Isaac's Choice: Staying, Sowing, and the Echoes of Abraham

Chapter 26, we're following on the heels of the story of the birth of Jacob and Vesau, and this chapter is going to be strangely familiar to you, because Isaac is going to repeat some of the same problems, some of the same mistakes, but also some of the same repeats some of the good things that Abraham did his father, and we're even going to see a repeat of some of the names that haunted Abraham's journey through this world, and I think there's a lesson in that. Maybe I'll be able to elaborate on that a little bit more as we go, but I would just say here right at the outset that when you accept that the Lord calls your father and he is obedient, not to that calling, and then God calls you, you're going to come across a lot of the same, you're gonna have some of the same enemies, you're gonna have some of the same friends, you're gonna have some of

the same blessings, some of the same problems. There is, there's no use in imagining that our parents don't play a large role even if they're not incredibly present in our life. We're going to have some of the same temptations they had, we're gonna have some of the same weaknesses they had, and we're gonna have some of the same strengths they had. Alright, so I think it's really important that we have this chapter here that shows us how Isaac followed spiritually in the footsteps of his father, so that we can see that when we choose our path with the Lord, our obedience to the Lord sometimes becomes our children's obedience to the Lord. Okay, so when you make good decisions, those decisions end up following generationally. That's also true on the wrong side of things, but watch this chapter and how Isaac lives in the blessings of his father, also some of the weaknesses of his father. Alright, now there was a famine in

the land besides the earlier famine of Abraham's time. Right? Now you all remember much earlier in this Genesis story that Abraham entered into Canaan and he had just kind of gotten sown there. He had successfully retrieved Lot after Lot had been taken away. He had not succumbed, Abraham refused to succumb to the temptations of Sodom and Gomorrah. He had just gotten settled and established and successful in this land, and then all of a sudden there's a famine, and then Abraham is on the move. Same thing ends up happening here in Isaac's life. There was a famine in the land besides the earlier famine of Abraham's time, and Isaac went to Abimelech, king of the Philistines in Jirar. That's familiar, right? Same name. Abraham went down to Jirar, and this is in southern, what is today, southern Israel. It's the southern border area of Canaan on the edge of the desert that leads into Egypt, and Isaac went down there and he encounters an

Abimelech. Alright, now I don't know if it's the name of the king or if this is the title of a Philistine king, Abimelech. In Egypt we have a Pharaoh. We know that's not his name. Me too, John Comma, Comma Moon, or it can be one of those very Egyptian-sounding names, but Pharaoh is just the title of the king of Egypt. It seems at this point that Abimelech is the title of the king of the Philistines. Abbe is Hebrew for my father. Abbe is father in Hebrew, and then you put the I on the end. That makes it possessive. My father. I like when Jesus on the cross says Eli. Eli is El, means God, and the I on the end means my, my God. Abbe, my father, and then Melech is Hebrew for king. So it seems to be something like my father is king, but it just seems to be a title for the leader of the Philistines. Alright, interesting. He faces

somebody. He faces a problem. He has a problem very similar to his father, and in the same place Gerar. The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, do not go down to Egypt. Live in the land where I tell you to live. Stay in this land for a while, and I'll be with you, and we'll bless you. Look forward to you and your descendants. I will give all these lands, and I will confirm the oath that I swore to your father Abraham. Look at that. The promise of God is contingent upon Isaac staying and obeying the word of God. Right? You can have all the promises in the world, but Isaac leaves the land. The promise is going to follow somebody else. The promise will still live, but will you be a part of it is the question. Okay, the church, let's say the same thing about the church. The church is never going to be defeated. The question is, will I be defeated?

God's church. When God makes a covenant, it's going to come to come to pass, but the individuals who reside within that covenant, they're still going to have to be a response on your part that is a responsible obedience. Okay, so Abraham's gone through all of this, including the offering of Isaac on a sacrificial altar. He's gone through all of this, but it's still contingent. If Isaac wants to be part of this covenant, he's going to have to obey God like his father Abraham did. Okay, he says, I'm going to confirm the oath that I swore to your father Abraham, verse four, I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands. And through your offspring, all nations on earth will be blessed. That's the same thing he said to his father. And oh, God has not finished. He says all nations of earth will be blessed because Abraham obeyed me and kept my

requirements, my commands, my decrees and my laws. All right, so Isaac stayed in Jirar. Right, this is, this is wonderful. He's responding to God the way his father responded to God. In Abraham's case, it was go. In Abraham's case, Isaac's case, it was stay. See, you look the calling, but you're part of the same covenant as your father. But your obedience takes a different form. That's interesting to me. Abraham, you obey by going. Isaac, you obey by staying. That's intentional. Everybody's walk doesn't look exactly the same. Doesn't look exactly the same. Sometimes God calls somebody to a walk through a valley of shadow death. There are other people who don't look through that same valley. And the temptation is to look at people who seem to have had it better and, and, and, and, and, and wonder about that. Think that maybe they've done something wrong. Well, God has different colleagues for different people. And sometimes father and son, it just doesn't even

a father, as close a relationship as that is. Same God calling, but one says go, another one says to another one, he says stay. This was what Peter found out his, his walk with respect to John's walk with God. Peter's, Peter's walk with Jesus meant he was going to be crucified. John's walk with Jesus meant he was going to remain and live into his old age. And Peter got upset about that. What about him? And Jesus says that. What does that mean to you? What does that mean to you? You follow me. What does that mean to you? His, his destiny, his calling doesn't mean anything to you. All right. Now today, right now, Peter and John are sitting at the same table with the Lamb of God. And they have been for the last 2000 years rejoicing. All of their sorrows are distant, distant memories. In fact, I'd like to put it this way. Do you remember the fourth step you took

out of bed three weeks ago on Thursday? Do you remember that fourth step? Do you remember stepping over the threshold of your bedroom out into the hallway? Do you remember that step three weeks ago on a Thursday? You don't do you. You took that stuff though. That's how that you're no more going to remember your greatest pain and sorrow here in the world than you remember that that that fourth step on Thursday three weeks ago, it's going to become an ever distant and vanishing sorrow. Okay, what does that mean to you? Follow me. Okay. All right. One, one, dad came out here, left the Midwest and came out here. That was gone. And my my calling ended up being why I'm out in the West again. But it was go stay. It was like stay where you grew up where you grew up. I want you to I want you to finish your life there. When my dad it was someone should go

finish your life far away from home. Same God World Day. Same God would follow me. God has a very unique calling for you and for you children by the way. All right. Where are we? So Isaac stayed in Gerard verse seven. When the men of that place asked him about his wife. She he said, she's my sister. Because he was afraid to say she's my wife. He thought the men of this place might kill me on account of Rebecca because she's beautiful. And again, you've heard that story. We've been here before and it was with a king named Abimelech or the king Abimelech. The Philistines same thing. I'm not that Abraham told Sarah. You you tell everybody wherever we go, you're my sister if they ask. And so she she did and she ended up being taken into Abimelech's harem and then God visits him with a dream and says, you're a dead man. And then the king says, oh man, that was

a close one. I'm going to get her out of here and I'm going to bless Abraham at the same time. Make sure he doesn't say pronounce any curse over me. And so he the situation gets taken care of. Well, here's his son Isaac and it doesn't seem that he made this packed with with with Rebecca, his wife. You say that you're my sister wherever we go. This seemed to have been a spur of the moment. He didn't he was kind of caught in in the high beams here and he didn't quite know what to do and he just on spur of the moment. He says, oh, I remember. I remember how someone got out of this once. She's my sister and we already learned from previous chapters. Rebecca is stunningly beautiful and so she's my sister. It's really strange though. Look what look look what's about to happen here when Isaac had been there for a long time. Abimelech King of the Philistines

looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebecca. Oh, I see your the translation up here. He says laughing. So Isaac laughing. Oh, first of all, you know Isaac's name means laughter, right? Okay, so so laughter laughing with Rebecca, his wife. This is the translators basically saying, I don't really know what to say here. I'll just give you I'll give you the closest approximation we can find. But the word Yitzhak, which is the root of Isaac's name, Yitzhak, laughter. It has a range of uses. It can mean sometimes laughter, but sometimes it has sexual connotations depending on the context. So Abimelech's looking through his window. Here's the king. He's up maybe in his fortress. He's looking out the window maybe into the village where Isaac is staying and he's been told that beautiful woman that's sister of Isaac. That's what everybody thinks. But then he sees they're not they're not yeah, they're not unless this is Princess Leia and Luke

Skywalker, the empire strikes back. They're not acting like brother and sister here. You laughter, probably some laughter in there, you know, flirtatious, giggling, something like that. But it's it was sexual in nature. And we know that because first night says so Abimelech summoned Isaac and said she is she is really your wife. Why did you say she's my sister? All right. So question comes to mind. This is not a super important question. But remember last week I was talking about how stories are told in the Bible and they're not always linear. You can get you can get the story of of Abraham being told in a linear way and then all of a sudden you see Abraham's probably died here. But then the next chapter Abraham's lies again say, well, what happened here in that previous chapter? Well, sometimes again story pieces of the story gets shuffled around like like locks. Okay. For whatever the purposes of the writer are. And this seems

to have been the case here as well. And I say that because in the previous chapter, Rebecca had Jacob and Esau. She had twins, right? Remember Jacob is grasping at the heel of Esau. He's born now he's born grasping at the heel. Okay. So she's she's in her 40s. She has this these twins. And then the next chapter, she's my sister. We're not married. And yet she has twins. She's carrying around. See what I'm saying? You see the problem here. What it seems to be happening here is chapter 26 is at an earlier stage, a pre-twin stage of their life. And for various reasons, the writer has shuffled around the blocks of the story to suit the narrative purposes. And I think when we get to chapter 34, the reason why this little interruption and island out of time occurs here in 26. I'll get to that later on. But it's just so that so that you understand occasionally you can get confused

when you're reading the Bible. You're like, what's going on? If somebody asks, but how did the king and how did the people around there not know that that's that's the husband? They really think that's the brother when she's walking around with twins. Well, the answer seems to be she hadn't had twins yet. This is an earlier point in their lives, but it's being told later on after the birth of Jacob and Esau narrative. Okay. All right. All right. Isaac answered him because I thought I might lose my life on account of her. All right. He's afraid she's going to get killed so that they can have his wife. So he says, sister. All right. Then Avi Malik said, what is this you've done to us? One of the men might have, and if this had been the same Avi Malik that Abraham had done with, I think he would have said, your dad did this too. And also, yeah, why did you fall

for a second time? Because they're a completely different person. Okay. Somebody who just holds the title. Right. What is this you have done to us? One of the men might well have slept with your wife and you would have brought guilt upon us. And here's a case that sometimes of a pagan being more obedient than the covenant believer. All right. Sometimes God uses unbelievers to chastise believers, say, hey, they acted more virtuous than you. So Avi Malik gave orders to all the people. Anyone who molests this man or his wife shall surely be put to death. In other words, anyone harms them in any way. It will be put to death. All right. Isaac, verse 12, all of a sudden we get this, that story is over and now we start a new one, but we're still in Jirar. So Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold because the Lord blessed him. The man became rich and

his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy. He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him. So all the wells that his father, father's servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up and filled them with earth. In other words, sealing up the wells so that they can't use the wells anymore. And you're right on the edge of the Nechab's desert. It's very inhospitable and there's a fan in the land. And these Philistines went around and plugged up all of those wells out there. There's not an endless supply of water. I was in the desert a few years ago, the Sahara desert. There's a group of refugees out there. They've been there since 1976. Since the year I was born. They've been living out in the village of Sahara. And it looks like a Circus of the Moon out there. There's nothing, nothing whatsoever. Then all of a sudden you come

upon this civilization. But it's all tense. And you can't eat anything partly without a thousand. Literally, I'm not kidding you. I'm not exaggerating. A thousand flies, you set the table and a thousand flies will swarm over that. You cannot keep them off. Can't do it. And I don't have an appetite strong enough to eat anything that I know a fly has been walking on. I just don't, I don't. So I actually, the whole time I was there, I just, I just drank coffee. That's it. That's it. Literally it could not matter how hungry I got. I could not eat this food. And so I didn't want to offend my host. So I'd end up just when I knew it was going to be time to eat, I would be somewhere far away. And the reason why you have so many flies here out in the desert, where are these flies coming from? Well, they also don't have a sewer system. So the sewage

is burying maybe a foot deep. And so you get this unbelievable amount of fly and maggot activity because of the conditions. It's so inhospitable to life. Absolutely horrible. And we were there as humanitarians. And so we asked a scientist came in from the United Nations to brief us on the situation there. And, and we asked, where's the nearest aquifer? And he said, the nearest aquifer is 40 miles north. And there's no way we can, we can put down 40 miles of pipe. That aquifer would be, there's 400,000 people living out here in Melba Sahara. There's no way that aquifer would be able to sustain us from within a couple of months anyway. So you just don't find wells and these in the hospitable places, they're extremely valuable. In the Sahara, the ship, they fly the water in every single day. They've been doing that for 50 years. Hundreds of tons of water every single day. And here where Isaac is, a well is

life. It's life. So wherever there's a well, you end up with a city built around that well. And Philistines see that Isaac has been successful in planting his crops. Well, how did he get successful planting his crops here in the middle of a famine? And we're on the border of the desert. We're not successful with our crops. He's successful with his crops. So how did he get that way? He's been watering it from these wells that he dug, that his father dug, in our territory. So they go and maybe in the middle of the night or whatever, they go and seal up those wells, destroy them so that they can't be opened back up for water. And Isaac now has no well to feed the crops and to feed his livestock and to feed his nourishes family. All right. So Avi Malik is getting a little bit of revenge on Isaac, or 16. Then he said to Isaac, move away from us. You've

become too powerful for us. So Isaac moved away from there. That is not what I expected to be said next. Move away from us. You're too powerful for us. Yeah, that's why you should leave me alone. Right? You're powerful. We're weak. Move away from us. And what does Isaac do? So Isaac moved away. He could have become very angry. He could have said, yeah, and I'm going to show you how much more powerful my interview. How dare you threaten me? How dare you go in the middle of the night and you seal up these wells and threaten our lives? How dare you? My father and the previous king of the Philistines made a pact, an oath with each other. And you're breaking that oath. I'm going to call down vengeance upon you. But there's no, there's no, none of that. It just says, so Isaac moved away from there and it camped in the valley of Jirar and settled there. Isaac reopened the

wells that had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died. And he gave the same names his father had given them, gave the wells the same names. Verse 19, Isaac's servants dug in the valley there and discovered a well of fresh water there that is in the valley of Jirar. But the herdsmen of Jirar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen and said, the water's ours. So he named the well Ezek, which means coral in Hebrew, because they disputed with him. Then they dug another well, but they quarreled over that one. Also, so he named it Sitna, which means opposition. He moved on from there. Look at this guy. They dug another well and no one quarreled over it. He named it Rehobith, saying, now the Lord has given us ruin and we will flourish in the land Rehobith means room or space. Verse 23, from there he went up to Bathsheba and that night the

Lord appeared to him that said, I am the God of your Father Abraham. Do not be afraid. I'm with you. I will bless you. I will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant, Abraham. Look at that. He's sending blessings down to your children. Do you remember David? God love David. David loved God. David broke poetry about God, saying songs about God. He fought for God. He was also a deeply flawed man. But God remembered David. David's descendants, some of them are wicked. Time and time again you'd have a wicked king like Ahaz or Jehoiakim or a wicked king like Vanessa. These are wicked, awful, horrible kings and the texts would say, but because of your Father, David, the assured mercies of David being visited upon the children. I want to live in such a whatever God, God looks down upon, looks down upon this broken, terrible man who has descended from David. He sees the wickedness of the

man, but he can't help but see David. Must have been like God seeing David dance before the ark again. I see the wickedness of this child, of this child of yours, but I can't get David's dance out of my head. I can't get the songs that he sang out of my head, and I see a little bit of David in him and I have pity upon him. There are the mercies that were passed down generation to generation. You live for God. You worship God. You do things right. You love God. You never know when someday maybe you're long out of the life of your children or your grandchildren, but God looks down upon that child and sees just a little bit or hears, remembers one of your prayers. And it's a prayer of a grandfather, a great-grandfather. God has mercy upon the child. This is what happened with Isaac. So, Isaac, I'm going to defend you. It has a lot to do with

the obedience of your father Abraham. And Isaac built an altar there, and he called upon the name of the Lord. And there he pitched his tent, and there his servants dug a well. Now, watch. Meanwhile, Abimelech had come to him from Gerar with Ahuseth, his personal advisor in Fico, the commander of his forces. Isaac asked them, it's the first time you ever hear Isaac say anything slightly controversial, the first time he ever stands up and says something, speaks his mind. Here it is. Why have you come to me? You were hostile to me and sent me away. They answered, We saw clearly that the Lord was with you. So we said, there ought to be a sworn agreement between us, between us and you. Let us make a treaty with you, that you will do us no harm, just as we did not molest or bother you. Taking some liberties with the truth right there. Look at this narrative right here. You're more

powerful. We see that God's with you. And we're in a little bit of a scary situation here with you. We don't know, we know you could take us out. And we want to make an oath with you right now. We want to make a peace treaty. Let's make a treaty with you, that you will do us no harm, just as we didn't do you any harm. That's a story. It's a story that doesn't bear up under history. Now you're blessed by the Lord, they said. Right. Now what's Isaac going to do? What's he going to do? Okay. Now you see your danger. Now you see this would have been Isaac's, this would have been a small man's opportunity to get him back. What did he do? Scripture says in verse 30, Isaac then made a feast for them. They needed drink. In early the next morning, the men swore an oath to each other. Then Isaac said, see here's the thing, Isaac didn't

need to make an oath with them. It only benefited them, but he made the oath. He was in the position of power. They weren't, you didn't need to make this, but he did. Right. Let me, let me tell you, let me tell you why. You, you want to know this verse of Scripture. Not really, really well. It's, it's in Father's chapter 16. And look at it. Hold up, if you would. Proverbs 16 and verse seven. When a man's ways pleases the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace. Sometimes I get a little bit worried. Get a little bit worried about, about someone who's constantly fighting with everybody. And they, sometimes they say, they end up saying is, we get defensive about them. They say, well, that's because I'm the one, the only one standing at home for anything around here. I'm the one who's doing things right. This is a promise from Scripture. When your ways please the Lord, God

makes even your enemies to be at peace with you eventually. So please the Lord. This is pleasing. What Isaac did was pleasing to the Lord. And he was challenged. Instead of fighting with them, he moved on. He moved on. He moved on. And he kept on digging wells. He didn't say, oh, I guess it's never going to work out for me. Oh, I'm going to dig another well and hope for peace. And when a man's ways please the Lord, God makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. All right. Last few verses, I'll finish. Verse 32 of chapter 26. That day Isaac's servants came and told him about the well they had dug. They said, we found water. He called it Sheba. And to this day, the name of that town has been Beersheba. And Esau was 40 years old. He married, this is, I don't know why this is part of chapter 26. But here we go. We're switching over

to somebody completely different now. But it says when Esau was 40 years old, he married Judith, daughter of Birai, the Hittite, and also the seamoth daughter of Elon, Hittite. They were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebecca. Okay. So now in the very last verse of chapter 26, we're back at the part of Isaac and Rebecca's life where Esau is not only, not only his lies now, but he's also mature enough to marry two women and become a great big thorn in the flesh, apparently for his mom and dad. And that will be for reasons we can get into later. But we do know that he married unbelievers. So this brought a division into the house. So last thing I want to do here is I want to read to you from Psalm 37, regarding Isaac and his way of making peace. Do not fret because of the evil men or be envious of those who do wrong. Or like the grass,

they will soon litter. Like green plants, they will soon die away. You can almost imagine. Don't plan vengeance against somebody or don't plan vengeance against grass. And that's what we all are. Needs of grass. We fade away with temporary. Don't make a temporary problem, any eternal problem. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in Him and He will do this, will do this. He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause, like the noon day's sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him. And this is Psalm 37. It's about Isaac, it seems like to me. Do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath. Do not fret, it leads only to evil. For evil

men will be cut off, but those who hold benalurk will inherit the land. That's the meek shall inherit the earth. You think it's the powerful, the mighty, that are going to have the land? It's not. According to the Bible, it will be the meek. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath. Verse 10. A little while in the wicked will be no more. Though you look for them, they will not be found. But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy green peace. The wicked plot against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them, but the Lord laughs at the wicked for He knows their day is coming. The wicked draw the sword and bend the bow to bring down the poor and the needy to slay those whose ways are upright. But their swords will pierce their own hearts and their bows will be broken. That are the little that the righteous have in the wealth of many wicked, but the power of

the wicked will be broken, but the Lord upholds the righteous. The days of the blameless are known to the Lord, and their inheritance will endure forever. In times of disaster, they will not wither. In days of famine, they will enjoy plenty. But the wicked will perish. The Lord's enemies will be like the beauty of the fields. They will vanish, as spunk. The wicked borrow and do nobri pay, but the righteous give generous. Those the Lord blesses will inherit the land, but those He curses will be cut off. If the Lord delights in a man's ways, He makes his steps firm. Amen.