Genesis 26

go. Perfect. Well, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to coffee and devotions. This is where every weekday you and I, we get together. We have a little bit of coffee. We get into God's word and we grow in our love for the Lord together and Lord willing, this year 2023, we'll make it from Genesis to Leviticus now I need to warn you today the plan for some reason had us reading all of chapter 26 and chapter 27 in diverse Chapter 27 verse 29. You think that's too much. So we're gonna do a two-part devotion today We're gonna do one right now and one that I'm gonna release later tonight. So please Check back tonight and we will have a second series tonight before you go to bed for an evening devotion.

So we need a Keep on track here. Yes, it's the Lord willing, but it's also Brian making sure we get through as much as is humanly dependent upon me. But let's go ahead and have some coffee. We'll pray and we'll get into the Lord's word. Let's pray. Oh, Father, we thank you so much for this day. You are a generous and gracious God. You are working globally. all around the world in all sorts of people and father you are redeeming people nations to yourself your promises have not failed and we pray lord that as we now read your word that your holy spirit would be working in our hearts father please teach us now Let us read your word, understand your word. We pray that we would have it applied to our hearts and lives in Jesus's name. Amen.

Okay, so we're at Genesis chapter 26. Genesis chapter 26, so we're continuing on in the life of Isaac. Genesis chapter 26, we had read about the Jacob and Esau incident yesterday where Esau sells his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew. Now we're going to read more about Isaac, their father. There was a famine in the land beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimelech, king of the Philistines in Gerar.

Then the Lord appeared to him and said, Do not go down to Egypt. Live in the land of which I shall tell you. Dwell in this land and I will be with you and bless you. For to you and your descendants I give all these lands, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father, and I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of the heaven. I will give to your descendants all these lands, and in your seed 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."

Now isn't this interesting? The Lord appears to Isaac there's a famine in the land this there's going to be a lot of similarities between Abraham's life and his son Isaac's life and there's a famine and now God appears to Isaac and he says don't go down to Egypt don't go there stay in the land and I'm going to give you the promise that I have given to your father Abraham now it's interesting It's just very interesting to me here that it's that the reason for him saying this right and in your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Again it's interesting because we are reading about the covenant of grace. This is the same promise that had begun in Genesis chapter 3 15 and now it continues on and we're at Genesis chapter 26.

And he says, though, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes and my laws. Well, now that's interesting, isn't it? What laws had he received? We're not at Mount Sinai yet. What commandments had Abraham received yet?

Well, this was a command of faith, a command to walk before him, a command to go before him. And so Abraham lived by faith. He lived by faith and that faith played itself out. But that did not mean that Abraham was perfect in his ways. No, we know that as we just read through the story of Abraham. But see, I was I just got off a phone call with the pastor in India and we were talking about Romans chapter four. God justified Abraham by faith apart from the law. He was righteous by faith. just as you and I are found righteous. And so now this. Covenant blessing, these promises are passed on to Isaac here in chapter 26. OK, so let's go ahead and keep on reading.

So Isaac dwelt in Gerar and the men of the place asked about his wife and he said, she is my sister. For he was afraid to say she is my wife because he thought, oh, pardon me. Because, he thought, lest the men of the place kill me for Rebekah, because she is beautiful to behold. Now it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked through a window and saw, and there was Isaac, showing endearment to Rebekah his wife. Then Abimelech called Isaac and said, Quite obviously she is your wife. How could you say she is my sister? Isaac said to him, Because I said, lest I die on account of her.

And Abimelech said, What is this you have done to us? One of our people might soon have laid with your wife, and you would have brought guilt on us. So Abimelech charged all his people, saying, He who touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.

Then Isaac sowed in the land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold, and the Lord blessed him. The man began to prosper and continued prospering until he became very prosperous, and he had possessions of flocks and possessions of herds and a great number of servants. So the Philistines envied him.

Now the Philistines had stopped up all the wells of which his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, and they had filled them with earth. And Abimelech said to Isaac, Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we. Then Isaac departed from there and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar and dwelt there. And Isaac dug again the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham. He called them by the names which his father had called them. Also Isaac's servants dug in the valley and found a well of running water there.

But 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 quarreled with him. Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that one also. So he called its name Sitna. And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth. Because he said, For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.

Then he went up from there to Beersheba. And 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 my servant Abraham's sake. So he built an altar there and called on the name of Jehovah and he pitched his tent there and there Isaac's servants dug a well. Then Abimelech came to him from Gerar with Ahaztoth, one of his friends, and Pichul, the commander of his army. And Isaac said to him, Why have you come to us, since you hate me and have sent me away from you?

But they said, We have certainly seen that the Lord is with you. So we said, Let there now be an oath between us, between you and us, and let us 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 away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord. So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank.

Then they arose early in the morning and swore an oath to one another, and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace. And it came to pass in the same day that Isaac's servants came and told him about the well which they had dug, and said to him, We have found water. So he called it Sheba. Therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day. When Esau was 40 years old he took as wives Judith the daughter of Bari the Hittite and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite and they were a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebekah.

Now you can see why I said let's pick up 27 tonight. Well, we need to ask ourselves, what's this about? What's the best verse to summarize this and see what are we called to do in response to this? So what's this about? Well, we started off with this amazing part of God renewing the covenant with Isaac.

God had given it to Abraham. Now he's given it to Isaac. And we see this parallel that's happening in the life between father and son. But we come to this and As the promise is paralleled, so is the sin. We see Isaac doing exactly what his dad did. As he goes to the Philistines, he tells his his wife, Rebecca, he says, hey, just tell them you're my sister. All right.

This this is what we're going to find in the in the Ten Commandments when we read that the you know, the iniquity of the father will be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation. It's a reality that we teach our children, not just the good things in life. Oh, I wish our children. I wish my kids only learned from me the good things of this life. But I see their anger, the same anger I display. I see their impatience, the same impatience I display. I see them butting into conversations the same way I wish I wouldn't.

And here we find Isaac doing the same thing, putting his wife, his wife, Rebecca, this poor woman, in the same position that Abraham had put Sarah. And while the king doesn't fall for it, He looks out his window and he sees a husband doing what a husband would do with a wife. And he says, dude, what have you done?

One of us could have taken her as a wife and lain with her and man, that would have been horrible. We would have committed adultery and the guilt that God would have heaped upon us. Because of that, I'm so sorry. This is what happens when you wake up at four something in the morning. And so it's OK. It's OK. Please forgive me for the yawns. And so he says, you know, he who touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death. And then we see following after this, surprisingly, Isaac prospers. But just because he prospers doesn't mean everything goes well for him.

There's this cycle of him going and he digs wells and they stop them up, he digs wells, they stop him up, he digs wells, they stop them up. They're fighting about water rights. Water rights are very important in the ancient Near East. They're also very important in the American Southwest. And so it's this constant fight about who gets the access to the water.

Eventually, Isaac becomes so powerful, so rich and has enough wealth and prosperity that The king and his commanders actually come to him and he's it's almost a tone of fear. You know, why have you come to me since you hate me and have sent me away from you? Now, he says this, but I think it was rightly deserved that they had sent him away. I mean, he had become prosperous and he had duped them or tried to dupe them. And so they sent him away and they come and they say, you know what?

You're powerful. And so we need to make an alliance with you. But in the midst of all of this, what we find is God appears to him a second time in verse 24. Do not fear for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for my servant Abraham's sake. He blesses him again, second time. Why? For his father, his servant Abraham's sake.

God continues to be gracious. God continues to be kind. Isaac doesn't deserve this. Let's just face it, right? He doesn't deserve this. And yet God is still gracious. God is still kind. Praise God he's not only kind and gracious to perfect people or else, well, none of us. None of us would receive mercy or kindness from him. But he's gracious. He gives us what we do not deserve.

But we see, though, that there's grief in this life, and this chapter on Isaac ends with a grief from his own son Esau. Esau takes two wives. They're Hittite wives, they're wives of the land, Canaanite wives, not wives of their own people in Mesopotamia, and they're a grief to both Rebecca and Esau. They're the daughters of Hittites, the daughter of Elon, they're pagans. not worshiping Jehovah, but worshiping the gods of this land, the land that they're traveling in, the land that's been promised to them, but yet it's not theirs yet. Well, what's the best verse to summarize this? Well, in my Bible, I have, let's see, I have verses 3 through 5 underlined. I think that's 3 through 5. Yep, 3 through 5. And then I also have verse 24 underlined. Well, last seek calling, what are we called to do?

Well, This is God's continuing on the seed of the promise. And we're able to see here that Esau, he marries women that this line's not going to come through. They're not worshipers of Jehovah. This is one of the ways in which he's going to work through Jacob instead. We're going to pick that up tonight when we look at that passage in Genesis 27, but it's going to be through Esau, not through Christ. And this long line where Jesus will come from is once again by the promise that God is going to be with people who don't deserve it. God is going to be with people who don't earn it, but it's by grace through faith that we are justified.

It's a gift. One of my favorite songs, why are you trying to earn grace? It's the Lord's blessings. Let's go ahead and pray. Father, we pray that we would see sin for sin. That we would turn away from it and hate it. That we would be able to call a spade a spade here and understand that the stories of the Old Testament are stories filled with black and white as well as gray. They tell us things in which our ancestors did sinfully, and we ought to be honest about those things. And yet, Lord, they also speak of your truth. and your promise. So Father, we pray that we would cling to your promises, that we would follow after you and love you.

In Jesus's name. Amen. May the Lord bless you today. May you go in the grace and peace of Jesus Christ. And I'll see you tonight. Bye. Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith and your life this week.

If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue. Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.