Choosing a Mate

Introduction

Few things in life matter as much as the mate you select. Becoming a Christian would be more important, perhaps choosing a career might be important, but a great job with a sour marriage matters little. Few things in life are more important than the person you choose to marry. No marriage is perfect. Most of us learned more about marriage while being married than we did before we were married. Marriage has its ups and downs. Jokes are made about being married for 25 years and it has been the best 18 years of my life. Or the man who was asked the secret of marriage. He said that when he got married he promised himself that whenever his wife did or said something he didn’t like that he would go on a long walk. He said, “the secret is that I am outdoor person.” Conflict is a part of marriage.

Choosing the right person to be married to is extremely important. Tonight’s lesson while talking about choosing a mate is not just directed to the single. For us as parents part of this message includes us as well. Most people do not get married thinking about divorce. Survey after survey reveals that while religion plays an important role in marriage, it isn’t enough to keep folks together. The national rate of divorce is 25% or so. The divorce rate among Christians is not much different. We have to prepare our children for marriage and our children must prepare themselves for marriage. We will look at Genesis 24 tonight and allow it to be a springboard for several suggestions about choosing a mate.

A Father’s Final Obligation

Abraham is old. He is about 140 years old. Sarah has died. Abraham is still hanging on to God’s promise that the land would be given to his descendants. But unless Isaac marries there will be no descendants. Abraham knows that he must find a wife for his son. This was customary of the culture at that time. Parents looked for an appropriate mate for their sons and daughters. This was not necessarily the idea of an arranged marriage, it was parental privilege to choose a mate. The reason was that families became related by marriage. A poor choice and a family could be ruined financially and socially.

This is the first point about selecting a mate. Choose someone whose family exhibits Christian ideals. Abraham wanted a mate from his own family because they would understand things in a similar fashion which included faith. When you marry, you marry the family as well. Notice how the perspective son or daughter in law get along with their family. How do they communicate? How do they deal with disagreements? What happens when there is an argument? Do they know how to have fun together? Do they have a spiritual mind set?

Being in love will not take away the problems of a family. Our culture encourages each person to make their own choice about a mate. Wise parents plan for this day by preparing their son or daughter for things to look for. Teens prepare themselves by remaining committed to high ideals and not allowing emotions to carry them away to a poor choice.

This leads to the second point. Notice Abraham’s servant is going to find a mate for Isaac. Isaac didn’t know Rebekah before the marriage. In fact, there is nothing about love before the marriage. Our culture places a high premium on love, but other cultures do not. There are advantages and disadvantages to either way. But let me highlight a real disadvantage in our culture. Love is equated with emotions. In fact, the whole idea of falling in love is couched in emotional language. How do you know you love someone? You can’t eat, you stomach flutters, your heart rate goes up. While these symptoms are said to be love, they can also be said to describe the flu. For Americans, love is something we fall into and out of. In this case, loving someone is similar to feelings of joy, happiness, and excitement. Chemical responses to stimuli.

Physiologically when we are enamored with someone our brains produce a chemical. Those chemicals give us a feeling of euphoria. As we become more accustomed to that person we produce less chemicals and the feelings of euphoria go away. It doesn’t happen quickly but it happens. This is the basis behind “the seven year itch.”

The chemical wash in our brains just doesn’t have the same effect. A new person in our lives produces new feelings of euphoria and we suddenly see that we are in love all over. We fell out of love with our present mate and in love with another.

I say all of this for this point. Love is not emotional. Love is a decision made on behalf of the other person. In Abraham’s day, love was most often something that happened after marriage. Couples grew to appreciate each other and love each other not based upon the physical but upon the person.

That is why the marriage vows are taken. The beauty of youth gives way to the advancement of age. If our marriage is not built upon something deeper than the physical then we are left to emotional swings being the driving force behind our marriages. Emotions will pass. True love remains committed long after the feelings have vanished.

Parents can prepare their children for marriage by talking with them about what holds a marriage together. Children prepare themselves for marriage by trying realizing that love is not emotional and not allowing the emotions to have the final word. Emotions will pass. True love remains committed long after the feelings have vanished.

Parents want to make sure that our children are married. Most of us look forward to the day when we see our children take vows with another. In some way we might feel that an important task has been accomplished. Abraham wanted to make sure that his son was married. He knew exactly what kind of mate was needed for his son. I would encourage our teens to listen to parents. They want what is best for you.

Preparation

We don’t know how long Abraham had been thinking about a wife for Isaac. But when the time came for Isaac to be married, Abraham had some definite ideas about a prospective mate. He didn’t want a woman from the Canaanites as a bride for his son. We are not told why but it could easily be because of their lack of faith in God. Second, he wanted to make sure that Isaac did not go back to the Mesopotamian region. Isaac must remain in the land God has promised. Finally, Abraham believed that God would prepare his family in Mesopotamia for his servant’s arrival. In verse 7, Abraham believes that one of God’s angels will proceed the servant to prepare the family for his arrival.

The servant is Abraham’s representative. He is acting on behalf of his master. On oath he will secure a wife for Isaac just as if it were Abraham himself doing the looking. The servant prays for God to help him know who has been chosen. He even sets up a scenario which if a girl does a certain thing, then he will know that God has chosen this one for Isaac.

Parents, we need to pray for our children in finding a mate. Start when they are born and do not stop until you die. The person your son or daughter is going to marry is already in this world. We probably don’t know the parents or the way they will raise their child. There needs to be a belief that our God is interested in who our children marry. Like Abraham we need to believe that God will go before us preparing that family just as he did with Rebekah’s family.

This chapter ends describing one of the purposes of marriage. Rebekah returns to Isaac’s land. Isaac brings Rebekah to his mother’s tent. She became his wife and he loved her. Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death. One of the purposes of marriage is to take away loneliness. Isaac and his mother must have had a special relationship. Isaac was 37 when his mother died. Three years he has grieved over her loss. At age 40, Rebekah comes into his life and Isaac is comforted. This is what marriage is about. Comfort and an end to loneliness. Parents, let’s pray for our children. Children pray for yourself to find a mate who will end your loneliness and be a comfort to you.

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