What is your legacy?
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God's rescue plan for a rebellious people through Abraham's family
My message is not officially part of Rabbi Michael’s series but I do want examine the Torah portion this week because I believe the it has some important applications for our lives.
Our Torah portion is Toledot - Generations/Which can also be translated descendants or legacy
As we look at God’s rescue plan for a rebellious people through Abraham’s family in the Torah ....of all the Patriarchs - Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob....Isaac gets the least amount of airtime.
We know many of the details about Abraham and Jacob, but really only have one narrative in the Torah where Isaac is the main character in the story and that story is in this week’s Torah portion but it is frequently missed it because it is generally eclipsed by the story of Jacob and Esau.
We know many of the details about Abraham and Jacob, but really only have one narrative in the Torah where Isaac is the main character in the story and that story is in this week’s Torah portion but it is frequently missed it because it is generally eclipsed by the story of Jacob and Esau.
Let’s take and minute and recap the Torah portion:
After years of not being able to conceive Rebekah gives birth to twins
Esau sells his birthright to Jacob for some red stew
There is a famine and Isaac goes to Gerar
He settles there and tries to dig a bunch of wells
Esau marries
Isaac wants to bless Esau
Jacob pretends to be Esau and tricks his father
Jacob runs away because Esau wants to kill him
Before he leaves Isaac makes him promise not marry a girl from Canaan
Jacob goes to uncle Laban and on the way has a vision
Did you spot the Isaac story in the recap?
The one story of Isaac is the story of the wells.
The Isaac story in Gerar is a parallel story to the Abraham story in Gerar, but there is lesson that God wants us to learn by comparing the life of Isaac to the story of Abraham
Abraham and Isaac both dwell in Gerar
They both lie about their wives
They both have a confrontation with Abimelech
They both have a confrontation over wells
Abraham is blessed by Abimelch
Isaac is banished by Abimelch
But why the different reaction?
I believe as we look at the story of Isaac’s wells we will see an important lesson that God wants us to learn for our lives
Ha fok ba
Now there was a famine in the land, besides the previous famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. So Isaac went to Gerar, to Abimelech king of the Philistines.
The Lord appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; stay in the land of which I shall tell you.
“Sojourn in this land and I will be with you and bless you, for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham.
“I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed;
because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws.”
So Isaac lived in Gerar.
Genesis 26:1-6
God tells Isaac to remain in the land as a sojourner and that he will be the recipient of the blessings promised to Abraham. He is to carry on Abraham’s legacy
God tells Isaac to sojourn in the land
God confirms his covenant with Isaac
Prospering in the midst of famine
God’s provision is generally limited to our circumstances but never limited by our circumstances
God confirms his covenant with Isaac
Promises him: Land, family, and blessings as tools through which all the nations of the earth will be blessed.
Now Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. And the Lord blessed him,
and the man became rich, and continued to grow richer until he became very wealthy;
for he had possessions of flocks and herds and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him.
Now all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped up by filling them with earth.
Then Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are too powerful for us.”
And Isaac departed from there and camped in the valley of Gerar, and settled there.
Then Isaac dug again the wells of water which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham; and he gave them the same names which his father had given them.
But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of flowing water,
the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with the herdsmen of Isaac, saying, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Esek, because they contended with him.
Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over it too, so he named it Sitnah.
He moved away from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he named it Rehoboth, for he said, “At last the Lord has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land.”
Then he went up from there to Beersheba.
The Lord appeared to him the same night and said,
“I am the God of your father Abraham;
Do not fear, for I am with you.
I will bless you, and multiply your descendants,
For the sake of My servant Abraham.”
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.
Now Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. And the Lord blessed him,
Genesis 26:
Isaac prospered in the midst of famine
: 12-
Prospering in the midst of famine
God’s provision is generally limited to our circumstances but never limited by our circumstances
and the man became rich, and continued to grow richer until he became very wealthy;
for he had possessions of flocks and herds and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him.
Genesis 26:
Now all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped up by filling them with earth.
Then Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are too powerful for us.”
And Isaac departed from there and camped in the valley of Gerar, and settled there.
Then Isaac dug again the wells of water which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham; and he gave them the same names which his father had given them.
But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of flowing water,
the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with the herdsmen of Isaac, saying, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Esek, because they contended with him.
Contention
Genesis 26:
Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over it too, so he named it Sitnah.
Quarreling
Genesis 26:
He moved away from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he named it Rehoboth, for he said, “At last the Lord has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land.”
He moved away - He detached himself from possessions - He realized the blessings are tools not trophies
Then he went up from there to Beersheba.
The Lord appeared to him the same night and said,
“I am the God of your father Abraham;
Do not fear, for I am with you.
I will bless you, and multiply your descendants,
For the sake of My servant Abraham.”
Genesis
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.
He makes God’s name great rather than his name great
Then Abimelech came to him from Gerar with his adviser Ahuzzath and Phicol the commander of his army.
Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, since you hate me and have sent me away from you?”
Genesis 26:
They said, “We see plainly that the Lord has been with you; so we said, ‘Let there now be an oath between us, even between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you,
Genesis 2
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.’ ”
Genesis 26
Then he made them a feast, and they ate and drank.
In the morning they arose early and exchanged oaths; then Isaac sent them away and they departed from him in peace.
Now it came about on the same day, that Isaac’s servants came in and told him about the well which they had dug, and said to him, “We have found water.”
So he called it Shibah; therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day.
When Esau was forty years old he married Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite;