# 214 You Are Not A Dog

The Book of Genesis

Day 214

Ge 24:5 And the servant said to him, "Perhaps the woman will not be willing to follow me to this land. Must I take your son back to the land from which you came?"  6 But Abraham said to him, "Beware that you do not take my son back there.  7 "The LORD God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my family, and who spoke to me and swore to me, saying, 'To your descendants I give this land,' He will send His angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there.  8 "And if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be released from this oath; only do not take my son back there."  9 So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master, and swore to him concerning this matter.

I can almost hear the protestations of the servant:  “You want me to travel 500 miles, to find a woman from your kinfolk to marry Isaac. You expect her to just leave family and home, hop on a camel and come running to marry a man she never met?”

Abraham: “Yup.”

Servant: “Well what if she says, “I won’t come? Should I bring Isaac to her?”

Abraham: “Don’t even think about it” Isaac is not to go back to where he came from. The Promised Land is his home now and he is not to leave it!”

Abraham didn’t want Isaac to return to Ur and be tempted to stay there and consequently lose out on his promised inheritance.

In a sense, we are a lot like Isaac. Born out of the sheer grace of God….a miraculous spiritual birth. Born into an eternal inheritance. As the loins of Abraham and the womb of Sarah were dead, so were we! Eph 2:1-5 reminds us: “ And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins,  2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience,  3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.  4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,  5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

And once we have tasted of this new life, we are not to return to the old as the Holy Spirit speaking through Peter reminds us: “For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning.  21 For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them.  22 But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: "A dog returns to his own vomit," and, "a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire." (2 Pet 2:20-22)

Friend, you may be living in this world, but your true home is the Promised Land…….. you are not a dog! Live like it!