(upbeat guitar music) ♪ I love growing in your grace ♪ ♪ You have your hand on me ♪ ♪ And all that I do wrong ♪ ♪ Love will keep me strong ♪ ♪ I love to be in your grace ♪ - All right, let's open our vials tonight to the book of Genesis chapter 26. Genesis chapter 26, as we've mentioned to you many times, especially in the historical books, when things are written in narrative, the way you learn as you go put yourself in the story. God tells you the story, you go stand there with him, look around, listen to what's being said. What would you have done? And what do we learn as we watch this played out before us as the Lord gives us this to know him better? Well, tonight we're continuing our journey through this first book of the Bible. We came last time to the end of chapter 25, which was also the end of Abraham's life, the first patriarch, really. We spent a hundred years of his recorded time walking with the Lord in faith. And we also came to the end of Ishmael's life, that son that Abraham bore with Hagar, he would die at 137, Abraham at 175, I think, but Ishmael at 137, he would leave behind 12 sons, which really today are represented by the League of Arab nations, these are all leaders from the Arab League, if you will. We then turned to Isaac, who was that promised child, the one that God had promised to Abraham and Sarah, and they finally were able to bear this child, well past their child bearing years, he was a hundred years old, she was 90, they had spent 25 years praying. We don't get much information about Isaac early on. In fact, by the time we get to chapter 28 in a couple of weeks, maybe even next week, Isaac will have come and gone. But we are told a couple of things about him in chapter 25, as we were introduced to him, he was 40 years old when God brought him a wife through the Abraham's servant. Her name was Rebecca, she was a beautiful girl. God had provided back in chapter 24. For the next 20 years though, they would pray to have children and were unable to have them. And so much like Abraham's father, who would have told him, "Hey, I prayed for you for 25 years." He and his wife spent 20 years seeking the Lord to have a child, and finally at the age of 60 years old, God gave them twins. And so it's the first mention of twins in the Bible. I think that they probably could relate to dads waiting all those years, but they had these couple of boys named Esau and Jacob. They were born in that order. Esau came out first, Jacob followed there after soon. The Lord told Rebecca because it was such a difficult pregnancy that in her womb were two nations that were competing. And he would have finally said to her, "The younger will be served by the elder," which is the opposite of what we usually see. We mentioned to you last week, I think, that God often blessed the firstborn, but sometimes and more than a few times, God would defer from that pattern and give someone else the lead and choose them to be the leader of the family or whatever. It is oftentimes an example to a spiritually of your old life being laid aside and living that new life that God can give you through his sign. So in any case, the Lord laid out for them that this younger one, Jacob, would be served by the older one, but that struggle had even begun in the womb. And so they were accurately named. Esau was born kind of a red hairy kid, so they named him Harry, which is Esau means. Jacob was born clutching his brother's heel, I think, trying to get out first. So they called him heel catcher. And we don't know, like I said, much about their lives at all, except we get a couple of insights in chapter 25, at least for their dispositions were concerned. Dad loved Esau because he was kind of a man's man, a hunter, an outdoorsman. Jacob was more of a mama's boy. He liked to cook, and he liked to hang out in the house. And she just took to him. And there was a lot of this dysfunction kind of in the family side taking all. And we were told last week of a quick exchange between the boys when they were already older, that he came in, Esau did from the field, he was hungry. Jacob was cooking one of his famous stews up. And Esau said, can I have some stew? He goes, do you sell me your birthright? Jacob didn't want it because it would put him in a position for it to honor the Lord and lead the family. He wanted it because of the benefits, the inheritance, the status that it might give him. But God had just begun to work with Jacob. That would take some time. And so for that little morsel, Esau, he despised his birthright where reading Hebrews. So he sold it to his brother, kind of passed it along. We'll get a little bit more information, like I said, tonight in the next couple of chapters. But know this between, I should say Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Esau is almost a footnote in the Bible. He comes and he goes so quickly. His spiritual account of his life is very sparse at best. He seemed to grow up in the shadow of his father and in the shadow of his son. He will die in chapter 35. We won't really see much of him. He'll be 180 years old when he dies. But by comparison, his life and his involvement and his recording and his lessons to us are very minimal. He might have reached his zenith when he allowed his father, Abraham, to tie him up at 25 years old. They're on Mount Moriah. And take that place of an example of Jesus giving his life for us, willingly. But aside from that, we'll read in chapter, I think 31, next week, that it will be said of Isaac by Jacob that he was the fear of Isaac, that the Lord was the fear of Isaac. And I think when we get next week where you know there is that hustle where mom tries to get the blessing from dad, his dad wants to bless the boy before he thinks he's gonna die and all. That whole hustle, if you will, that whole kind of operation thing, it kind of shows you the heart of everyone. Esau, not willing to do what God says, mom, just like in the connive Jacob, he just didn't wanna get caught. Esau just didn't care. So there's a lot of weird kind of things going on in the family. But when Isaac has found out about how he tried to give a blessing to his elder son, even though the Lord had clearly said no, he finally said, all right, I'm gonna do exactly, this is what God wants, I'm not gonna go back. And it frightened him. And so his relation with the Lord seemed to be one of fear. And willingness, but almost willingness with his arm kind of up behind his back. But needless to say, he wasn't much of a figure in the scriptures. I think we mentioned to you, well, many years ago, it seems like now, that the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis covered roughly 2000 years of history, only major events. But when you start in chapter 12, God slows down and from chapter 12 to the end of the book, only 400 years are covered. And 36 of those chapters are covered by three guys, and about two and a half chapters by Isaac. So we get a lot about Abraham, a lot about Jacob, a lot about Joseph, but not so much about Isaac. Having said that, we're gonna look at Isaac tonight. It's the one thing we do have to go on. This miracle boy will turn out to be much like his father in his struggle in faith early on. He was more like his father in the wrong ways than he was like his father in the spiritual ways. There are two things in particular that are recorded in the scriptures for us to consider. Number one, he was like his dad in the sense that when it came to a famine, he wanted to escape the land of promise to survive. Rather than saying, well, I'm staying here where God put me, he like his dad years earlier was headed for Egypt. And second of all, like his dad, when he was questioned about his wife, like his dad, he said, oh, she's my sister. And he was worried that maybe they'd put him to death so they could take this beautiful woman who was now in her mid 70s. But needless to say, he acted much like his father. So there's this interesting picture between a dad who sets before his children examples, and kids are in many ways, I guess, the product of their parents. You can pass along godliness too though, and faith. It is not always true that the sins of the parents have to become the strongholds in the lives of their children. There is a way to break, I think, that mold by just doing what is right in the Lord's eyes. We hear a lot of times, even in counseling, people say, well, my dad smoked my mom's smoke, so I smoke. Or my dad was an alcoholic. I think I'm gonna be an alcoholic too. Or my, you know, we're Irish, we break things. Whatever crazy stuff. But that's really not the way that it goes, you know? Fortunately, patterns of sin can be broken by the Lord. And if any man is in Christ, he's a new creation. So I'm actually the first kid in my family in the last two, three generations, I got saved. My dad, mom did get saved before they went to be with the Lord, but their parents were not saved. And I grew up at a very liberal Dutch home. We're just about anything else. And yet God stepped in to do a good work. But, you know, to make the argument, my father was a left-handed cigar-smoking golfer who drank and so alive, that's ridiculous. You can't make that argument. Abraham running to Egypt, you might remember if you've been with us on Wednesday night, he was 75 years old. He then went, when he was 99 years old, to a place called Guerar, which we were gonna visit tonight. It is a Philistine stronghold, if you will. It is near the Egyptian border. But both of those events took place before Isaac was born. So he said, well, how in the world does Isaac learn that? And he follows a pattern that really was established long before he was born. And I think the answer is, you know, there are obviously tendencies in his dad's life early on that he had adopted and it kind of led to those kind of decisions. Later on, certainly in Abraham's life, it was a walk of faith. But what we can't discount is that as a patriarch, Isaac was chosen by the Lord for this position. He was used by the Lord, he was blessed by the Lord when he walked with him. It was Griffith Thomas who was a, one of my favorite Bible commentators, although he's hard to get his books, he's from Britain. But he wrote in his passage on this portion, Isaac was the ordinary son of an extraordinary father and the ordinary father of an extraordinary son. So God had a place rise. It could have been much more than he was, but he certainly exemplified a lot of dad's early kind of foibles and never seemed to rise to the occasion of walking with the Lord like he might have done. Certainly his dad did for much of his life. But we'll start in verse one and having said that as an introduction and it says in verse one, there was a famine in the land besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimalec, the king of the Philistines in Gerhard and the Lord appeared to him and said, do not go down to Egypt, live in the land which I shall, of which I will tell you. Isaac was certainly a man in the Bible who was molded by circumstance. You could almost move Isaac by what happened around him. And the famine in the land of promise was the first one biblically in over 100 years. The last one was when Abraham had just barely arrived here back in chapter 12. And in seeking relief, he took his family down to Egypt. And those were disastrous moves. I mean, go back and read him or if you've been with us, I know we've mentioned him to you. Lot, lot, his nephew came back saying, oh, I like the way of Egypt. His wife brought back Hagar who turned out to be not such a blessing as a servant. Abraham left a horrible witness and was told off publicly by a pharaoh. None of this worked out very good because how do you leave the place of God's best to go try to find help in the world? Well, Isaac here 100 years later in at least a second famine. We don't read of any others or might have been but this is, it seems like from verse one that this was the second major famine in the land as we were going forward in our scriptural reading. Isaac does the same thing. He's heading for Egypt. He's gotten as far as one of the Philistine strongholds. It was also a place by the way that a few weeks ago when we were studying Abraham's life, Abraham spent a lot of time in this area because for whatever reason before his, but again it was before his dad, before he was born, but dad spent a lot of time in this Philistine kind of a border town as opposed to living in the heart of where God had brought him in that place where he had built a lot of places of sacrifice and worship. So Isaac believes he would be better served in Egypt to go and try to find sustenance there than to stay in the land of God's promise. How do I apply that? Well, God has a lot of things to provide for you. There is a tendency when we're under pressure to go back to the things we are most comfortable with, though they might not be things of faith, right? We're gonna bail ourselves out. We're gonna look to the world. We're gonna go back to our old ways because there's pressure. And rather than waiting on the Lord or looking into his word, I find myself heading for Egypt. You know, the place God brought me out of the place that the Lord said to Abraham, don't go back there, there's nothing back there for you. Why Egypt? Well, it was a place that God will deliver his people. In the Bible, it is always a type of your flesh, always. When it is typified, it is a picture of the old life. To the natural man, to maybe Isaac. Egypt had the Nile River. And the Nile River was large and it kind of wound its way towards the ocean. And it created what is even today called the Nile Delta. And the Nile Delta has within its borders, this tremendously fertile land. In fact, it is so rich in nutrients, it is not at all dependent upon, to survive on yearly rainfall. In other words, it can survive for years without rain as that famine was oftentimes brought by a lack of rain. And so this was a pretty interesting place to go. It would lessen the hardships of a famine. If you go to the land of Canaan or you go to Israel today, the part that they are in control of, that is not at all like the Delta. In fact, Israel today to this day depends completely upon annual rainfall. You will find as you go into the north, people capturing water just to run it down sometimes a half a mile through pipes and all, just to throw it into the Sea of Galilee because they need water, they can't survive without it. It is life and depending on the annual rainfall, the Sea of Galilee and then the Jordan River, it needs replenishing. Now, that was by God's design. Back in chapter 11 of Deuteronomy, here's what the Lord said through Moses to the people about the place that they were headed for. He said this, "The land which you go to possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you could sow your seed, you can water it by foot as a vegetable gardener." Or in other words, you have this fertile soil. But the land where you cross over to possess is a land of hills and valleys with drinking water that has to come from the reigns of heaven. A land for which the Lord your God will care, the eyes of the Lord your God will be upon it and from the beginning of the year to the end. And it shall be that if you were earnestly obey his commandments, which I command you today to love the Lord your God's servant with all of your heart, with all of your soul, then I will give you rain for your land in its season. The early rain, the latter rain so you can gather your grains and wines and oils. And I will sudden grass into your fields for the livestock so that they might eat and be filled. Just take heed to yourself. Don't let your heart deceive you. Don't turn to worship other gods and worship and serve them lest the Lord's anger be aroused against you. He shuts up the heavens and there's no rain. The land can produce no fruit and you perish from the good land which God has given you. So God created the land of Canaan with a closet says, you're gonna have to depend upon me 'cause in the natural sense, you can't survive here. I would say to you, that's exactly true in your spiritual life. You need to depend upon the Lord to be fruitful. You need to walk with God. Then you'll be watered, right? Then God will send his spirit into your life in a real way. So the life in the land of promise was very different from the life in Egypt in that regard. God's kingdom relies on God's provision. The early or the autumn rain called the Yoreen in Hebrew. The Yoreen, the rains that come early or the Macosse, the Cose is the latter rain. And God says it comes for obedient people. You will be taken care of if you come into this land, but it's not like Egypt where it just operates on its own. I put you in a position where you need to rely upon me. So there are hills and valleys in Israel. And I think that they easily represent to us the fact that sometimes you run into famines and difficulty and lean years and difficult times. And for us, the challenges don't reach back to where we've come from, but rather to reach up to the God who has taken us through it. He allows trials for our benefit to build our faith and to like the children of Israel, realize we have a tremendous need for God in our life. You can't go it alone. You can go it alone. You're not gonna make it. It's just not the way that go. So here's Isaac, not the most spiritual guy. And famine comes and he's heading off to go, if you will to Egypt and God stops him before he gets there out of one of the border towns kind of along the way where the Philistines are ruling, if you will, and in charge. So the Lord appears in verse two day in, and he warns him not to go there. And he says to him, "Much what we read in Deuteronomy, dwell in this land. I'll be with you. I'll bless you for you and your descendants. I will give these lands and I will perform the oath, which I've sworn to Abraham, your father, and I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven. I will give your descendants all these lands in your seat, all of the nations of the earth will be blessed because Abraham obeyed my voice, kept my charge, my commandments, my chats, shoots, and my laws. And so Isaac dwelt there in Guerra. Now notice that the Lord warns him, don't go back to the old life. He makes this clear distinction, verse two. Just stay in the land where you have been given great promise. I think that's true. As Christians, we can't go back, right? We've got to keep our hand to the plow and look forward. By the way, this is the first recorded time in the Bible that God speaks with Isaac directly. You don't have any other conversations between the two of them until we begin here. He gives him a prohibition and a promise. Don't go back, hang out here, and I'm going to do for you what I promised to do for your father. And he reiterates the promises that Abraham had been given, God's care, God's blessing. And then he says, because your father obeyed me, well, there's a big paintbrush of grace there, isn't there? 'Cause if you've been with us, there's a lot of times Abraham didn't do so well. But God doesn't, grace covers all that, right? Our sins are covered by his grace. So he only records the things that moved his heart and his hand for Abraham. And so by God's grace, he overlooks the times of Abraham's failures and doubts. And to me, it's an amazing example of God's relationship with his people because here is a very disobedient and pretty much a faithless, at least, from a biblical standpoint, patriarch, who is headed out of the land of promise with the first chance of difficulty. God stops him and he's very gracious to him. You know, and I've been God, which you don't want. I think I might have said, what is it with all these stupid patriarchs? A little trial and off you go, really? I haven't provided enough for you. I haven't proven enough to you. But instead, because he's God is good and his mercy is new every morning, he extends this wonderful love to a fellow like Isaac. I love the picture. Paul writes to the Ephesians in chapter two, verse four, "But God who is great in mercy with the great love "were with the loved us. "When we were dead in our stresses and sins, "he made us alive in Christ by his grace, you say." I mean, this is really the heart of God reaching out to us in our sinfulness. I think it was in lamentations that Jeremiah wrote. Because of God's mercies, we are not consumed. And because of his compassion, we don't fail their new every morning. Great, great is God's faithfulness. So I love the picture here because, you know, Isaac has not been, you know, he's not been a guy and he will not be a guy that we go, "Oh, way to go, Isaac." But he does seem to be someone in God's plans. I do, I totally expect to see Isaac in heaven. God chose him, but he could have been a lot of other things than he was. Whenever you wonder why God is blessing someone like Isaac, remember that God's mercy is greater than our foolishness. Right? Greater than our stumbling. He is blessing Isaac not because Isaac is deserving, but because God is good. And he does all things well. So Isaac, in verse six, doesn't go to Egypt. Doesn't really turn around and go back to the place of worshiping. Doesn't go back to the place where the altars are and where God met with his family and where the Lord made himself. No. He just kind of settles down on the borders with the Philistines, the very place that his father had come the year before he was born and had did for the second time, "Oh, yeah, she's my wife." Right, it's not my wife, she's my sister. It had happened here in the exact same place. So we read in verse seven, "And the men of the place asked them about his wife, "and he said she's my sister. "For he was afraid to say she's my wife "because he thought less the men of that place "would kill me for Rebecca "because she is beautiful to be whole." Like father, like son. However, father did that long before his boy was ever born. He did it twice before Isaac ever was born. And he does it for the same reasons. He's worried about how he's going to be treated. He's worried about his wife's beauty. It is self-preservation. And he believed that maybe if they liked the way she looked, maybe they would take him or take her from him. What a, that's a tough society to live in. What are you doing here? But at 60, he had had twins now. His wife was in pushing 80. Good looking woman in her 80s. But that's what drove him. The timing of his stumble is amazing because he had just heard for the first time in his life at least recordedly from the Lord. God had spoken to him. God had given him this beautiful list of things he would do for him. Great, just promises. And I thought to myself, would this be the time that I would start lying to my teeth? Okay, maybe a couple of weeks down the road. But you had just got done talking to the Lord. God had spoken to you. He's for real. Is this the time you want to live with deceit and fear? At least, wouldn't you hang in there for a while to try to do better and to please the Lord? But instead, he immediately with fear goes it alone and falls back to the, he's not in Egypt, but his heart is. He goes back to the very things that he would rely upon, he turns back. It makes no sense theologically, but it does personally for all of us, I think are prone to the same response. We come to church, God speaks, we're all, God is so good. You know, God answers our prayer, oh, he's so fatal. God can take care of anything. And the very next thing that comes up rather than remembering that, we go reaching for the very things that will never help us. You know, somehow we don't get stuck in the right place when we should. And so we degenerate back to our old patterns of sinfulness. I always remember Peter and Caesarea Philippi, who was never more on fire spiritually than when the Lord said, who do you think that I am? He goes, oh, I got this one. And he spoke up for all of the people or all of the men, certainly, that were with him. And he said, you're the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus said, you're a blessed man, Simon, Bargeona. Flesh and blood hasn't told you that. You didn't learn that on your own. My father and heaven told you that. In other words, this is revealed to you. And he went, that's right, because I talked to God. Five minutes later, Jesus said, we're going to Jerusalem. I'm going to die. And Peter said, I got this one too. No more talker, you're dying. No more nonsense like this. That's not going to happen. You far be it from you, Lord. And the Lord said, ah, you're getting inspired again, Peter. But this time from the pit of hell. And in a moment's time, he just kind of, he seemed to swerve into the other direction. It's something about, you know, the lessons we learn, we should, hopefully it leaves a permanent mark. Sometimes you have to learn the same thing 100 times. But here Isaac, he hears from God, you think, perfect. Now God's got his heart, five minutes. And the first bit of tragedy, and he's already in a bad place. So he's kind of pushing himself to be confronted anyway. And this is what you see. But notice what we read here. He is driven by fear to sin. Fear drove him. You and I, as God's people, should never live by fear. Never. Psalm 23, I think it's verse four. "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Comma for you are with me." Right? You believe that? Fear is the enemy, and it'll steal from you everything that God wants to give you. Well, here's Isaac. Why is he afraid? Because he's not so close to the Lord that that's even a consideration for him. He's got to come up with his own ideas of how to protect his 80-year-old wife from a bunch of gonkers who are gonna take her and kill him. That's what he's left with. The Lord is my shepherd. Isaac fears for his life, for his wife, but he doesn't fear the Lord. That's the problem, right? It is fear, but that's not the kind of life you wanna live. In fact, if you look up the words fear not or do not fear, depending on which Bible translation you have, you'll find it at least 125 times in the Bible. At least for me, when my dad said something twice, he expected me to get it. Well, here's your father in heaven, telling you 125 times, stop being afraid. I've got this, I'm with you. You can depend upon me. And to make matters worse, according to the next few verses, when he lied out of fear, it worked for quite a while. In other words, there was no ramifications, there was no payoff, I got away with it. So you read in verse eight, now it came to pass when he had been there for a long time. But then King Abimelech of the Philistines looked out through a window and just happened to see Isaac showing in dearments to Rebecca, his wife. Uh-oh. And Abimelech called Isaac and he said, "Look, quite obviously she's your wife. "Why did you say she's my sister?" And he said, "Honestly, because I said to her, "lest I die on because of her, on account of her." And Abimelech said, "What is this that you have done to us? "One of the people might soon have lain with your wife "and she would have brought your guilt upon us." So Abimelech charged all of the people. And he said, "He who touches this man "or his wife will certainly be put to death." The lie, the reaching back to Egypt-like behavior and then the success rate. I got away with it. That's gonna be fine. And it worked for quite a while until this fellow Abimelech saw him, you know, hugging his wife or whatever and he put two to two together. By the way, the name of Abimelech, two words in Hebrew, Avi, Melech. My father is king. It is either a dynastic name like Herod. There's a lot of those. Doesn't mean his name was Herod, but it's a dynasty name that's passed along like King would be. Or it is a throne name like Pharaoh, also nobody named Pharaoh. It was just a, you know, a place that you sit. So this isn't, this guy's name's Abimelech, the fellow that Abraham dealt with 100 years early. It was also named Abimelech back in chapter 20, I believe it was. So years have passed. It isn't the same person and it's probably not his name. Notice that once Isaac gets caught, he comes clean. But I always think it's a terrible deal when Christians get chastised by the world. You know, we should be like the example, right? The worst thing in the world is to have some guy who's worshiping idols every turn, you know, tell you about how unfaithful you've been to your God. But that's so often what happens when Christians fall into sin. We don't reach people, we stumble them. And that's certainly the case throughout the scripture. When David fell with Bathsheba, it was pretty awesome, awful, I should say. We read in the scriptures there about this has been the cause why many have stumbled the world around them, the nations around them had stumbled. Nehemiah, when he took over his governor in Jerusalem, found the Jews who had money, kind of taken it to the Jews who didn't have money and charging them some kind of interest that they were losing house and home. And they went to Nehemiah and said, "This is horrible. "We can't survive this." And he got all of these folks together. He said, "What you're doing is not good. "You should walk in the fear of the Lord "because of the reproach of the nations, "your enemies around the value." You have to be an example to those around us who we should do better. Isaiah spoke to the nation of Israel back in chapter 52. And the Lord says, "What do I have here?" He said to the nation that my people have taken away for nothing and those who rule over them just make them wail and because of them, my name is being blasphemed continually day in and day out. We don't want that, right? So Isaac, besides reaching back, he puts himself in a position as God's representative to do a good thing and he doesn't do a good thing at all. So Isaac is confronted by this heathen king. He admits that his fears have been misplaced and a bimlic in response makes touching him or a capital offense. This is the kind of power that he held. All of this time, we don't know how long a long time is, what we read here. God is not recorded as speaking to Isaac once. He's living the lie. He's driven by fear. He's not back in the country, at least in the center of the country where he could have fellowship with God. He's just kind of stuck in the border town of the world, right? And that kind of, he didn't cross into Egypt, he just can see it from here, that kind of life stuff. And so maybe you know someone or maybe you're that person that wants to kind of live on the edge. And you think about it, gosh, it's the Lord that says, "Come out from among them and be separate." So he's exposed. He admits, if you will, his sin. He comes clean before the king. There's no more lie to live, if you will. And we read in verse 12. Then Isaac began to sow in that land and he began to reap in the same year, a hundred fold and the Lord began to bless him and the man began to prosper and he continued prospering until he became very prosperous for he had possessions of the flocks and the herds and great numbers of servants and the Philistines began to envy him. The minute that Isaac comes clean, honest, notice what God does, he begins to bless him. And in this process, and we'll read it through the end of the chapter, God will use this situation of blessing not to reward Isaac living on the edge, but to push Isaac back into the place where God wants him to be. In other words, the blessings that outwardly look like, oh man, he's really getting away with murder from a heavenly viewpoint and we're given that by the Lord. It is the very thing that pushes Isaac slowly but surely back to the place where God and he had met and where his father had spent most of his life worshiping the Lord. And so God begins to bless this God. He's not in Egypt, but he settles in amongst the heathen and God wants to change that. He doesn't want you living sort of in the world. You know, everybody looks good in church, but the church looks good away from the world. So God begins to bless. And notice in verse 12 and 13 and 14 here that Isaac though he hasn't yet moved from the area, God has begun to bless him so that this bumper clop will do a couple of things. It'll move the jealousy of the people against him so he won't stay there and then they will in verse 16 in a minute just ask him to get out. Why don't you move along? We don't want you here among us. By the way, the Philistines just for you that like history originated from the island of Crete. So if you follow history from the southern area of Israel, the Philistines moved off Crete when there was a huge volcano that killed most of the people, threatened the island, which is where the term Palestine came from. It was originally Philistine. And so it's where it got its name. By the time King Saul comes around, we're a little bit away from him, the Philistines were this powerful people who vied against Israel. You remember Goliath was one of their guys, right? 9 foot 6. By the way, I heard today there was a guy in Africa that was 9 foot 6, tallest man in the world. And they think it's 9 foot 6. I heard today because they didn't have anything to measure him. So they guessed. Well, we did like-- I think he's 9'6. So he's never seen a man that big, but apparently he's the tallest guy on the world. Even Joshua, when he came across years before King Saul, there was already a much larger presence of the Philistines. But at least now, in this time, they were basically a big family, right? An enclave, a tribal group that would wield their powers, bells they could, in an area. And they kind of ruled the land and watched over them. Beginning in verse 15 and going to the end of the chapter, if you're somebody who outlines chapters, that's the only way I can remember where things are. I remember chapters. People go, what's the verse? I go, I don't know, but I think I know what chapter it's in. The rest of this chapter could be called, oh, well. Oh, well, because this is all about wells and water. Both of them, a matter of life and death in the desert. And both of them, used by the Lord, to push his boy back to the center of his will. So we read in verse 15, these words. Now, the Philistines had stopped up all of the wells, which his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham's father, and they had filled them with earth. And Abimalek said to Isaac, go away from us, for you are now much mightier than we, because God had prospered him so. And so Isaac departed from there, and he pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar. So now he's moving away from Egypt and back towards the center of the land of promise. He settled down there. And again, Isaac dug again the wells of water, which they had dug in the days of Abraham's father, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham. And he called them by the names which his father had called them. And Isaac's servants dug in the valley, and they found a well of running water there. But the herdsmen of Gerar, corner with Isaac's herdsmen, and they said, the water is ours. And so he named the well Isaac. The word Isaac means to argue or to quarrel, because they quarreled with him. And so he dug another well, and they quarreled over that as well. And so he named that one sitting there, sitting in means to have an enemy. And then, verse 22, he moved from there, and he dug another well. But they wouldn't quarrel over that one. So we finally stopped and called the name of that Reheboth. Reheboth both means to be, to have roominess or so. And he said, for now, the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land. So he's prospering. He's getting as strong as he can be. He looks to the world like, gosh, God's blessing, this guy that's not been all that upright. But he's constantly now being uprooted by the jealousy of and more with the people of the area where he really doesn't belong. It's not a good place for him to be. And so God stirs up the people. The king tells them, get out. The people in the land had buried every well that his father had built. Can you imagine? They just filled it up with dirt. So they didn't want him around, for sure. And so he cleared them out, began to make them useful again. And they would just say, get out. We don't want you here. And Isaac not a fighter, what kind of guy that facilitates. He continues to move, and he's pushed by these angry people further and further away from this place. And back to Bathsheba, which is kind of that place where Abraham had spent a lot of time walking with the Lord. In fact, he'll call the place Bathsheba next to the last verses, verse 33 of this chapter. In verse 19 and 20, his servants find a running water well, an artesian well, hugely fine in the desert. This is a water that's coming from underground, and it has an endless amount of water. The locals immediately show up and say, that's ours. Not yours. And so he called the place contention. He gave it to them. He moved on. He dug another well. He called it enmity or opposition. And again, he relinquished it, moved on. Finally, a third well. He kept moving with all of his stuff. Finally, nobody seemed to bother him there. He settled down there. So I've got plenty of room here to move around, and he settled in. But notice that opposition worked to move Isaac to the place where God wanted him to be. And I would say to you, sometimes, if you're not where God wants you to be, and you say, gosh, everything's going wrong, it could be that everything's going right. Because God doesn't just forsake us. He will do whatever it takes to get us to where we need to be. Probably this strategy that the Lord employed here would probably not have moved Abraham. Because everything we learned of Abraham is he was a fighter. He didn't seem to dislike conflict. He'd take him head on. He wasn't easily moved. But Isaac tends to roll over whenever there's trouble. Isaac is a peaceful guy. Abraham is kind of a contender, if you will. So both are good, depending on what God is doing. But here, it brings Isaac over time, exactly back to where the Lord wanted him to be. Well, as he is getting closer to that place in verse 23, we see him finally ending up to where he should have been to begin with in this area of Bathsheba, or Bathsheba. And the Lord said to him that night, I am the God of your father, Abraham, do not fear. I am with you, I will bless you, multiply your descendants for my servant, Abraham's sake. And so he built an altar there, and he called upon the name of the Lord there, and he pitched his tent there, and there Isaac's servants dug a well. So over time, he gets to the place God wants him to be. And here's the first thing you notice. The minute he returns to where God wants him, God speaks up. During all that we've read, God spoke to him, don't go to Egypt, then nothing, just blessing, so that God put into motion this strategy of pushing his boy back into that place of fellowship and dependency upon the Lord away from the Egyptian borders, if you will. But the minute he arrives in Bathsheba, verse 24, he hears from the Lord immediately, and God makes them the same promise. The same God that took care of your dad. I'm going to be with you. There's promises of a future down the road. You don't have to worry if you will, but don't be afraid. And so verse 25, it says, he built an altar there, and he called upon the name of the Lord there, pitching his tent, and there Isaac's servants dug the well. So the minute they put themselves where God wanted them to be, they found this, or they're able to dig this well, to be able to find sustenance and water, if you will, and God has quickened to encourage his child. He's where he wanted him. Good words come from the law. God is very interested in encouraging us. But I want you to notice, he's still afraid. He's afraid because he's developed relationship with these folks in the world that now he's prospering, and they're angry, and they're stronger than he is, or so it would seem to him. And so he doesn't want anything to do with what's maybe coming for him, and after all, they're living in tents. They're not hiding in the city. This is, you feel kind of exposed. But God says to him, you don't have to be afraid. I'm with you. I'm your God, I took care of your dad, I'm gonna take care of you. I'm gonna take care of your future generation, just trust me. And he went, all right, build a place of worship, dig a well. Let's stay here where God speaks. And so God meets him here. Well, as he is there, verse 26, as then a bimilek comes traveling from Gerhard to see our guy Isaac with his friend named Ahuszz, and Phil called the captain of the army. So he shows up with two representatives, and Isaac says to him, why have you come to me since you hate me and since you have sent me away? And they said, we have certainly seen that the Lord is with you. Gosh, what an encouragement. So we said, let us there go there now to be an oath between us, between you and us, that we can make a covenant with you, that you will do us no harm since we have not touched you. And since we have done nothing to you but good, and have sent you on your way in peace, that you are now blessed of the Lord. Well, I would argue, bearing every one of his wells, not exactly being kind, but for whatever reason, here comes the enemy to make peace, and to ask that there would be kind of a peace treaty between them, their words, like I said, are sort of, they're kind of accurate, but he didn't hurt, they didn't hurt him, but they didn't do him much good either. In any event, in verse 30, they made a feast, they ate and drank together, they got up in the morning, and they swore an oath with one another, and then Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace, and it came to pass that same day that Isaac's servants came and told him about the well which they had dug and said, we found water. And so he called the place Sheva today, or therefore the name of the city is bear Sheva to this day. The agreement was made on the same day, the well, well water was found, and the word bersheba means a well of oath, or a well, if you will, of promise. Sometimes the word sheva is seven, but not in this case or in this usage. So he names the city where he has now settled down where the Lord has spoken to him, bersheba. The next two verses have nothing to do with this chapter, but have everything to do with what is coming down the road. But we are at the end of the chapter introduced to Esau, one of his sons, who is now at 40 years old, remember they had a child, but now at 80 years old, his son would be, or sorry, at 100 years old, his son would now be 40. Esau begins to get married, and he takes wives, Judith, the daughter of a head type, and base a myth, the daughter of another head type, and the relationships of Esau, who is not a very spiritual guy at all, brought tremendous grief to the mind of his parents Isaac and Rebecca. So like I said, we will travel with these guys for another couple of weeks until we get to chapter 28 verse nine, and then we'll just kind of lose them all, and we'll spend time with Jacob, which is I think where the Lord wants us to be. For now we are told that these twins had turned 40 years old, so that's how little we know of them. We know their birth, we know it was 20 years after Isaac got married, it's been 40 years now. Isaac is 100 years old, and Esau, their whereward son gets married twice, and he marries two heathen women from very idolatrous lands, if you will, breaks his parents' hearts. Esau will continue to make terrible choices. At the end of chapter 28, when he sees that his dad doesn't bless them like he wants, he goes and marries two more, just to make his parents angry. I'm not sure there are some parents maybe here tonight who would understand how they would feel. Sometimes your kids get involved with people that you wish they hadn't. It's difficult when your kids aren't walking with the Lord, and then marriage just kind of goes south. But Esau here immediately flocks to the polygamy part of the world, if you will, something God has, from the beginning, when he instituted marriage, a forbidden one man, one woman. That was all there were around, by the way. It was easy to follow. Hooray for them. I remember a couple years ago, Dan Cathy, who was then president of Chick-fil-A, came out and said, "You know, we believe "in the biblical definition of marriage." Got himself in a lot of like hot water with the world. I suspect he got a big high five from Jesus. His son now, Andrew, Kathy runs Chick-fil-A, but certainly a family that loves the Lord. So, chapter 26, there's this picture of the faithlessness, really of Isaac, but the continual faithfulness of God. He stops him from going too far. He uses lots of things to push him back to the place of where he won't fail, but he'll succeed. God was with him even in the worst of times. He finishes with him the work that he began. But to the degree that you surrender to the Lord, your life and mine, the annals of the annals. Annals, the annals of our walk with the Lord can either be filled with pages of victory and fruitfulness like you find in the other patriarchs, or you can have a chapter of a comment. And that's kind of what Isaac gets a comment in a chapter of what God did. But what God certainly wanted to do is far more and you'll find that even in Jacob, who had tremendous difficulties walking with God, came from the same messed up family, brought the same stupid kind of practices, spent half his life just hustling, you know? But again, he was willing to be taught. He was open to be directed. He finds himself as he falls on his face, getting up on my face. Isaac never seems to wake up to that much. So God blessed him, God promised, God used him, God doesn't fail all of his promises to his people. But he's a really a pretty good picture of a guy that could have done a whole lot more. I guess what I would say to you is don't be an Isaac. Don't just, you know, you're gonna make it, you're gonna get to heaven, you love Jesus, you're going to heaven, God's forgiven your sin. But you know, your life never amounted to much. You didn't get much done. You didn't find yourself in the right place. And so God's having to constantly be pushing you just to get you to survive in a place that you can get through. God has much better plans for you than that. And I think we'll learn that as we go in the next, well, probably not next week 'cause we'll see Jacob at his finest, which isn't all that great. But God has great things and great plans for you if you're willing, but he's not leaving you either way. Amen? I'd rather thank you tonight for your word to us. What, how hard it is to stand in these chapters in this historical setting and in this narrative of where you give us a picture of a birth and a marriage and 20 years later a birth and 40 years later this fella getting sideways. And then there's the dad and how many years it took to push him back to where he should be from where he had wandered. And even in the next couple of chapters, we're gonna see Isaac again fighting with God and he finally relents because he's afraid of God's judgment. But aside from that fear of judgment, I think he might have continued down the road of pushing back, but you're a good God. You're a faithful God. I'm sure that you caused Isaac to make it. But oh, what his life might have been. So Lord, like Isaac, keep us from Egypt, but even keep us from the land of the Philistines where we have to fight with our own kind of equipment, if you will, and our own resources rather than that, may we look to you, to your word, live life to the full, be blessed and carefree and delivered from the power of sin. May your spirit just guide and direct our steps. This is a new year. May this be great things that happen in our lives this year as we begin to walk with you and take the lesson of Isaac seriously and just see that though he often gave up on you, you never gave up on him. And when you found him where he needed to be, you were always there to encourage him and promise to him and bless him. So Lord, do that with us. Keep us close, we pray. If you're not close tonight, from pastors that will be up front, we'd love to pray with you and just be able to say to you without a doubt, God can start over with you in your life. God can restore what the world can try to take away. God can bring you back to that place where God can restore the joy, restore the thanksfulness, restore the peace, but you're gonna have to go back to where you were with him. And the further you get out there towards Egypt, the closer you lived to that devarcation line, the worse it gets. The world doesn't want you and yet you're trying to be acceptable there. God has a plan and it's far better. But if you need prayer tonight, would you come up and speak to one of the guys and just go home tonight with a peace and a rest that you put yourself back where you need to be? And God is more than willing to begin to speak to your heart again, words of encumfort and forgiveness and joy. If you're online tonight, you can send us an email, we'll be happy to get back to you, call the office in the morning or just follow those links and see the promises that God makes to your life because he loves you so, and he's not just gonna let you go. Know that for sure. You let go, he won't. (gentle music) - Well, thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and rating our podcast. You can visit us on the web at morningstarcc.org and on our YouTube channel at MorningstarCC. Again, that's @ MorningstarCC. If you'd like to support this podcast, please look us up at patreon.com/morningstarcc. Again, that's patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/morningstarcc. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
