By Neisha Roberts
The Alabama Baptist
As participants sang along to the familiar melody, “Yippie yi-yo. Yippie yay-ye,” the Tuesday evening worship service of the Alabama Baptist State Convention was underway.
Three on a String wouldn’t be considered a “typical” Tuesday night musical guest, but as three and then four men began picking away at the banjo, bass, guitar and then harmonica, the upbeat rhythm and familiar tunes brought smiles to the faces of those in the sanctuary of Eastmont Baptist Church, Montgomery.
The “perfect balance of musical entertainment and humor,” according to its website, Three on a String consists of Jerry Ryan, Brad Ryan, Andy Meginniss and the real jokester of the evening, Bobby Horton, who changed into three or four outfits throughout the night, morphing into a high school band member, an elephant in a parade and a baroque-style musician. If these descriptions sound out of place for a state convention annual meeting, that just means you weren’t there to laugh along with the others that night.
And laughter, as the evening’s guest speaker Robert Smith Jr. said, “is music and medicine for our own soul.”
Smith, who serves as Charles T. Carter Baptist Chair of Divinity at Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, continued with the annual meeting’s theme of “Sent … Here, There and Everywhere” with his message from Genesis 24.
Though it might seem like the chapter’s 67 verses are all about “how to get a good wife,” Smith chuckled, the chapter “contains the seed of the perpetuation of Israel that is sown in this passage.” And in that, the ultimate plan for the Church is “sown in the soil of this passage,” he said.
Israel has always been in danger, Smith said. From the story of Joseph being sold into slavery by his own brothers to Pharaoh’s order to kill the Hebrew babies to the 40 long years in the wilderness to spending 70 years exiled in Babylon.
Faithful promises
But “God made a promise that He would rebuild … and re-establish Israel. … And God is faithful to keep His promises,” Smith said.
One can see that faithfulness throughout the Old Testament, he said, and even in Genesis 24.
The plan for the Church is sown in this passage, Smith said, “because God knew that out of Abraham all nations would be blessed — not just Jews, not just Gentiles.”
Referencing a story about a theologian who went back to where he used to preach for years in Hamburg, Germany, Smith said the man looked out over the city and the church where he once preached. The church building had long been destroyed and the members dispersed but the theologian noted how he thought it was odd that he still held the keys to the church building in his hands.
“I wonder if we are holding keys to locks of churches that no longer exist or are on their way out,” Smith said.
“I’m talking about the churches that have on their marquee [announcing] bazaars, rummage sales and nothing that would suggest there’s really life there. I’m talking about the church named in Revelation 3 where God says, ‘Behold I stand at the door and knock.’ He has purchased the Church with His own blood and now He is on the outside knocking on the door asking for re-admittance.
“The Church in many instances is sick,” he said. “And a sick Church cannot minister to a critically ill world.”
But again the seed (that is Jesus Christ) that sustains the Church itself and is the “future promise in terms of the future kingdom of God is planted in the soil” of Genesis 24, Smith said.
He noted four portraits that are important to recognize in the passage to see the seed planted there.
The first portrait is of Abraham, a man who is 144 years old at the time and believes he needs to find a wife for his son, Isaac, so that the promise can be fulfilled through him.
But there were some stipulations on the woman that could be Isaac’s wife. She could not come from Canaan but had to be from Abraham’s family living in Aram-Naharaim, a 400-mile journey away.
Plan B is easier
It would have been much easier to have a Plan B, to take a wife from the Canaanites near where they were already living. But Abraham knew how such a plan had worked out in the past for him when he tried to fulfill the promise by his own power — having a child with the servant Hagar, instead of with his wife, Sarah.
“The Bible doesn’t need to be adjusted, it just needs to be trusted,” Smith said.
The second portrait is of the unnamed servant who went to find a wife for Isaac.
When the servant travels with an entourage of camels to find this mysterious woman who would hopefully marry Isaac without ever having seen him, “he only does one thing — talks about his master.”
Once he arrived at his destination he began praying. While he was praying the answer showed up before the prayer was over, Smith said. Rebekah was already approaching the servant with water.
“Trust Him while you are praying, that God is sending an answer. Open the door and trust that if it’s in His will He will do it for His purposes.”
The third portrait Smith noted in the passage was the willingness of Rebekah to go to a land far away from her family, “because she had heard what kind of master she would be going to see.”
God sees us first
The final portrait is found in the welcoming spirit of the bridegroom, Isaac. Before Rebekah even sees Isaac, he notices her coming into town with the unnamed servant. In a similar way, Smith said, God sees us before we see Him.
In an unlikely story about marriage, lineage, a 400-mile journey and fetching water from a well, one can find the seed of the Church being planted, watered and harvested. So when God calls you to go here, there and everywhere, “not through convenience” but through His plan, “keep on being His ambassador,” Smith urged.
Prior to the evening service, church planters from across the state filed into the sanctuary holding signs with the name of the city they are serving.
Lamar Duke, church planting strategist for the State Board of Missions, introduced the group and asked participants to surround them at the front while Bob Weber, pastor of Valley Creek Baptist Church, Hueytown, led in praying over the 24 church planters gathered at the altar.
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