Genesis 26
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Ok Wednesday night crew. Who is ready to get started. Chapter 26 is going to have you ready to fight. I hope you have your steel toes on and I hope you have your maturity cap on because there are some tough things to discuss in this chapter. I know I was ready to beat Isaac up the first and second go around I was studying this chapter. You probably will also.
The next thought you are going to have is haven't we read this before. Maybe Chris forgot where we were. So much so that other scholars have thought that maybe Moses just keeps repeating the same story. But we know this to not be the case because 1 the word is infallible. Pastor Jeremy says this a lot that “I completely trust the bible. I don’t completely trust myself with the Bible.” That has to always be study mantra. So when I look at the bible and I don’t just read the bible I read the bible sometimes things come at me that didn't before. Sometimes I am in a different space reading it and it says something different that it didn’t say before. Sometimes Holy Spirit brings different revelation that he couldn’t bring before. But I know that this word is still perfect. This word is still proven truth. This word is still above all other words. So let’s get in it.
1 Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar to Abimelech king of the Philistines.
Sounding familiar already. As soon as Abraham got to the land he was supposed to live in what happened? Famine. As soon as Isaac takes his place as his father’s replacement, what happens? Famine. When the famine hit what did Abraham do? He left. What is Isaac doing? He is leaving. Abraham ran into a king named Abimelech. Who does Isaac run into? Abimelech. Now there is some thought about this, Abimelech is not his name but his title it actually means my father is king. So maybe this is the Son of the first one or grandson we don’t know. I will be honest if Abraham is living until 175 this could be the same king but more than likely it is a generation or two down because it has been almost 100 years since the first time they met. So let’s keep going.
2 And the Lord appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; dwell in the land of which I shall tell you.
3 Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you, for to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father.
4 I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands. And in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed,
5 because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”
Then the Lord appeared only happens for 3 people in Genesis. That word YHWH is what I am referencing. YHWH appeared and it only happens like this for 3 people. You may ask me what the difference is, I don’t know. I just know that there are three people that get this phrase and it is only 5 times in Genesis. Abraham is the first with Genesis 12:7, 17:1, and 18:1
Isaac is the second with this one here in 26 and then we will see the next one with Jacob in 35:9.
And when YHWH shows up you better believe he has something he needs to say to you and here it is. He puts an end to going to Egypt. There will be no more going to the world to get what I am supposed to give you. Each one of those visits there was a blessing on those men. But in particular this one, there is a tiny little word that we have in the english language that is so powerful. It is only 2 letters. When it appear you better pay attention to what came before it and what comes after it. You wanna know what the word is? If. Tiny word, huge implications. So YHWH says I will bless you but with that blessing there is a condition you must meet in order to receive it. I will bless you if you do not go to Egypt. I will be with you if. You want my blessing and my presence, do not go to Egypt. That is the condition. That is the obligation you must meet. Now how many of you are going to Egypt. Trying to have egypt and God? You want to see God in your situations, he ain’t in Egypt. Stop trying to get Godly results with worldly systems. Oh we need more people to come to church lets make the church more palatable. Let’s make it look more like the world. Let’s not sing the songs that talk about the blood. Let’s not talk in tongues because they wouldn’t understand that. It might freak people out. let’s not dance and get to wild because that might freak people out. There is a message I want to preach and maybe one sunday I can about praise and what bible says it looks like. Some of yall would realize you haven’t biblically praised God at all your entire Christian walk if we talked about it the way the bible talks about it. But we are not called to go to Egypt. We cannot have both. Does Isaac obey?
6 So Isaac settled in Gerar.
Now it is a huge deal to hear the words of the Lord, but it is even a huger deal to obey the words of the Lord. It is the obedience that matters and yes he obeys. Matthew 7 building houses on rock and sand. What was the key. Obedience. Now storm is coming on both. The storm is given but how you survive it is to obey my word.
God leaves no doubt to Isaac on what he should do and Isaac obeys.
But let’s go back to 3 and 4. There is a word I want you underline.
Notice a shift in the promise that definitely reiterates what God said to Abraham but there is a slight change. He changes from land to lands. God is saying that this is going to be bigger than you thought. This is going to more than you could even imagine. It will be lands. Not just the land of Canaan but also the land of the Philistines.
Then he says which is the first time it is recorded, not only will I bless you, but I will be with you. He doesn’t say that at all any where else. I will be with you. Who does that sound like? This should excite you. I will be with. You not only get my favor you get my presence. Jesus said I will never leave you.
So God repeats all the things again. We learn by repetition. You can’t just read the bible you,…see. I wish God could say it once and we got it but we don’t. So God repeats it. Then is the why he is going to do this.
Because Abraham obeyed. Dad’s can your kids say because the way you lived your life, I am better off. I am closer to God? Can they count on that. Is that in their account? Like I know we wanna leave finances in their accounts but can they say spiritually that they are in a better situation spiritually because of you. I know it ultimately is their faith. But how is the foundation. So God says if you act like your dad, I will bless and be with you. Or would God say to your kids, if you stop acting like your dad I will bless you. You can be the generation breaker. You are not doomed because you dad wasn’t a disciple of Christ and you can break that for your kids.
Isaac listens and stays. Then verse 7 Dad’s your influence cannot be turned off so either it is a blessing or detriment.
7 When the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, “She is my sister,” for he feared to say, “My wife,” thinking, “lest the men of the place should kill me because of Rebekah,” because she was attractive in appearance.
Listen to me. We wanna talk about there aren’t generational things in families. How each person has their own demons etc. I would argue that there are demons that oppress families and unless you as a person get them under control they will always be around your family. I could tell you mine. You got them too. Look at this. You realize Isaac wasn’t there when these happened to Abraham. Abraham didn’t “teach” him to lie and to be deceitful. Isaac didn’t learn this but yet here he is repeating the exact same mistake as his father when he had no recollection of his father doing it. This can’t be happening again. Yet it does. It is not the same story because there are differences.
But let me say this, I can look at my own life and go why do I keep repeating the same stuff. This is so stupid. I will say that Paul said that. I don’t find it that hard to see that a man can repeat the same mistake. God sitting up there going well here we go again. Not that God is surprised but I am sure he wishes we didn’t repeat.
And he is doing this with the same motive and with the same selfishness of I don’t care what happens to you just so I am ok.
Look
8 When he had been there a long time, Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out of a window and saw Isaac laughing with Rebekah his wife.
9 So Abimelech called Isaac and said, “Behold, she is your wife. How then could you say, ‘She is my sister’?” Isaac said to him, “Because I thought, ‘Lest I die because of her.’ ”
10 Abimelech said, “What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.”
11 So Abimelech warned all the people, saying, “Whoever touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.”
So some difference. She wasn’t taken into the kings harem. He saw them together. And I read this in one of the commentaries. Notice that what they were doing. Laughing. What does Isaac mean. I laughed. They are laughing in the face of the king because of his deception. The commentary said that the hebrew words used here would have been to the point of making a mockery of the promise of God. How many of us because of our actions have made a mockery of the promises of God.
Again I am just saying that this trickery or deception is not a thing to just blow by. Abraham taught it to his son Isaac. How to get an upper hand in life. Laban which is Rebekah’s uncle looked for it. Rebekah will use it with her two kids. Jacob will use it against Laban. Laban against Jacob. Jacob dupes Isaac. Jacob will be tricked by his sons about Joseph. Simeon and Levi dupe a whole country. Judah’s daughter in law trick him. Do you see this generational sins rolling through your family? Deal with it. Do the tough thing.
We also see the same bigotry in Isaac passed down that there is an assumption of the people that they are wicked enough to kill him. Maybe warranted because they were an evil people but he should give them the benefit of the doubt and he says why he does that. He was afraid. The moment he believes it can go bad, he bails on his wife and bails on god and is only concerned with his own life.
He doesn’t use a term for murder here. He is very careful to not use that word because you accusing someone of murder there are different consequences so he says killed for her sake.
Why do you think this Abimelech even started watching them? He has learned from what the other things that have happened. You know what else he learned?
He doesn’t want the guilt of the God that they serve. He knows that God would have dealt with us very harshly had we touched her. I don’t want trouble with the God he serves. So none of yall better lay a hand on her. His fear of God is greater than Isaacs.
Those of us that claim to be a part of the kingdom, let us live a life that shows we actually believe in this gospel we proclaim. Does the world fear him more than we do?
Ok let’s look at 12
12 And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him,
13 and the man became rich, and gained more and more until he became very wealthy.
14 He had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him.
15 (Now the Philistines had stopped and filled with earth all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father.)
16 And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we.”
What is the main reason they hate him for? Because God is blessing him. Are there any philistines in the room? Instead being excited that God is blessing them we grit our teeth in disgust because that blessing ought to be ours. Don’t you dare covet.
They would rather his blessing be destroyed then for him to have it. Well if i can’t have it no one can.
Abimelech is now going to be working in fear. Dictators don’t like when the church begins to show a little bit more power than them. China does this. They will almost like an alarm go in and kill a bunch of people, and destroy their buildings and say start over. This all boils down to we as the church say God is the ultimate authority not the government so when the government attempts to take control they go after the church first. Look around.
17 So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar and settled there.
18 And Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, which the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham. And he gave them the names that his father had given them.
19 But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of spring water,
20 the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” So he called the name of the well Esek, because they contended with him.
21 Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that also, so he called its name Sitnah.
22 And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, saying, “For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.”
So Isaac decides that if it is going to be a problem, he will just leave. He will compromise. But then what happens. They just go to the next one. Hello church. We compromise on the little things because we just want people to like us. We just don’t want trouble then all of a sudden we are compromising on the entire truth of the bible and allowing open unrepentant sin in the pull pits and leadership.
God allows the persecution to come on him though because God promised lands. So even in his apparent compromise, God is setting him to take over all the land he is moving to. Because apparently we as a church can’t handle blessing too much. We get full of ourselves so persecution comes to remind us who we are truly dependent on.
How does Jesus get his church to finally leave Jerusalem and head to the places he called them to do. He said go to Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. They all hunkered down in Jerusalem and what does God allow, Saul at the time to start persecuting the church and hunting them. Then they all flee.
The names of the three wells: Esek, Sitnah, and Rehoboth means contention, enmity or opposition, wide or open space
So God told him what was going to happen and then it happens. If God has said something is going to happen, prepare for it. Jesus said I will send you out like sheep among wolves and here we are in the world as sheep among wolves going, how did that happen. I just don’t know what is going on in this world. What do you mean you don’t know. Everyone is ok with Jesus carrying the lamb and loving everyone. But when you start talking about he isn’t many ways to the father. He is the only way. People don’t like that. Well we just have to get along and coexist. Jesus didn’t say that. He never said the goal of being my disciple is to be liked by the world. He said I bring a sword. I came to offend. I am dividing this thing. Your whole house may be against you he said and then you look and your whole house is against you and you wonder what’s going on. You are his disciple and they are not. You can be less devoted and have a relationship with them but you have to decide. What he says is going to happen.
23 From there he went up to Beersheba.
24 And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham’s sake.”
25 So he built an altar there and called upon the name of the Lord and pitched his tent there. And there Isaac’s servants dug a well.
So look what else he learned from His father. As soon as God shows up let me worship him. Let me sacrifice for and to him. Let me lay it down on the altar because it is all his.
26 When Abimelech went to him from Gerar with Ahuzzath his adviser and Phicol the commander of his army,
27 Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, seeing that you hate me and have sent me away from you?”
28 They said, “We see plainly that the Lord has been with you. So we said, let there be a sworn pact between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you,
29 that you will do us no harm, just as we have not touched you and have done to you nothing but good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord.”
30 So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank.
31 In the morning they rose early and exchanged oaths. And Isaac sent them on their way, and they departed from him in peace.
They see that God is with him. Sounds like Peter and John. The pharisees said that they could see they had been with the Lord.
Forgive. Make a table in front of your enemies.
32 That same day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well that they had dug and said to him, “We have found water.”
33 He called it Shibah; therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day.
34 When Esau was forty years old, he took Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite to be his wife, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite,
Shibah means oath and Beersheba is called well of an oath.
Now why in the world we throw in this little blurb on Esau. lol Moses you just brought that out of left field somewhere. He is showing that trouble is brooding. It is a little bit of foreshadowing for us. We are going to bring in Esau. Esau knew that he wasn’t supposed to marry these women. They will bring him away. God couldn’t trust Esau to lead his people. Can he trust you?