Main idea: The Lord is always with His people to bless them. So, remember His promise, rely on Him, renew your worship and rejoice in Him!
Introduction
Matthew 28:20
John 14:23
Ephesians 2:21–22
Colossians 1:27, 2:9–10
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Today, we're in Genesis, 26 continuing, going through Genesis, and we're seeing the theme today of the promise keeping present God, God who makes promises and keeps those promises. And I want you to see in Genesis 26 how God promises to Isaac, to be with him, and then how God keeps that promise. And during Isaac's failures, during Isaac's faithfulness, God is with him. And I hope that encourages you, if you're someone who's following Jesus, to have faith in Him, and to be someone who remembers that God is with you. So please stand with me if you're able. I'm going to read 33 verses. So if standing that long is not good for you, that's okay. You just stay seated. But the rest of us will stand. And then when I finish reading this, I'm going to say, this is God's word. This is the word of the Lord. And we'll all together say thanks be to God, because we're thankful that God speaks to us through His Word. So let's read Genesis 26 together. 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, and the Lord appeared to him and said, Do not go down to Egypt. Dwell in the land of which I shall tell you, 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. 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 because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes and my laws. So Isaac settled in gerar when the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, Oh, she's 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. 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. So Abimelech called Isaac and said, Behold, she is your wife. How could you then say she is my sister? Isaac said to him, because I thought lest I die because of her, Abimelech said, What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife and would have brought guilt upon us. So Abimelech warned all the people, saying, Whoever touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death. And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year, a hundredfold, the Lord blessed him, and the man became rich and gained more and more. Until he became very wealthy. He had possessions of flocks and herds of many servants and herds and many servants. So the Philistines envied him. 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 and Abimelech said to Isaac, go away from us, for you are much mightier than we so. Isaac departed from there and encamped in the valley of Gerar and settled there, and Isaac dug again the wells 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. But when Isaac's servants dug in the valley and found there a well of spring water, the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen, saying, the water is ours. So he called the name of the well essek, because they contended with him. Then they dug another well, and They quarreled over that also. So he called its name Sith Na, or enmity, 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. From there, he went up to Beersheba, 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. 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. When Abimelech went to him from gerar with ahuzith, his advisor, and Fike, the commander of his army, Isaac, said to them, Why have you come to me seeing that you hate me and you've sent me away from you? 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 that you will do us no harm, just as we have not touched you and have done nothing done to you, nothing but good, and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord. So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank. In the morning, they rose early and exchanged oaths, and Isaac sent them on their way, and they departed from him in peace. 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. There. He called it Sheba. Therefore the name of this city is Beersheba. To this day, this is the word of the Lord. Let's pray together. God, we thank You that You are a God who appears to your people. You appeared to Abraham, you appeared to Isaac. We'll read later in the story how you appeared to Jacob and God, you appeared to Moses and you talked to them. And God, you have appeared to us in the Lord Jesus. You have spoken to us through your prophets, through the Lord Jesus, through His apostles. And we thank you that you are a God who shows up and speaks to us. And you have made promises to be with us, to be with your people, not only with Isaac and Jacob, with all your children who have trusted in Jesus. You are with us. So we praise You. We praise your name, we thank You. Help us today to understand what it means that you are with us, that you are a God who keeps your promise in his presence, God, there are people here today, doubting, struggling with unbelief. Help their unbelief, father. Give us faith in you, the God who keeps your promises. There are many here suffering with different Temptations to sin, difficulties. God help us to trust that you are with us, to strengthen us, to obey you, to know you. God, we go through different valleys and difficulties, with health problems and financial problems and relational difficulty and all those things. God, we need to know that you are with us, and to remember and believe and trust you and look to you. Help each of us, give us faith. We pray for those sister churches around the city. We think of Trinity Church in Spokane Valley and Paul Funches and Jeremy Coon and and Dan Dan Ferguson and many other brothers and sisters there. We pray that you'd help them to be faithful, to know you, to look to you, to remember that you are with them. Make your name and your glory known in Spokane Valley through our brothers and sisters at Trinity, we pray for Faith in five as we go out today after second service and invite people from our church neighborhood that some would want to come and hear Your word and see how we love you and love each other. And that you would draw people to yourself, God, I pray that even here in this room, you would draw people to yourself who are here but don't know you yet. God, open eyes to see God. We pray for our governing authorities. Give wisdom to our leaders. Give wisdom to Congress as they consider how to best care for our country's budget and health care and all the other issues that they're dealing with. Pray for our local authorities. We pray for our mayor, for our council. People that you would work in our city, God, we pray for you to work in the world. There are many situations going around, around the world, but we want you to work your name, to be glorified. We trust you to bring your kingdom, to bring your glory, to make your glory known. God, we pray. Pray for you to work, to strengthen your children, to save, to draw people to yourself, bring peace and righteousness on the earth. We pray Jesus, we pray that you would come. We pray in Your Name. Amen may be seated
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as we go through life. None of us likes to be alone, right? Like there's circumstances where you don't want to be alone. I grew up in Tennessee, and my dad was a newspaper man. We delivered newspapers, and I would help him in the apartment complexes, because you had to deliver all these newspapers. Deliver all these newspapers to the doors back before we had the internet, back before we just got our news on the phone or the TV or the computer. And when I got to those stairs in the middle of the night, 3am you don't want to go down the stairway in the middle of the night at 3am you know what's lurking in the dark, in the shadows. So I would stand as close to the top of the stairs as I could, and I would chuck that newspaper down and hope I'd hit the door it was supposed to hit. And sometimes I'd miss and I'd have to go down the stairs, and you're like, Oh no, I'm gonna die. You hurry real quick and put it back and run up the stairs fast. You know, like someone's chasing you. It wasn't fun to be alone in the dark. I got to go to Kenya when I was 19 and visit some missionaries there. And there was the outhouse. We were in this remote village where there were witch doctors that weren't happy we were there, and I'm walking out in the dark by myself to the outhouse, and there's definitely lots of cockroaches flying out, but there weren't any other people with me, but I felt like people were watching me. It's very unsettling to think you're alone, but you're not alone, and you're not sure what's out there. It's scary. Any of us who go into scary circumstances, we like to know that someone's with us, like if you're camping in the woods, so much comfort when someone's with you. Doesn't matter if a bear comes and you're on your way to defend yourself. Doesn't matter if there's three or four of you, you'll probably still get eaten. But, but it feels more comforting knowing that someone's there with you, and maybe you're faster than them, so maybe you won't get eaten. But nonetheless, we don't want to be alone. Like, why do you when you go to public restrooms, you want to take your friend with you, right? You know, friend or loved one, especially if we're female, we go take we go together to the restroom. We don't want to go by ourselves in there. You ourselves in there. We don't want to be alone, right? And in life, God didn't create us to be alone. He didn't see Adam alone and say, That's good. He said, That's not good. He made a companion for Adam. He wants us to have community, to have companionship. And ultimately, the biggest thing that God wants us to know and to have as him. He wants us to be with Him, to know that he's with us. And that's what he's telling Isaac here. He's telling Isaac, I will be with you. God is making himself known to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to the Israelites in the wilderness with Moses. He is showing them that He is the God who makes promises and keeps them, and that's what we're going. See in Genesis 26 God makes a promise to Isaac. God keeps His promise to Isaac. Some of us parents might tell our kids sometimes, hey, I'll take you to the park today, or let's go to Walmart, or maybe we can do that game later. And sometimes we're unable to keep our promises, or sometimes we're unwilling to keep our promises. We're not perfect parents, are we? But God never fails to keep his promise. If God has told you, I will do this, God will do this. He does everything he says. He never fails to keep his promises, even when we are unfaithful. God is faithful. And we see that in Genesis 26 God makes a promise to be with Isaac and to bless him. And I want you to think about that promise that God made to Isaac. Does that apply to you? Is God with us, if you're trusting in Jesus, if you're following Jesus, the promise applies to you as well. God is present with all of his people. We know that God is spatially everywhere, right? Can you go anywhere in the universe? And God is not there. God is everywhere, right? God, God is present everywhere, but God is specially present with his people. He's present with his people to bless them, to make himself known to them, to carry out his good and perfect purposes to his people. How can we be confident that God is not only with Isaac but he's also with us if we follow Jesus? What did Jesus say? Matthew, 2820, he told them, I have all authority go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I've told you, and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. Jesus told his disciples that, but does it apply to us? Now? Think about the context. Who is he talking to there? What does Jesus say in John 1423, he said, If anyone loves Me, he will keep my word, and My Father will love him. We will come and make to him and make Our home with him or with her. Anyone who knows Jesus, who's trusting in Jesus, the Father, the Son, the spirit, make their home, their dwelling place with that person. That's what Jesus says through Paul in Ephesians, 222, in Christ, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. So you can hear these words and know that if you trusted Jesus as your savior, they are true. Jesus says,
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I am with you. That promise is life changing. I am with you. Jesus is with you, to bless you, to make himself known to you, to help you, to correct you, to guide you, to comfort you. He is with you that makes all the difference. When you're scared, what do you need to know? The Creator of the universe, the all powerful God, the Lord of hosts, is with you when you lack strength to obey when you're facing temptation, the Lord is with you, the Holy One, the God who made everything, Jesus, the perfect Son, the obedient son. He is with you. He understands and he's able to help you when you are discouraged, when you're upset, when you're weak. He is with you by His Spirit. He's with you. And so I want you to remember our main idea, the Lord is always with his people to bless them. If you are in Jesus, He is with you. You are in Christ, and Christ is in you. He's with you. So remember his promise. Rely on him. Renew your worship and rejoice in him. This hope of him being with us is a sure a sure anchor, a steadfast anchor of our soul that holds us in the midst of storms, the storms of life. You can hold on to this promise, I am with you what God says to his people. So look at let's look at the text, Genesis 26 and First, remember God's promise to his people. I am with you always. Let's see what God says to Isaac and then think about how it applies to us. Genesis 26 verse one, it says, Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham. God is using this famine, this difficulty, to expose a need to create a situation where Isaac is going to see God work. Before this, in chapter 25 we saw that Isaac and Rebekah had been married for 20 years, praying for a child God promised Abraham, and then Isaac, I'm gonna make you a great nation. But he doesn't have any kids. Rebecca has no children. She's barren. And then they look to God, and in their barrenness, in their need, they see God provide. God answers and gives them. Esau and Jacob, that's what we saw last week, right? And now they're in a famine, another situation of need, and he's gonna see God provide for him in a way that makes God known. And the same is going to be true in your life. You're going to face need. You're going to have situations where you need God's grace, you need help, and God's purpose and His plan is that you would know him in that trial and that difficulty, like a lot of times, I think, wouldn't it be nice if my life was always easy, if everything went great all the time I never had problems. But that's not what's best for me, right? God wants to give me something better, which is knowing him as I go through difficulty. That's what God wants for Isaac, and so he gives him a famine, a great famine. There's no Costco, there's no grocery store. Isaac has his wife, Rebecca, he has Esau and Jacob. He's got all of his servants. He's got a big household. You. He's got to provide for them. So it seems like he's on his way to Egypt, because Egypt has a big river and there's no rain and there's a famine. A big river makes some food. So Egypt is a good place to go if you're in that area and there's a famine. So he's on his way. He stops in gerar, which is the land of the Philistines, where Abimelech is the king, and right there in gerar, God appears to Isaac. It doesn't explain what God looked like when the Lord appeared to him. We know from John 118 that no one's ever seen God the Father. So this is, this is Jesus showing up. Jesus in His pre incarnate form, he's showing up, and he's revealing himself. He's talking to Isaac. But the text does not emphasize what he looks like or how he appears. We just know he appears to Isaac. And Isaac knows Yahweh the Lord is talking to him. What is what does the Lord say? He says three different ways. Do not go down to Egypt. Dwell in the land which I shall tell you, and sojourn in this land. God is saying, Stay here. He makes it very clear. Isaac needs to hear it different ways and surround sound. This is where you're going to stay. Don't go down to Egypt. God tells him, stay here. And Isaac might be thinking, but we're going to all starve to death. Then we're all going to die. The people of ger are not going to want to help us out. We're going to be in big trouble. What does God say? Look at the text. God says, and I will be with you and will bless you. God gives him this encouragement, this hope, this promise that Isaac needed to hear. God says, I will be with you and I will bless you. And if that's true, if God is going to be with Isaac and God is going to bless him, then Isaac can obey God. He can do what God says, no matter how crazy it sounds. That's what Abraham saw. That's what Isaac is going to see. Now, Jacob, when he goes to live with Laban, his father in law, and his father in law is cheating him, and it's kind of going rough. God is with God is with Jacob. God blesses him. Joseph gets sold into slavery in Egypt. What happens to Joseph? God is with him. God blesses Joseph. God uses Joseph for His glory. The Israelites are slaves in Egypt for 400 years, but God is with them. God is blessing them. They're in the wilderness now, as they receive this from Moses, God is with them. God is blessing them. What happens through the Lord Jesus with the church? Stephen Paul Peter, people are martyred and killed for their faith, but the Lord is with them, blessing them, and the same is true. Today, Jesus says, I will be with you, and He blesses us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. What does this blessing look like for Isaac, he says to Isaac, and I will be with you and will bless you for to Yount, your offspring, I will give these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham, your father. I will multiply your offspring as the stars of the heavens. I will give your offspring all these lands, and in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed So God gives them a promise of lands, of people, multiplying his offsprings, and then, through that people a blessing to all the nations of the earth. The same promise he gave to Abraham, the same promise He gives again to Jacob later. First he says, I'm gonna give you land. I'm gonna give you a place to live. How many of you, moms or dads want your kids to have a place to live when they're little with you, right? I'm gonna get old enough. You're like, Okay, go get your own place to live, right? But when your kids are younger, you want to give them a place to live. God is telling Isaac, I'm going to give you a place to live. I'm going to give you land where you can have crops, where you can have your livestock, where you can live and flourish in peace. God is promising him land. This is what God promised Abraham in Genesis, 15 and 17. And now this is very relevant, because Isaac got this promise, and then Jacob got the same promise, and then Jacob's sons go to Egypt, and they're in Egypt for 400 years, and now they're on the way back to the same land that God was talking to Isaac about. And what was happening to the children of Israel in the wilderness on their way back to the land of Canaan. They were scared. They're like, I don't know if we can go take that land because those people are big, they're strong. This is scary. And so that whole generation in the wilderness didn't believe so this promise that God gave Isaac is very relevant for them. They should be hearing God promised this land to Isaac. He's promising to us. And God does bring them into the land. He gives them the land through Joshua, through David. God gives them the land. And then they get exiled from the land, and they come back to the land. Back to the land, then they leave. In AD 70, there's a great scattering, and now people are back in the modern state of Israel. A lot of people think, okay, is this the promise being fulfilled to Isaac? Now that there's the modern state of Israel, a lot of controversy, a lot of question, but let's think carefully about this promise God made. He's not only promising them land, but as you look at God's promise to his people, he's probably people, he's promising that they would be believing in him. It's a believing nation of Israel gathered together in the land worshiping King Jesus on his throne, and then blessing is going from there to all the nations of the earth. Is that? What's happening right now? Do we see all the people of Israel, like Romans 11 describes worshiping the Lord Jesus? Is Jesus sitting on his throne physically in Jerusalem? Not yet. That's still to come. So the fulfillment of this promise is not yet. Yount know this promise is fulfilled when you see a huge revival of Jews worshiping Jesus. Jesus is actually on his throne, and there's peace flowing and righteousness flowing to all the earth, all the nations through them. That's the ultimate fulfillment. It's something much greater than than Trump or Netanyahu or any worldly leader can bring about. This is something only Jesus, King Jesus, the Lord Jesus, can bring about. And so we pray for that day. We pray that the Lord Jesus would come back, that righteousness and peace would flourish for Israel and for the nations around them. Through Israel, it's not just about them. It's about God's blessing coming to all the nations of the earth, and so you can trust God. Now, even though most of us are not Jews, God is going to provide us a place to live. What did Jesus say in John 14? I'm going to prepare a place for you. He is going to have a place for us to dwell with Him on the New Earth and the new heavens for all of eternity, not just on a cloud with a harp, right? Although playing a harp on a cloud be pretty cool for a little while, but he's going to give us a place on the new earth, to live with him, to flourish like Adam and he were meant to flourish. He will give us a place to live as our king. He's with us. He's with us. Now, God also promises Isaac that his offspring will be multiplied like the stars of the heavens. That's a lot of offspring for a guy that has two kids. Did that get fulfilled? How many Israelites are in the wilderness. When Moses is writing this down, over a million. We've gone from a few people to over a million. Even though the Egyptians tried to kill a lot of them, it didn't matter. They kept on growing. They were they were growing. And now how many people are the sons of Abraham? What does Galatians 37 say? Now then it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. So there's everyone who's trusted in Jesus is spiritually part of that family. And so yes, God will bless the nation of Israel eventually with the revival. But right now, there's probably over a billion people who have trusted in Jesus who are part of that spiritual offspring that God's giving Abraham and Isaac. So God is keeping that promise. God is faithful. And then look at the last part of the promise. This directly hits us as the nations. It says God is going to in his descendants, in his offspring, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. God told Abraham, all the families of the earth will be blessed. How does this happen? How does blessing knowledge of God go to all the families of the earth? Well, Isaac's great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson was Jesus. Jesus lived the perfect life, representing everyone who would trust in Him, so you can give all of us righteousness. He died in our place, dying for anyone from any of the nations who would believe in Him. He rose again, and now he reigns forever as the king of anyone who believes in Him. He is the king of the of the earth. He's the king of kings. He brings blessing to all the nations, to all the families of the earth. Revelation five says people from every tongue and tribe and nation will be gathered around his throne, worshiping Him. So God promises Isaac, through your descendant, through Jesus, blessing will come to all of the nations of the earth. You and I are part of that. God's heart was for Isaac. It was for the Jews, but it was also for all the other families. God wanted to bring a massive family together in Jesus of people to be His people, to for him to live with us and for us to know him. What do we see here that God says about Abraham? We see that that God gives these great promises, and then his people participate by faith. We need to participate by faith in those promises. God makes the promises. God keeps the promises by His grace and we participate by faith. Look at Verse five, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments and my statutes and my laws. Abraham obeyed God, and God's pointing to that as he talks to Isaac about keeping this promise, he's saying Abraham obeyed. Why is God talking about Abraham's obedience? We see in Genesis 15, six, that Abraham believed God, and that was kind of his righteousness. Romans four says it was Abraham's faith that that caused him to be made righteous, but his obedience is linked together with his faith. James two says that our faith is demonstrated by our obedience. If I say I believe in God, but I don't have any any works, any obedience that goes along with it, then it's an empty faith. What does it say in James two, someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one. You do well, even the demons believe and shutter. God is reminding Isaac, your father, Abraham, obeyed you. Remember when he carried you up that mountain, or you walked up the mountain and he was willing to sacrifice you on that mountain out of his faith, his obedience to Me, that came from faith and God is saying that pleased me, that pleased me, and I'm pleased that Abraham's participation in this promise, and that example of Abraham was meant to encourage and to motivate Isaac to also obey out of faith. It's not that you try to muster up enough obedience to get God to save you or to participate in his in his command. Your faith moves you to obey. Your faith has the fruit of obedience. That's what happened with Abraham, and that's what God wanted Isaac to have, and that's what he wants you to have. He wants you to be like Abraham, to be a person who believes God's promise and acts out of obedience. Because of that, did Abraham always obey. He had his own failings, too. Abraham had repentance. So as God helps us to obey, there's a lot of repentance, correction. God is moving in us by grace, initiating, causing his work to flourish in us so that we will obey Him as His people, out of faith. So God makes this promise to Isaac, I am with you. I will bless you, and God wants you to hear. That promise coming from Jesus. Jesus says, I'm with you always, Brian, I'm with you, right?
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Alim, I'm with you. He says to each one of you who have trust in Jesus, I am with you. I'm with you. Matt, too. I'm with you. He's with all of us who have trusted in Jesus. He is with you. And do you remember that when you're scared, you remember Christ is with me, to bless me, to make himself known to me, to work in me when you're tempted. Do you remember Christ is with you? He wants to empower you to obey when your faith is wavering. Do you remember he's with you? He kept his promise to Abraham. He's keeping his promise to Isaac. He's going to keep his promise to you as well. God is a God who makes promises and keeps them. So what does Isaac do? He obeys. He settles in gerar verse six. So Isaac settled in gerar. He trusted that God was going to be with him and bless him in the midst of the famine, he trusts that God is going to take care of what he needs. Well, kind of right? Look at the next part. We see that we should rely on God who is with us in all circumstances. Isaac relies on God some, but he also is being cowardly. He's going through crises, he's going through conflict, and he sees that God is with him, blessing him. What does Isaac do? Well, first he stays there. Good job, Isaac. But then he's like the dad in Mark nine, who says, I believe and help my unbelief. He's got a mixed heart. He's believing. But then he says, Well, my wife, Rebecca, if I tell the truth about her, that she's my wife, they're going to kill me because she's pretty and they're going to want to take her. I don't know if that was happening a lot back then. If they see someone with a pretty wife, like, Let's kill him, we'll take his wife. I don't know if that was like happening all the time. And so he had a good reason to be scared. Abraham had the same concern his dad. Abraham twice lied about Sarah being his sister, and so it seems like he's continuing his dad's unbelief in that same area, not trusting that God is going to take care of him. Is he believing that? Well, there's a famine, and if I tell them to choose a single lady, and she's my sister, then there's this eligible single lady that maybe will motivate them to be nice to me. Maybe he's thinking that way. Either way, he's being a coward. He's being unbelieving. He's being self protective. But we see that God is faithful, even though Isaac has this unbelief in his heart mixed with belief, we see that God is faithful. God protects Rebecca, right? And you and I have the same thing going on our lives a lot of times, right? We believe we're following Jesus, but then there's mixed in bad motivations, mixed in unbelief, mixed in selfishness every day, right? We're wrestling with that there's a mix in our hearts. So we pray, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. Purify my heart. I want to worship you out of love, out of a right heart, out of faith. And there's this mixture going on. And so can we rely on God to help us in that we can look what happens with Isaac? So Isaac is laughing with Rebecca, and in God's providence, he kept anyone from from doing anything to Rebecca. He protected Rebecca, and the king looks out the window and sees Isaac and Rebecca laughing. Another translation says that they were kind of playing, joking together. And however they were playing and joking, I don't know exactly, but it was in such a way that the king says that you guys aren't siblings. This is the kind of joking together, playing together, that a husband and wife do. You could just tell by how they were treating each other that it was marriage, not siblings. So the king was like, What are you doing? He calls in Isaac. And he could have gotten really mad and punished Isaac, or killed him, or whatever, but he doesn't. He calls Isaac in and he says, if anybody touches you or your wife, I'll kill them. So he makes an edict. He protects them. So despite Isaac's self protection and cowardice, God protects them. God is looking out for them, and he's being faithful to them, even though they're being unfaithful. Mark Ken Hughes wrote, in his commentary on Genesis a very helpful exhortation regarding this. He says, and believers, here's a window into our own souls. It is one thing to theologically affirm that God is omnipresent, but it is quite another to have it dominate and inform us day in and day out, to embrace the sure knowledge that God is spatially present and more specially present, to bless and protect us. What a difference this makes in our lives. Recognizing God's presence crushes the temptation to compromise God's presence puts our fears to flight. It instills confidence and steel. It protects us and our loved ones. It upholds the name of God. We need to actually believe that God is with us. We would affirm that theologically, right? I would say, Yeah, God is with me. But am I acting like God is with me when I'm doing this task and it's really hard and I just want to throw something against the wall? Am I believing God is with me? I I want to say those unkind words to someone because I'm angry, when I'm feeling alone and discouraged, when I'm tempted and I'm feeling like I'm gonna give into my temptation? Am I believing that the Lord is with me, the Holy God of the universe, is dwelling in me, that I'm his temple, that you're his temple. Do we believe we need our faith to be strengthened that God is with us. If we're in Christ, that is the confidence we need, and that's what God is showing Isaac, despite Isaac's faithlessness, God is faithful. God gives him this clear understanding through the king Abimelech, protecting them, I am with you. I will protect. You, I will bless you, like I said, and so take courage when you pray, Lord. I believe. Help my unbelief. God hears your prayer. When selfishness and cowardice tower over your soul and your life, you can draw near to Christ. He is able to change you. He is full of love and power. You can know that God is with you as you trust him to give you His love, His power to do what he wants you to do, what he's calling you to do, to obey Him, to love others. Trust the Lord. Look to Him. He's with you. What else does God do for Isaac? Not only in Isaac's cowardice, but in crisis, God is with Isaac, blessing him. This is evidence that God keeps His promises. Look at verse 12. Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year, 100 fold. The Lord blessed him.
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100 fold crop is pretty good in a normal year, but when there's a famine, 100 fold like, his cucumbers are like this. He's got pumpkin so big you can't pick him up. He's got massive crops. All of his sheep and his goats and his chickens are just like, multiplying and multiplying. And everyone else around him is like, you know, I've got a cucumber like this. I don't have any. I've got a my tomatoes are invisible. I don't have anything going on here. I'm starving. And look at, look at Isaac's crop. God is blessing him, and he's got massive abundance of crops. What does that do for him? He becomes very wealthy. Everyone around him is having scarcity, and Isaac has abundance, and so God is giving him wealth. God's providing for him. And the point is not the wealth, it's God's provision, God's blessing. God is taking care of Isaac, saying, Isaac, I'm with you. You can trust me to provide for you. God is giving him exactly what he needs, and he becomes so great. But look at verse 16. They were they were envious of his of his wealth and his power. Abimelech said to Isaac, go away from us. You are much mightier than we. He become more mighty than the Philistine nation. He was massive. He was getting so powerful that was because God was with him, blessing him. It wasn't that Isaac had a better strategy than necessarily. It was God blessing him, God giving him what he needed. Not only is God with him in this cowardice, in the crisis of the famine, God is with him in his conflict. They keep throwing dirt in his wells. And if you don't have water, you have problems with your crops and your livestock. So he's got all these wells that have been stopped up by dirt, and he re digs them. Then he finds a spring, which I imagine was a really big deal, a spring of water in the valley of Gerar. And the other herdsmen there come and say, Hey, this is our water. We have a water rights fight going on now. And instead of fighting them, Isaac moves on. They dig another well. They say, this is our water also. So he moves on. Digs another well. God makes him more water. He keeps providing him water. How many times in this chapter is God giving Isaac water? He's showing him you don't need Egypt. You don't need the Nile River. You have me. You have me. You have everything you need. You're good. You have the God of the universe. The Creator you're okay, he will give you what you need. What does Jesus tell us regarding water? In John seven, verse 37 Jesus said, If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and I will give you living water. What is Jesus talking about with the springs of water come out of your soul, talking about the Holy Spirit. Jesus is promising to give everyone who comes to Him the Holy Spirit. That's how you can have what you need in the midst of scarcity. I'm not talking about having lots of money or a nicer car or your chickens making more eggs. I'm talking about having peace and joy, having a knowledge of God, having a relationship with him. What are the blessings He promises us? He promises us to know Him, that he's working all things together for our good. What is our good? In Romans, 829, that we would be like Christ. God is working by His Spirit in us, giving us what we need, more than more than water. We're in America. We have lots of water, more than water. He's giving us His Spirit to make us like Christ. Does God provide for us materially. Is it a promise that we're going to be wealthy? No, but God tells us in Matthew six, I take care of the birds, I take care of the flowers. I know how many hairs are in your head, I'll take care of you. God provides for us. Sometimes, God provides for his children, through famine, through them dying, by receiving them into His presence and giving them a resurrected, glorified body, right? Sometimes he's caring for his people, even through the resurrection. It's not necessarily that we're going to escape death through famine, but normally, we're seeing that he's providing us what we need. And even more, we have to beware. In America, if we get so much nice stuff, we can start loving our material goods and our things and thinking that God's blessing us, but we forget about him. God takes care of us, but what he's promising us now in the church age is that we would be with him. We have every spiritual blessing in Christ. Ephesians, one, Thiry, what did Jesus tell us? He didn't say, Follow me and you're gonna have everything be great. Everyone will like you, and you'll have a lot of stuff. Jesus says to His disciples in the gospels, if anyone wants to come after Me, let him take up his cross and follow me. Be willing to die. Deny yourself. We're going to have affliction. People are going to not always like us. We may even have our stuff taken away. We may be poor. The early church, a lot of them were impoverished. Their possessions were taken away. They lost their jobs. They were killed, but Jesus has promised to be. With them was true. He was with them, and he's with you in abundance and scarcity. He's with you, giving you himself. Like I said before, we want things to be easy. I want my 401, K to grow. I want to get raises. I want my car to never break. I want my house to never break. I want my kids to always get along. But that's not what God's giving us, right? He's giving us more knowledge of Him, and sometimes the difficult things are the way he blesses us to know Him better, so we can rely on Him and His promise to be with us, he says, I am with you. Always. Trust me. Look to Me. Rely on me. That's what he wants you to do. Is rely on him. That's what he wants Isaac to do, and he's teaching Isaac over and over, I will keep my promises. How often does gravity work like this pen, right here, if I drop my pen, how often is it going to fall? If I drop it, it falls. Gravity works every time. Maybe do gravity stop working? Nope, still working. Why is gravity work like that? Why is science a thing? Christians discovered science because we believe that God consistently does what he does, he keeps his laws. He's consistent. Gravity always works, because God is faithful. How many times will God keep his promises? I could drop this pan all day long. It's going to fall. If I drop it, it's not going to fall up. It's not going to fly up and stick in the ceiling. Now, if I threw it really hard, maybe, but that's because my arm is throwing it up. If I drop it, it will fall. How many times will God keep his promises? He's always going to keep his promises. We can trust that he'll always do it. How many times will he be with you always? Why did Jesus say that I'll be with you always? He wants you to remember he's always going to be with you. But wait when I'm tempted with that sin, that's a really big pull in my flesh. Is the Lord still with me? Yeah, he's still with you. What about when you get sick and it's really painful and the treatment is terrible and it's afflicting you and your life is miserable? He's still with you, right? What about when someone that you love hates you and treats you terribly? Still with you? What about when life is really hard, he's still with you, right? He always is with us. Always. That's what he's showing Isaac in Genesis, 26 that's what he wants you to believe, brother or sister, if you're in Christ, he is with you. If you're not in Christ, he wants you to repent and trust in Christ so that he can be with you. He wants you to repent of trying to live away from him, of trying to act like you can drop the pen and it'll go flying in the sky. Submit to reality. Trust in Christ. He is the king. He's the one who died in our place and rose again. He's the only one who can actually forgive us and give us a relationship with God, and then he'll be with you. That's what he wants. So what is what happens with Isaac? I keep going in the story, and it seems like some years have probably passed. It doesn't say, but it seems like some time has passed. And in Genesis, 26 verse, 23 Isaac goes to Beersheba from the Valley of Gerar. So he's around different people, and God appears to him again again. It doesn't describe what God looked like, but God appears to him and speaks to him and says, 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, if you didn't get the message already, in the first part of chapter 26 he's telling us again, I am with you. I will bless you. That's what God wants Isaac to remember. He's reminding him, I'm the God of your father, Abraham, the same God that appeared to Abraham. I'm that God. I am Yahweh, the God who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, the I Am the ever present one. And he says, Fear not. Why does he tell Isaac to fear not? He knew that Isaac was fearing right? He probably was afraid of the new people he was around in Beersheba, and what they were going to do to him, how they were going to treat him. God says, Don't be afraid. How many times the New Testament did the angels tell the people around Jesus, don't be afraid? Right? Does Jesus say, Don't be afraid. The disciples are in the boat, and Jesus wakes up and says, Don't be afraid. Have faith. And what does he tell you? And I fear not, but horrible things could happen to me. Fear not. But the sin in the world is difficult and hard. Fear not. I get discouraged and my faith gets weak, and I have unbelief. Fear not. God is telling Isaac I am with you, and earlier in the chapter, he says, I will be with you. Now he's saying I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring. God's saying, I will keep my promise to you. They're not going to kill you. You're going to be okay, is what God's telling Isaac. And in our case, they might kill us, and we're still going to be okay, right? Not even death can separate us from the love of God. Death unites us with him in his love is a gift to depart from the body and be present with the Lord, like Paul says, It's gain right to be with Christ, so we don't need to be afraid. We can believe that God is with us. He gives us His Spirit. He adopts us as His sons and daughters. He gives us every spiritual blessing in Christ. For the sake of Christ. Look at what God tells Isaac. He says, I will multiply your offspring for my servant, Abraham's sake, because of Abraham's faith, because of Abraham entering into that covenant with God. Well, who gets the credit for that? Did Abraham start the idea with God? No, it was God. God initiated with Abraham. Even Abraham's failings, God was faithful, but God recognizes that faith that Abraham had, and says, For Abraham's sake, and now it's not just for Abraham's sake. God is keeping the promise to Abraham for you and I as he blesses us, but it's for Jesus' sake. God looks back at Jesus, the mediator between God and man, and says, because of what Jesus, did you have my blessing, all of it. He's with us. He's with you. So what does Isaac do in response? Look at verse 25
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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. There's gonna be one more well in the chapter, lots of wells. God he meets. He built an altar. Why do people make altars? He's gonna sacrifice stuff, right? It doesn't describe it, but I imagine Isaac did like Abel did in Genesis four. He did like Abraham did. He's making sacrifices like Noah did in Genesis nine. Why did they make sacrifices? Why did they have to kill animal? They were worshiping God. They were calling on the name of the Lord. Why did God have them kill animals? Over and over they needed to see that someone needed to die because of their sin. Someone needed to die in their place, and God is showing them this animal can die instead of you, a substitute, temporarily. But what does that altar that Isaac had point to? Points to a greater altar. If you read Hebrews, we see that Jesus, the Son of God, the God man, fully God, fully man. He takes on a body, He lives a perfect life, and then he goes into the heavenly, Holy of Holies, the altar of God in heaven, and he offers himself to God, the Father, on our behalf. His blood brings the cleansing for our sin, our forgiveness. He makes the sacrifice on the altar that allows us to be accepted by God, to have God dwell with us forever. Perfectly. He brings the blessing that God promised that God promised, that Isaac would descend, it would give to all the nations of the earth. So Isaac calls in the name of the Lord. What does that mean? It's trust, it's reliance, it's worship. He's calling on Yahweh, on his holiness, trusting Him, looking to him. What does Romans 1013 say about us if we call in the name of the Lord? Says, Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Like Abraham, like Isaac. You can be an example of someone who God lives with, and you call on Him, the Lord, when you're tempted, when you're facing trials and tribulations, because the Lord is with you, you call on him. You call out to Him, God help me now, when I'm going through hard things and I don't call him the Lord, I'm acting like he's not there when I choose to go into my sin, I'm acting like he's not there. What he wants you to do, wants me to do is, remember I am with you. Call upon him. He's there. Call upon him. He's with you always. He wants you to call on Him, to trust in him. Is he going to see you calling him and say, Oh, I'm not feeling it today. You know, I'm having a bad day. Can you try tomorrow? Because I'm just not. It's been a hard time for me, all this stuff going on around the world, you know? And I just can't, I can't today. Is God gonna respond like that? No, it seems ludicrous to even joke about it, right? Because God is always full of grace, full of mercy, full of love, full of power, full of himself, his own holiness, and who he is. He offers himself to us, and he never tires. He never tires. Like Isaiah, 40 says young men lions, they get worn out, but the Lord never tires. He never gets weary. He gives strength to those who look to Him. And so in your work, in your school, in your home, in our church, we look to Him. We worship Him. We renew our worship and our rest in Him. Isaac renews his worship, and we need to renew our worship. That's why we gather every week, right? We renew our worship. Yes, he's with us. And finally, we see, in the last part of the chapter, He wants us to remember, I'm with y'all always, right? I'm from Tennessee, and we say, You plural. All, y'all, y'all, right. That's how we know it's plural, because in English we say you or you. I could be saying you Frank or you, all of you like, how do we know the difference? Spanish is nice, because in Spanish you can kind of tell the difference, but in English, we have to say y'all, God is saying I'm with y'all always, not just Isaac, not just Jacob, not just the people of Israel, with everyone who calls on the name of the Lord, he's with us. I'm with all y'all. That's what he told Isaac, I'm going to bring blessing to all the nations through you. He told Abraham, I'm going to bless all the families of the earth through you. And now we see Abimelech. Abimelech sent him away because he was envious. And now Abimelech is looking at how powerful Isaac is over in Beersheba, and he's like, man, if our enemies get together with Isaac, we're in trouble. We got to get this guy back in our side. We got to make sure that he's not mad at us because we sent him away. We got to make sure he doesn't join with the other people's forces and then attack us, maybe join with the Ishmaelites or somebody else. He's making sure that Isaac is okay with him. So he goes back to Isaac because he recognizes God is with Isaac. Look at what Abimelech says. Abilene goes with his advisor and his commander his army, and he says, We see plainly that the Lord has been with you. Verse 28 so God says, I'm going to be with you. God says, I am with you. And then Abimelech says, I can see that God's been with you. What's the theme of this chapter, I am with you. Isaac, that's what God's telling him. Even Abimelech can see it. And so Abimelech is wanting to join himself with Isaac and make a covenant. And eventually we see that God's design for Israel is that the nations would see how great Yahweh is, how great the Lord is through Israel. And now the design is that through Jesus, and then through the church, that all the nations would see how great the Lord is. They would see his great salvation. What does Psalm 117 say right in the middle of the Bible, this very short Psalm, praise the Lord. All the nations extol him, all peoples, for great is His steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord. He wants all the nations to praise Him. Abimelech, the Philistines, people like us from North America, from wherever you're from, from Ukraine, from Afghanistan, wherever we're from. He wants us to praise Him, to know him. He offers salvation freely to all who will call on him. He wants our lives, our unity. John 17, how we love each other, to be a call out to the nations. Come to Christ. He wants our good deeds, Matthew 516 to glorify Him so they'll glorify our Father in heaven. He wants them to hear, I'm with you all always. Do you believe it? Do you trust Jesus that he's with you? Do you remember he says, I'm with you. I am with you. Do you rely on him? He wants you to remember that he's with you and he's not standing by like a supervisor at a work site. That's like, I get paid the big money. It's not doing anything. You go ahead. You do that, not that. All supervisors like that. If you're a supervisor, I'm sure you work really hard. God's not standing by. He wants to help. He wants to give you his resources. It's not like, sorry, I'm out. I'm out. I can't give any more. No, he's got lots. He wants to help you. Give you grace. Give you strength. Do you renew your worship of Him? Do you call on his name and at the altar of your life, offer yourself as a living sacrifice to him? Do you rejoice in him and call the nations to rejoice in him? High school student, as you walk around your school, I want you to remember, if you trusted in Christ. The Lord is with you. College student, he's with you. People around you don't have the same convictions that you have. They don't see what is right and wrong like you do because of your understanding of who Christ is. But he's with you to help you, to love them, to be pure, to be steadfast, to work hard. Young mom at home as you change diapers and more diapers and more diapers, and then correct kids, and then correct them, and then you clean and cook, and dad, as you're helping doing that too. Do you remember the Lord saying, I'm with you always, to encourage you, to refresh you, to give you fellowship, to wash more dishes. I'm with you, to give you wisdom with your kids and your tasks? Single person, retired person. Do you hear the Lord saying, I'm with you always, as you endure aches and pains, loneliness, disappointment, he's with you, assuring you of the future of his perfect plan for you to give you a new body to dwell with you forever. I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Remember him all of us. Do you remember his promise, I am with you this week. Remember, if you're in Christ, he's with you. He understands, he knows exactly what you're going through, and he's with you. Trust him. Call out to Him, worship him. Be faithful. To look to him and know that even when you're not faithful, He is faithful. Keep trusting him. Keep going back to him, trusting Him for His grace. Let's pray to him right now. Christ, we thank you that you are faithful. Like Isaac. We falter in our faith. We have cowardice, we have self protection, self seeking. There's so many times we don't believe that you're with us so that you're good, help us in our unbelief to believe. I pray for anyone who doesn't know you that you that you would open their eyes to see and trust in you Christ, to repent, to believe in your gospel. Help all of us to believe the gospel each day, to preach it to ourselves, to remember your goodness. Help us right now as we come to these symbols of the Lord's Supper, to remember you and to worship you, because you are with us by your grace through Christ.
Nathan Thiry is the Growth Groups & Outreach Pastor at Faith Bible Church. He enjoys biking and outdoor activities, and has a passion to see the gospel spread throughout our community and the whole world!
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