next few weeks.
For today, I would like to
prepare the way by looking
briefly at the source of all
marriage: the Lord.
The
teachings of our church tell us
that marriage is not merely a
human affair. It has its source
and origin in the nature of God,
from whom all things--including
marriage--come. Though it was
left to Swedenborg to spell out
the nature of this divine
marriage, its existence is
implied in the first chapter of
Genesis, at the very creation of
humans:
And
God said, "Let us make
humankind in our image,
according to our
likeness." . . .
So God created humankind in
his image; in the image of God
he created him; male and
female he created them.
(Genesis 1:26-27)
If
humans, both male and female,
are created in the image of God,
and they are created to become
"one flesh" (Genesis
2:24; Matthew 19:5; Mark 10:8),
this means that the origin of
both male and female, as well as
the origin of marriage itself,
must be in God, in whose image
and likeness we were created.
Returning
to the theme of the inner life
of the Lord Jesus, this must
also mean that there was and is
a marriage within the Lord
himself. When we read the story
of Isaac and Rebekah, we are not
only reading a human love story.
At it's deepest, heavenly level
of meaning, we are reading the
story of the marriage of love
and wisdom, or of goodness and
truth, in the Lord himself. This
divine marriage is the source of
all human marriage.
As
we will see in the unfolding
story of Isaac and Rebekah,
spiritually speaking, finding a
wife for Isaac involves making
an inner marriage between what
we love and what we believe, or
in more concrete language,
getting our head and our heart
together.
As
the Genesis story has shifted
from Abraham to Isaac, we have
followed the course of the
Lord's shift, in early
childhood, from simple,
heartfelt promptings of the
divine love toward his life work
of saving the human race, toward
a more mature rational and
spiritual understanding of what
he needed to do in order to
accomplish that work. And as we
will see, the story of Isaac and
Rebekah is the story of how the
Lord's developing rational mind
found its true partner in a love
for spiritual rationality and
truth.
This
is the meaning of getting a wife
for Isaac from among Abraham's
own relatives. Abraham's family
represents a spiritual view of
life, while the Canaanites among
whom Abraham was living
represented a materialistic view
of life. And as we have been
discovering in our series on the
Lord's inner life, Jesus himself
always moved toward a higher,
spiritual view of the world
around him, and of his life and
mission in it.
What,
practically, does this mean for
us as we prepare our hearts and
minds for the true marriage that
the Lord has prepared for us?
(And this applies even if we are
already married!) Following in
the Lord's footsteps, if we wish
to find true love and a happy
and growing marriage
relationship, we must also lift
our hearts and minds above a
focus on the things of this
world, toward a higher focus on
the things of eternal life.
If
we focus on building up our
status and wealth in this world,
we will never have a real
marriage, even if we "find
the right one." There will
be no room in our heart for
loving another person, because
we will be too busy loving
ourselves. But if we focus our
lives on opening our hearts to
love the Lord and our fellow
human beings, and opening our
minds to the Lord's guiding
truth, we will build a true
marriage of mind and heart
within ourselves. Then we can be
a person who can experience true
love with our life's partner.
Amen.
Sermons on Audio
Part
2 - The Divine Marriage: Seeking
Oneness
Webpage Set
by Full Moon Graphics
Music:
Heart to Heart
© Bruce DeBoer
Used with Permission
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