BEMA 12: A Mission Realized (2016)

Transcription Status

1 May 22 — Initial public release

19 Apr 22 — Transcript approved for release

A Mission Realized

Brent Billings: Welcome to The BEMA Podcast with Marty Solomon. I’m his co-host, Brent Billings. Today, we’re covering the life of Isaac, as seen in Genesis 24 and 26, where we begin to see the initial realization of God’s promise to Abraham. Before we get started, we do have, actually, a little bit of follow-up. When we were talking a couple of episodes ago about circumcision and we didn’t know what other cultures observed circumcision. We get a little bit of feedback on that.

Marty Solomon: We had some listeners — I had actually a few listeners make some comments. One in particular. A big shout out to Christi for helping us out but she actually had a whole bunch of — found some notes, had some notes, and just kicked some stuff around. It was a good question and glad I didn’t make any promises from here during that podcast about what I knew and didn’t know. Even a basic Wikipedia search educated me a little bit about that. You can actually look up male circumcision on Wikipedia. It has an article about some of the history there and some of the thoughts. A lot of that history we don’t know a lot about, but there were some other cultures — even some other disconnected [from the Biblical narrative] cultures, African cultures — that seemed to practice it more as a rite of passage or entrance into manhood.

The big one that might be relevant to the biblical conversation — Christi pointed this out — was Egyptians. It may be argued which came first, but it would seem, based on the history we have, pretty close to the same time, maybe a few centuries before, the Egyptians are practicing circumcision. This would be, possibly even before Abraham, before they go down there, but they’re practicing circumcision. The best records we have seem to indicate that they are practicing circumcision in terms of priesthood. What’s really cool about that is, it seems, from what we know, that the Egyptians are circumcising priests as a mark of priesthood. If God has all males circumcised when they come out and begin to become a kingdom of priests, if you will, it’s a mark of priesthood that everybody, all males get which is a pretty interesting play there coming off of the culture they’re used to.

There’s a few sources you could look at. One of my good friends, George DeJong, taught a little bit on it in his material in Egypt. He does some study tours over there. He has a ministry called Under the Fig Tree. He taught a little bit about that. He actually has a — seems to have an opinion that it was also connected to a rite of manhood, a passage into manhood, a rite of passage so to speak, even in Egyptian culture. Sandra Richter, somebody pointed out, actually makes a passing comment in The Epic of Eden. Actually, I’m not sure if it’s in The Epic of Eden or not, now that I think about it. Sandra Richter has made — she teaches in something called the Seven-Minute Seminary and that could’ve easily maybe come out of that as well.

Another source here that Christi sent me, Robert G. Hall — in an article on circumcision in The Anchor Bible Dictionary — it does some talking about ancient Egypt and the practices of circumcision there. It’s always good to toss out a question and actually have listeners get back to us. That was pretty cool. Thanks to everybody for engaging in that conversation. It actually has added an element to my teaching for the future. I like that. I’m going to keep studying on that.

Brent: Absolutely. All right. Let’s move on to Yitzak (Isaac), Genesis 24 and 26. Don’t worry. We’ll come back to 25 here shortly but covering Genesis 24 and 26 today.

Marty: Yes, I wanted to deal with the life of Isaac today and make a couple of observations, two big ones. One out of 24 and one out of 26. The next podcast or two will go through the life of Yaakov, the life of Jacob, and spend our time there. We’ll end up coming back to the birth of Jacob and Yitzak in Genesis 25 next time. If I were to start in Genesis 24, we end up having the story of Yitzak, of Isaac needing a wife. We’ll just walk through this and see if you have any questions as we go through and we’ll chat about this Brent.

Abraham was now very old, and the Lord had blessed him in every way. He said to the senior servant in his household, the one in charge of all he had, Put your hand under my thigh. I want you to swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you’ll 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 with me back to this land? Shall I take your son back to the country you came from?”

Abraham responded, “Make sure 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, 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. So, you can get a wife for my son there. If the woman is unwilling to come back with you, you’ll be released from this oath of mine. Only, do not take my son back there.” The servant put his hand under the thigh of his master, Abraham, and swore on oath to him concerning this matter.

Brent: This hand under the thigh business. Is that like a pinky promise?

[laughter]

Brent: What is this?

Marty: It sure seems that way. The “thigh” in ancient cultures was very often an idiom for the groin and the organs located near it. What Abraham is doing is… if you did make — a pinky promise is actually the same way of looking at it. If you made a promise, if you made a covenant, you would often swear that oath by holding on to the sign of that covenant. Obviously, we know where the sign of Abraham’s covenant is. When he says, “Put your hand under my thigh,” he’s essentially asking him to make a covenant in a very Eastern way. Nothing sexual about it in that regard that we would react to that but definitely, an interesting figure of speech in Hebrew idiom that adds a little color to the story. [chuckles]

Nevertheless, we have Abraham here making sure that he gets a wife, not from the Canaanites. He goes to that one household that’s left from his father, Terah, the house of Nahor, is where he’s going to end up going. If you remember where we left, Nahor — Nahor and Terah, they have settled in Haran. Many times, Abraham’s family is going to end up going back to this other family who comes from the same stock as his father, Terah. That’s where they’re having to go find a wife. Interesting conversation. The servant wants to know — this is a pretty far-fetched request here! What if she doesn’t come back? Abraham trusts in God so much that he says, “Listen, if you don’t find a wife for my son, you can be free from — I’ll release you from your servitude to me. I’ll give you your freedom as a slave. I’ll send you on your way.” Pretty big promise.

Brent: Now, this was the senior servant in the household. Does that mean that he’s in charge, or he’s the oldest? What is senior as a —

Marty: Yes, he’s the chief house servant. That means that he’s basically, in a lot of ways, he’s in charge of the — he’s practically in charge of the estate in its physicality. There’s no inheritance. He’s not in charge of it. He doesn’t have any claim to it, but he’s in charge of the day-to-day running of it. We were told earlier that Abraham has 318 people in his household. Most of those have to be servants. Eliezer, he’s going to be the chief of all of those, the head manager.

Brent: Obviously, we’re not there yet. Is this going to be similar to the relationship of Joseph to Pharaoh that we’ll see later on, where Pharaoh puts Joseph in charge of everything?

Marty: That’s a good question. In some ways, yes, it’s going to be similar to the relationship of Joseph. It’s also going to be quite a bit different. Joseph has a much more formal respectable relationship with Pharaoh, a much more official, in a much more claim to his position where chief servant is definitely within the household. He would have been looked down on much more than maybe not like we think of servitude or slavery. Our culture is definitely different than that but not a glorious position by any stretch of the imagination like Joseph had in Egypt.

Brent: Then, final question: Abraham has this sticking point. Like, in no way, there’s no reason that Isaac is going back to —

Marty: Correct.

Brent: — to the other land.

Marty: Correct.

Brent: Is the servant thinking like, “Hey, if she’s not willing to come back, do I bring Isaac over and let him pick his own wife?”

Marty: Right.

Brent: Abraham says no.

Marty: Absolutely.

Brent: What is Abraham’s concern?

Marty: The concern here is that God called them to leave the father’s household. They were not to settle in Haran. God was doing something new. That’s going to come up in a little bit in this story but in the life of Jacob; this is going to become a big deal. If you remember, God needed Abraham to keep moving. Just like the story of the Tower of Babel, you can’t settle. You can’t settle. You can’t settle. He can’t let his son go back, go backwards, metaphorically speaking, and settle with the family of Nahor. Not that there’s anything wrong or pagan about it, but even that — we’re going to find out later in the story of Genesis — we have some god-worship issues going on with the family of Nahor. It’s important that Isaac doesn’t — he keeps to the promise. This is the land. This is the promise. This is the mission that God has called the family to. You need to hang with what God’s doing with the world.

Brent: If Isaac goes back, he’s like, “Oh, well, since we’re here, we might well get married. Well, this big party, we got a lot of cleaning up to do.”

Marty: That’s correct.

Brent: Next thing you know, they’re stuck.

Marty: Yes, absolutely. The servant leaves, Eliezer leaves, taking with him 10 of his master's camels. He’s got 10 camels. It’s a pretty big deal, loaded with all good things from his master. He set out for Haran and made his way to the town of Nahor. He had the camels kneel down near the well outside of town. It was toward evening, the time when women go out to draw water and he prayed. It’s an interesting prayer here.

He prays, “Lord God of my master Abraham, make me successful today and show kindness to my master Abraham. See, I am standing beside this spring and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. May it be that when I say to a young woman, “Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,” and she says, “Drink and I’ll water your camels too.” 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.”

Now this is a really interesting prayer, because Eliezer is basically setting it up. He’s just made a request that not many of us understand. He finds himself at a well, a cistern in their culture and he is asking God to have a woman come out and offer water to him, which wouldn't be a big deal. He’s saying, “Without me asking, I want her to offer to water my camels.” In order to water a camel, that takes — the Bedouins and those that live in the middle east say — anywhere from 10 to 20 trips into a cistern, depending on how watered the camel already is, depending on how big your jars are.

He’s asking God to send somebody to him that is willing to voluntarily offer to make at least 100 trips down into — now you were with me this summer, Brent. You got a walk down into a cistern. How about a hundred times up and down those steps?

Brent: Well, it was pretty fun the one time, I’m not so sure I’d want to do it 100. I don’t even know if I’d want to do it 10 times. It’s narrow. It’s a pretty decent distance down there. It’s maybe a story and a half.

Marty: Yes. That would be very typical. It might change here and there, but that was very typical. The cisterns I’ve been to in the Middle East, ancient cisterns in particular. He has just asked God to provide something ridiculous, totally outlandish. It makes me wonder if this isn’t Eliezer going, “Wow. I get my freedom if I can’t find a lady. Huh? Okay. Well here’s my only God request,” kind of thing.

Brent: An offer that has not been made before or since.

Marty: Before he had finished praying, verse 16, I love that — or 15, excuse me. Before he had finished praying, Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Bethuel, son of Milcah, who was the wife of Abraham’s brother, Nahor, the woman was very beautiful. A Virgin, no man had ever slept with her and she went down to the spring, filled her jar and came up again. The servant hurried to meet her and said, “Please give me a little water from your jar,” “Drink my Lord.” She said, and quickly lowered the jar to her hands and gave him a drink.

After she had given him a drink she said, “I’ll draw water for your camels too until they have enough to drink.” She quickly emptied her jar into the trough, ran back to the well to draw more water and drew enough for all of his camels without saying a word. The man watched her closely to learn whether or not the Lord had made his journey successful. When the camels had finished drinking, the man took out a gold nose ring weighing a becca, and two gold bracelets weighing 10 shackles.

He asked, “Whose daughter are you? Please tell me, is there room in your father’s house for us to spend the night?” She answered him, “I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son that Milcah born to Nahor,” and she said, “We have plenty of straw and fodder as well as room for you to spend the night.” The man bowed down and worshiped the Lord saying, “Praise be to the Lord, the God of my master Abraham who has not abandoned his kindness and faithfulness to his master. As for me, the Lord has led me on the journey to the house of my master’s relatives.”

I don’t think we’ll read the whole rest of the chapter as we are here on here on the podcast. I would invite people to actually read the rest of this chapter because it’s going to be relevant I think to some of the things we’ll look at in the New Testament far down the road. It’s not that the rest of this chapter is too obscure and there will actually be some stuff there. Make sure you read it on your own time. My point in looking at Genesis 24 is I think I see here, one of the reasons — the questions that you brought up earlier, Brent — one of the reasons that Abraham demands that Eliezer goes to the house of Nahor.

This family of Terah has a particular… they are made — I keep using this phrase, I don’t know why — they are made of a particular stock. They have a DNA, a spiritual DNA in them that makes them — what we see in Rebekah is the exact same generosity and hospitality that we saw in the story of Abraham, if you remember when he hurried and ran to greet the three visitors in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, she’s made of the same stuff. It even makes me wonder if that’s why Eliezer prayed the prayer that he prayed.

He didn’t just pick some random prayer like, “I want some outlandish prayer that only God can answer.” He said, “If there’s a wife here that’s worthy of my master’s son, it’s going to be a woman who is as dedicated to hospitality as my master is, made of the same stuff. God, I want a woman who’d be willing —” Let’s not make this about women who are willing to serve. Let’s make this about something much bigger and wider in the realm of hospitality.

“I’m looking for a person who’s willing to go down into a cistern 100 times in order to water the camels of a visitor.” I just see God choosing to work through this family over and over and over again and I keep seeing the DNA of the people of God put on display in these stories. The people of God are a people that are committed to generosity and hospitality.

Brent: This guy’s the head servant because he’s been around for a while, right?

Marty: Absolutely.

Brent: He’s seen this hospitality in action many times.

Marty: Absolutely. This guy is as intimate with knowing Abraham as anybody in the family, especially outside of the immediate family. This guy is essentially, on a lot of levels, he is immediate family. He doesn’t have inheritance. He doesn’t have a legal or a covenant claim on anything, but he is as part of the family as anybody else that’s in this household. He knows Abraham as well as anybody does, and I think that might be where his prayer comes from.

Brent: I like this sentence, “Without saying anything the man watched her closely to learn whether or not the Lord had made his journey successful.” Is she going to say, “Yes, I’ll water your camels,” but then is she going to give up halfway through, but she finishes it. She carries — she follows through.

Marty: Rivkah (Rebekah) is absolutely, like you said, just a cut above. She is just something else. Even her family’s going to demonstrate incredible hospitality. She brings Eliezer and the 10 camels to the home. They have straw, they have fodder, they put him up. They do the typical thing that you would do in the Middle East. This family is the family that Abraham came from and Rivka is just an all star in that story. I just love to see the consistent story of God’s people played out in person after person, after person. Anyway, if we were to jump over to Genesis 26, we’re going to see the rest of the story of Isaac now, here’s what’s interesting. We’ll read through this and see what happens here.

Now, there was a famine in the land besides the previous famine in Abraham’s time, and Isaac went to Avi Melik, king of Palestine in Guar. The Lord appeared to Yitzak and said, “Do not go down to Egypt, live in the land where I tell you to live, stay in this land for a while and I will be with you and we’ll bless you. For you and your descendants, for you and your descendants. I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swear to your father Abraham. I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and give them all these lands, and through your offspring, all nations on earth will be blessed, because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees and my instructions.” Isaac stayed in Guar. This story starts with God coming to Isaac and reiterating the promise that he made to his father, which is that, “Through you I’m going to bless all nations.” When the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, “She is my sister,” because he was afraid to say she was my wife. He thought the man of this place might kill me on account of Rebecca because she is beautiful.

When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelech, king of Palestine looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah. Abimelech summoned Isaac and said, “She is really your wife. Why did you say, “She is my sister?” Isaac answered him because I thought I might lose my life on account of her. Then Abimelech said, “What is it that you have done to us? One of the men might have slept with your wife and you would’ve brought guilt upon us.” Abimelech gave orders to all the people, “Anyone who harms this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.”

Now, does that strike you as odd for any reason Mr. Billings?

Brent: Well, it seems very similar to a story that we heard before, and yet the end of the line is very different than the first time we heard it.

Marty: Tell me more about how it’s different.

Brent: Abraham goes to Egypt, says Sarah is my sister, relative and Pharaoh says, “Okay, cool. Let’s bring her right into my household.” Now this time he says the same thing and then finds out that she’s actually his wife and says, “Okay, nobody lay a finger on anyone.” No gifts exchanged this time.

Marty: Maybe there might even be a reason why it happens that way this time, did this happen only once in Abraham’s life?

Brent: Well, no, he did this twice.

Marty: Correct. Who did he do it to the second time? Do you remember?

Brent: What am I thinking of right now? Oh, no. I’m thinking of the — well, yes, there’s two of those and there’s two of the other things. I was thinking of the story of Lot, where he says that Lot is his brother, even though he’s not his brother.

Marty: This comes back at the end of Abraham’s life and he commits the same sin a second time to a king by the name of, let’s see, Abimelech.

Brent: Oh, interesting.

Marty: Now, there’s potential this could be the same guy, probably unlikely. This is probably a son or maybe even a grandson or something like that. Very common for Kings especially — Abimelech means, “My father is king,” is essentially what the name means — it would be a very common name for a son to take who was the son of the original Abimelech. Something tells me that this family has a reputation for running this joke. Abimelech has either been burned before, or has heard the story of his father being burned before and he’s like, “Hey, wait a minute. I’ve got my eyes peeled on this one. I ain’t buying this she’s-your-sister stuff.”

Maybe, I’m totally reading more into the Text there, but it’s very interesting. You have brought up the point I wanted to point out, which is, this is a total replay of the life of Abraham; like father, like son. Abimelech, this is where Abraham’s story ended, not totally ended, but ended Genesis 20-ish. Genesis 20, this is where the covenant that Abraham ends up making with Abimelech. This is towards the end of Abraham’s life and now we start Isaac’s life with a mere image of that story replayed.

Brent: Now, is this the story where you’re going to tell it around the fireplace at night? Like, “Oh yes, I did this one time and that was close. Pharaoh almost kept your mom. It almost didn’t work out.” Is Isaac going to know about this, or is this just — he doesn’t? Abraham’s ashamed, “Hey, it worked out, but we got lucky and let’s not talk about it.”

Marty: Yes, it’s a great question. I’m not sure we could answer for sure. I would imagine he knows about it. I’m not sure if it’s a campfire story, but I bet it’s certainly his story he knows about in his family’s history, I would think. Can’t prove that, or maybe say that with any definitive assurance, but I would think he’s got to know the story.

Brent: Maybe he’s just heard legends of someone who did this and doesn’t realize it was his own dad. I don’t know.

Marty: You know how we are. Again, I just find myself in the middle of these stories, this is a story of humanity. Isaac and Abraham are just like you and me. How many of us repeat the sins of our parents, sins of our fathers, the sins of our mothers? We’re like, “I’ll never be them,” and then we end up doing those things that we’ve spent our whole life trying to run from, because it’s a part of the patterns that we’ve learned. It’s a part of what’s in us. I think we see that with Isaac, but let’s keep on reading.

Isaac planted crops in the land that year and reaped 100 fold because the Lord blessed him. The man became rich and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy. He had many flocks, Which, okay, now I think of Abraham going down to Egypt, and he went down to Egypt and became very wealthy. And we talked about the negative impact of that. Now Isaac chooses — still making mistakes — but he chooses to not go down to Egypt. He stays in the land and the Lord blesses him and he becomes very wealthy. I wonder if we can listen to this story and go, “If Abraham hadn't gone down to Egypt, could God have blessed him?” Interesting.

Brent: All the wealth with none of the trouble.

Marty: Maybe.

Brent: Not as much of the trouble.

Marty: Let’s see here, where did I leave off? Reaped 100 fold because the Lord blessed him. The man became rich and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy. He had so many flocks and herds that the servants-- And herds and servants that Palestine envied him. All the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up, filling them with earth. Then Abimelech said to Isaac, “Move away from us, you have become too powerful for us.”

Isaac moved away from there and encamped in the valley of Guar, where he settled and Isaac opened the wells that had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died and he gave him the same names his father had given them. Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and discovered a well of fresh water there, but the herders of Guar quarreled with those of Isaac and said, “The water is ours.” Have we heard this story before?

Brent: I’m not sure.

Marty: Have we heard a story about herdsmen arguing…?

Brent: This would be Abraham and Lot.

Marty: Exactly. He just encountered another retelling of the Abraham story and the life of Isaac and you’ll notice it’s going, what direction?

Brent: It’s going the other way.

Marty: It’s going backwards. It’s like we’re retelling the life of Abraham, but the stories are going backwards. In a Jewish sense they sometimes would look at this and say, it’s almost like Isaac is redeeming the story of his father. Not that the story of his father needs a whole lot of redemption. It’s pretty fantastic, but he’s making the same mistakes. He starts with the mistakes of his father and now he’s going backwards through his life, almost like… let’s see where this ends up. It’s interesting, I now have two stories that are taken very similarly out of the life of Abraham.

He named the well Esek because they disputed with him and they dug another well, but they quarreled over that one also so he named it Sitnah, and he moved on from there and dug another well and no one quarreled over it and so he named it Rehabot saying, “Now the Lord has given us room and we shall flourish in the land.” From there he went up to Beersheba and that night the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am the God of your father, Abraham, do not be afraid for I am with you. I will bless you and increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham.”

Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord, and there he pitched his tent and there his servants dug a well… does that sound familiar?

Brent: That’s textbook Abraham move right there.

Marty: Absolutely. Where did that show up?

Brent: That was right at the beginning.

Marty: We just went backwards through the life of Abraham in one chapter describing the life of Isaac. It seems that the author wants us to see that the mistakes and the promises of his father, Abraham are being realized in his own story. Isaac built an altar there and called in the name of the Lord and there he pitched his tent and there his servants dug a well. Meanwhile, Avi Melik had come up to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath, his personal adviser and Phicol, the commander of his forces. Isaac asked them, “Why have you come to me since you were hostile to me and sent me away?”

Isaac’s like, “Hey, you told me to leave, so why are you coming to me?” They answered — listen to this — “We saw clearly that the Lord was with you. So we said there ought to be a sworn agreement between us, between us and you.” Itzhak takes the promise and the mission of his father. He goes into this land and he chooses to stay in this land. God tells him to stay in this land. “Don’t go anywhere, stay committed to the promise,” which is exactly why Abraham said, “Don’t go back to Nahor and let my son go back to Nahor and let him marry the —” Stay right here and be about the mission.

He stays right there and he opens up wells and people come and they try to pick a fight and he says, “Okay, they’re your wells.” He digs more wells and they say, “Those are ours.” “Okay, they’re your wells.” He digs more wells and, “Okay, they’re your wells.” He just keeps submitting, even though he’s being treated unjustly. He keeps living in this land, committed to the mission. We were told at the beginning of this story, God came — if you remember the opening verses of Genesis 26 — God came and said, “This was the mission. I told your father Abraham, I was going to bless all nations through you.” What do we see, by the time we’re done with this story? We see that the very promise that God made to Abraham is being realized through the work and the Ministry of his son because now all of a sudden, the nations are coming out to…

It worked. It worked. I wish we would grab this in our culture because we don’t trust in the process enough, we don’t trust in forgiveness, we don’t trust in selflessness. We don’t believe that truly, actually, being selfless would actually move the kingdom of God forward. Here in the story of Abraham and Isaac, over the course of two generations — it does take some time — over the course of two generations, the mission of God is working. They are blessing the nations around them, and people are calling on the name of his God. They have seen that God is good. It’s working. Something I think we could probably learn in our own world, in our own life, I feel like we have probably put this to work.

Brent: They’re blessing the nations in spite of themselves, right?

Marty: Exactly.

Brent: Nations are like, “Yes, we don’t really like you, we’re going to fill in — that’s a perfectly good well, but we’re just going put all the dirt in.” Then he goes, and he re-digs it and then he says, “No, you guys go ahead and use it. I’ll dig another well.”

Marty: We get it so backwards in the evangelical world today. They messed up our coffee cup. They’ve just taken away all of our stuff, and they’re just infringing on all of our — no, take a page out of the book of Itzhak. You want to take that? I’ll show you what my God is like. My God is generous. My God is hospitable. My God will go down in a cistern 100 times to water your camels. It wasn’t your well, but I’m not going sit here and argue. I’m not going to take you to court and try to protect my rights. What an ungodly thing to do. I’m going to lay my rights down. Through this whole process this had to be excruciating. It wasn’t easy.

This was probably painful, incredibly frustrating. How did he sit there through this injustice? That’s what he did because that was the mission. That is our mission, even today, and so much to be learned from this obscure life of Isaac that gets lost in the narrative of the patriarchs.

Brent: Even the trust that the servants have to have, the ones who are digging the wells. They’re like, “Are you kidding me? They just filled that in. If we dig it back out. How do we know they’re not just going to fill it in again?” Their chief servant, from two chapters ago. He says, “You know what? I’ve seen the stuff that you do for my master.” We didn’t talk about that a whole lot. He kept referring to God as the God of my master, not his.

Marty: Absolutely. At the end of that story, he finally owns God as his own God, one of the most moving things that we didn’t cover back in chapter 24.

Brent: I think that’s why this works out with the servants in chapter 26 later. “I know this seems crazy but we’ve been around. We’ve seen it work. We’ve seen the blessing that comes out of this.”

Marty: I’m telling you. We got to give it a try in our culture, it will probably help us, in a lot of ways, make some progress.

Brent: It’s hard but we gotta do it.

Marty: It’s probably enough to marinate on for this lesson.

Brent: I think that about wraps it up for this show. Before we end though, I know, Marty, you’ve got a couple of updates with Impact Campus Ministries, and you just want to give us a little bit of information about what’s going on with the ministry before we close out.

Marty: I won’t do this a lot. A lot of people think I work for the church or that’s where I get my paycheck and those kinds of things and I don’t. I actually work for Impact Campus Ministries, and we’re a national campus ministry organization all over the country. I serve as the chief executive for that organization. It’s that time of year, where year-end finance stuff comes up. This is one of those ministries — the ministry that I do — I’m not supported by a church. I have to go out and raise funds for my own paycheck.

More importantly, the organization that I work for is an organization that’s doing incredible work in lots of different places, 22 different campuses. Almost 20 full-time staff that we help support and love the work and the mission and the vision of Impact. You can find our website online at impactcampusministries.com. One of the things I wanted to do before the year came to a close was just toss out a request that — as people consider — a lot of people own their businesses, a lot of people look at their own tax situation as the calendar year comes to a close, they look at the kind of things they want to do for charitable giving.

We have this great tax-deductible organization that they could consider. We have information on the bemadiscipleship.com website, you can go there and you can find a little write-up on that. My family is still trying to hit our financial goals for the year to come. Our personal ministry is definitely one that we’re still trying to raise some funds for. More importantly, one of the things I’d like to ask my listeners to consider is just the general fund for Impact Campus Ministries.

Nobody likes to give to the general fund of an organization. It’s the least sexy work and the least sexy fundraising that people like to give to. It’s critical for all of the campus ministers that I help lead. One of the things I’ll use this podcast for every now and then, is just to ask you to consider supporting the work that we do, supporting the work that I do. Consider giving to one of the places that you would feel led to give there but one of the places that could really use it for my listeners would be the general fund that helps us provide the support. It helps me do my job when I travel to all these different places. All those weeks where we don’t have a podcast because I’m on the road.

I’m out there trying to help give administrative and executive support to campus ministers just like me all around the country. That takes resources. As you consider those year-end donations and your charitable giving, just consider the work of Impact. If it’s something that you enjoy, it’s something you appreciate. Just know there’s a lot of people out there contributing to that. Love to see that generosity shared that way.

Brent: Absolutely. We’ll have links for those different organizations and all the information you need in the show notes. If you live on the Palouse, we hope you’ll join us for discussion groups in Moscow on Tuesday or in Pullman on Wednesday. If you want to get a hold of Marty, you can find him on Twitter at @martysolomon. You can find me on Twitter at @eibcb. You can find more details about the show at bemadiscipleship.com, including schedule changes and information on any of the stuff Marty just talked about. All that stuff is on bemadiscipleship.com, and thanks for joining us on The BEMA Podcast. We’ll talk to you again soon.