Will you turn in your Bibles to chapter
26 of the book of Genesis for the
scripture reading this morning.
And we'll read the entire chapter, Genesis chapter
26, beginning with the first verse.
For those of you who may not have
been here in the previous hours, we are
in that section of Genesis in which the
life of Jacob has become the predominant theme.
And in the preceding sections, we read of
the birth of Jacob and Esau and then
Esau's sale of the birthright to Jacob.
So now we pick up the story in
Genesis chapter 26 in a chapter that is
somewhat surprisingly in some ways devoted entirely to
Isaac.
Now there was a famine in the land
besides the previous famine that had occurred in
the days of Abraham.
And so Isaac went to Gerar to Abimelech,
king of the Philistines.
And the Lord appeared to him and said,
do not go down to Egypt.
Stay in the land of which I shall
tell you.
Sojourn in this land and I will be
with you and bless you for to you
and to your descendants I will give all
these lands and I will establish the oath
which I swore to your father Abraham.
And I will multiply your descendants as the
stars of the heaven and will give your
descendants all these lands.
And by your descendants, all the nations of
the earth shall be blessed because Abraham obeyed
me and kept my charge, my commandments, my
statutes, and my laws.
By the way, those words charge, commandments, statutes,
and laws are not simply general terms but
are references to specific events in Abraham's life
such as the right of circumcision and Abraham's
obedience to that.
We don't have time to talk about that
but they may be related to specific things
in Abraham's life.
So Isaac lived in Gerar.
When the men of the place asked about
his wife, he said, she is my sister
for he was afraid to say my wife,
thinking the men of the place might kill
me on account of Rebecca for she is
beautiful.
And I may also add this that it
was customary in the Near East to speak
of a relative such as Rebecca was to
Isaac as sister.
So he might well have rationalized just as
Abraham did about his half-sister Sarah and
he might have spoken and accurately, she is
my sister.
But of course he really was lying since
he was trying to deceive Abimelech just as
Abraham had deceived men about Sarah.
Verse 8.
And it came about when he had been
there a long time that Abimelech king of
the Philistines looked out through a window and
saw and behold Isaac was caressing his wife
Rebecca.
Then Abimelech called Isaac and said behold certainly
she is your wife.
How then did you say she is my
sister?
And Isaac said to him because I said
lest I, because I said lest I die
on account of her.
And Abimelech said what is this you have
done to us?
One of the people might easily have lain
with your wife and you would have brought
guilt upon us.
No doubt if you have been following us
through in the book of Genesis you will
have been puzzled perhaps amazed perhaps that we
should have three incidents in the book of
Genesis which are so similar.
Twice Abraham lied about Sarah his wife and
now Abraham's son Isaac lies lies about Rebecca.
It would be natural for unbelieving critics to
devise a theory that have is just one
incident that has been given in three different
places in the book of Genesis multiplied into
three accounts and consequently we don't expect the
account of the book of Genesis to be
totally accurate.
But if you read these accounts carefully you
will notice that while there is a similarity
between them obvious similarity there are also obvious
differences between them.
And furthermore you will notice as you read
this account that there is an indication that
the previous accounts are known.
Because when Abimelech says what is this you
have done to us?
One of the people might easily have lain
with your wife and you would have brought
guilt upon us.
He evidences by that that he was acquainted
with the previous account in the twentieth chapter
where Abimelech that Abimelech who is a different
Abimelech from this one since Abimelech was a
kind of dynastic name like a czar or
a pharaoh that Abimelech is told that if
such a thing had happened guilt and judgment
would have come upon them.
So this one knows about that.
In other words this account is an account
that presupposes the previous account.
We do have three different accounts and it's
not surprising considering the nature of man.
So Abimelech charged all the people saying he
who touches this man or his wife shall
surely be put to death.
Now Isaac sowed in that land and reaped
in the same year a hundredfold and the
Lord blessed him.
That's the fulfillment of the promise in verse
three where he said he would bless him.
And the man became rich and continued to
grow richer until he became very wealthy.
For he had possessions of flocks and herds
and a great household so that the Philistines
envied him.
Now all the wells which his father's servants
had dug in the days of Abraham his
father the Philistines stopped up by filling them
with earth.
Then Abimelech said to Isaac go away from
us for you are too powerful for us.
And Isaac departed from there and camped in
the valley of Girar and settled there.
Then Isaac dug again the wells of water
which had been dug in the days of
his father Abraham for the Philistines had stopped
them up after the death of Abraham.
And he gave them the same names which
his father had given them.
And when Isaac's servants dug in the valley
and found there a well of flowing water
like an artesian well the herdsmen of Girar
quarreled with the herdsmen of Isaac saying the
water is ours.
So he named the well Issach because they
contended with him.
Then they dug another well and they quarreled
over it too so he named it Sitna,
enmity.
And he moved away from there and dug
another well and they did not quarrel over
it so he named it Rehoboth.
For he said at last the Lord has
made room for us and we shall be
fruitful in the land.
Broad places Rehoboth.
Then he went up from there to Beersheba
and the Lord appeared to him the same
night that's rather striking.
He's back in Beersheba and at that point
it would appear from this incident that he
must have been thought to have been out
of the will of God in Girar.
He comes back to Beersheba and there the
Lord appears to him the same night and
said I am the God of your father
Abraham.
Do not fear for I am with you.
I will bless you and multiply your descendants
for the sake of my servant Abraham.
So he built an altar there and called
upon the name of the Lord and pitched
his tent there and there Issach's servants dug
a well.
This is the well chapter of the Bible
no doubt about it.
Then Abimelech came to him from Girar with
his advisor Ahuzeth and Phicol the commander of
his army and Issach said to them why
have you come to me since you hate
me and have sent me away from you.
That sounds almost like a lady's words to
a husband doesn't it.
You hate me.
And they said we see plainly that the
Lord has been with you.
So we said let there now be an
oath between us even between you and us
and let us make a covenant with you
that you will do us no harm just
as we have not touched you and have
done to you nothing but good.
That of course was Abimelech's lie and have
sent you away in peace.
You are now the blessed of the Lord.
Then he made them a feast and they
ate and drank and in the morning they
arose early and exchanged oaths.
Then Issach sent them away and they departed
from him in peace.
Now it came about on the same day
that Issach's servants came in and told him
about the well which they had dug and
said to him we have found water.
So he called it Sheba.
That's a term that could mean one of
two things.
It's very close to the word for seven
in Hebrew and also for the word oath.
Beersheba.
Therefore the name of the city is Beersheba
to this day.
And when Isaac was forty when Esau was
forty years old he married Judith the daughter
of Beeri the Hittite and Basimath the daughter
of Elon the Hittite.
And that's very interesting and striking and bears
a relationship to the next chapter in which
Jacob obtains Esau's blessing.
And they brought grief to Isaac and Rebecca
and this tempers the feeling of compassion that
people often have for Esau.
This gives us an insight into the character
of Esau.
It was an act of defiance when he
married the Hittite women.
May the Lord bless this reading of his
word.
Let's bow together in a moment of prayer.
The subject for this morning in the continuation
of our exposition of the book of Genesis
is Isaac the passive and patient patriarch.
The twenty sixth chapter of the book of
Genesis is really not an easy chapter because
it is a chapter in which there are
things that are said about Isaac and then
there are things that are said that do
not especially make for interesting preaching according to
what preachers usually think are interesting things.
I don't think that many people want to
preach on the wells of Isaac that he
dug for example.
And I must confess that in spite of
all of the study that I have done
of chapter twenty of Genesis that stands out
still as the chapter that has to do
with the wells.
Among the patriarchs Isaac attained to the greatest
age the ripe age of one hundred and
eighty.
So he lived for five years longer than
Abraham himself.
But this middle man of the patriarchal triumvirate
has only this chapter devoted to him in
the Old Testament.
Now of course he looms large in Genesis
chapter twenty two when Abraham offered him up
on Mount Moriah.
But this is really the only chapter in
which we have a great deal devoted to
the life of this second man of Abraham
Isaac and Jacob.
I must confess that when I thought about
preaching on this I couldn't help but think
of that comedian who frequently says I don't
get no respect.
It's almost as if Isaac is the one
of the patriarchs who does not get proper
respect.
Griffith Thomas said concerning him his was a
quiet peaceful normal life.
He was the ordinary son of a great
father and the ordinary father of a great
son.
And those words are really typical of Isaac.
He is not as significant as Abraham and
he is not as significant as his son
Jacob at least according to the writer of
the book of Genesis.
And another of the remarkable things about this
chapter is the resemblance that Isaac's experiences bear
to Abraham's.
For example he has to contend with a
famine in the land just as his father
did.
He has to take a trip down into
the land of the Philistines just as his
father did.
He has to deal with the king of
the Philistines whose name was Abimelech.
That was a dynastic title and so he
had to contend with Abimelech just as Abraham
had to contend with Abimelech.
And then of course he has the same
experience of lying about his wife.
Abraham lied about Sarah twice.
And even though Isaac must have known about
this for the traditions were handed down still
he lies about Rebecca.
There are other striking lessons in Genesis chapter
26 as is true of most of the
chapters of the Bible.
One is how believers meet difficulties in their
daily lives.
And Isaac gives us some good instruction concerning
that.
We also have an illustration of the sovereignty
of the grace of God.
Even after he lies God blesses him richly.
And one might have expected some disciplinary experiences
on the part of Isaac but he doesn't
seem to have any.
God pours out tremendous physical and material blessings
upon this man even though he has lied
so abysmally about his wife Rebecca.
It is an illustration of the sovereignty of
the grace of God in his dealings with
men.
And I think also one of the great
lessons of the chapter is the wisdom of
meekness manifested in the life of Isaac.
He was a meek man.
In this he was like our Lord.
Now the scriptures when they speak of meekness
do not speak of weakness.
We are inclined to think that if a
person is a meek man that means he
is a weak man.
But meekness is not weakness.
Many have commented upon the fact that around
the racetrack the horse that wins races is
often called a meek horse because he was
subject to the rider's directions more fully than
others.
And consequently the jockeys speak of a horse
that is a good horse as a meek
horse, pliable.
He responds to the directions of the jockey.
Well meekness in the Bible is looked at
as a strength rather than a weakness.
And Isaac was a meek man.
In this he is a beautiful illustration of
how a Christian should be.
That's not weakness.
It is strength to be meek.
The apostle Paul when he speaks in the
twelfth chapter of the epistle of the Romans
and says, if possible so far as it
depends on you be at peace with all
men, might well have had Isaac in mind
for that was the kind of man that
he was.
It illustrates also I think the truth of
Proverbs chapter sixteen and verse seven.
When a man's ways are pleasing to the
Lord he makes even his enemies to be
at peace with him.
And Isaac gained in that respect by his
meekness rather than his weakness.
In the last two verses of the chapter
in connection with Esau and the marriage with
the Hittite women we have an illustration of
the sin of compromise.
We're inclined to be sorry for Esau and
I think in the next chapter when we
study the stolen blessing we will feel sorry
again naturally for Esau.
We are of sympathies with rest with him
rather than with Jacob who schemed with his
mother to steal the blessing.
But we should never forget that Esau is
the person who defiantly rebelled against the teaching
of the Word of God and brought grief
upon his father and mother Isaac and Rebecca.
I remember a story that a Bible teacher
used to tell and I understand that it's
been told by others as well about a
hunter who was just ready to kill a
bear.
He raised his rifle the bear called out
can't we talk this over like two sober
human beings.
And the hunter lowered his gun he said
what's the talk over.
Well for instance said the bear coming a
little bit closer.
What do you want to shoot me for.
And the hunter said it's simple.
I want a fur coat.
Well all I want is a good breakfast
said the bear.
I'm sure we can get together and talk
sensibly over this.
So they sat down to work out an
agreement.
After a while the bear got up all
alone.
They reached a compromise.
The bear secured his breakfast and the hunter
had on his fur coat.
Well in the warfare between the flesh and
the spirit there never has been any other
result than that ultimately the flesh wins when
compromise takes place.
And so when Esau compromised it was obvious
that the flesh would win.
It's a great illustration of the sin of
compromise.
It is very very destructive of spiritual things.
Well we turn now to Genesis chapter 26
and we look at the first 11 verses
for a few moment and few moments in
which Moses speaks of the famine and the
deception.
God will in a sense put Isaac to
test by virtue of his providential dealings.
Now there was a famine in the land.
I sympathize with Isaac because after all God
had given Abraham great promises.
He had said that he would give him
this land.
He had assured him that this land would
be something to possess that would be that
he would be proud of.
But what do you do when the land
which has been promised to you is a
land in which there is no bread.
There was a famine in the land.
So I must say I sympathize with him
because surely he must have thought long and
hard over the promises of God.
What about the promises when there is no
bread in the land.
There are 13 famines referred to in the
Bible.
So I am told.
And either this is God's trial of Isaac
or else it's Satan's attempt to destroy the
seed of the woman by forcing Isaac to
yield and to get out of the land
and thus get into difficulty.
Well we read that Isaac went to Gerar
to Abimelech king of the Philistines and the
Lord appeared to him at that point.
It's not easy to stay in the land.
The blessings of the covenant were distant and
so he begins to move and it's possible
he was on his way to Egypt and
just stopped here but God arrested his plans.
Appeared to him and said do not go
down to Egypt.
Isaac stay in the land of which I
shall tell you.
Sojourn in this land and I will be
with you and bless you.
For to you and your descendants I will
give all these lands and I will establish
the oath which I swore to your father
Abraham.
So God promises to bless this mediocre son
of a great father and he says I
will establish the oath.
Now remember that after Isaac had been offered
up by Abraham God had confirmed the oath,
confirmed the promises by an oath to Abraham.
So he not only has faithfully promised that
he would bless Abraham and his seed in
a certain way but he has added to
his word his oath.
The writer of the epistle of the Hebrews
makes a great deal over this.
He says by two immutable things God's word
and God's oath.
Now if there's anybody who doesn't need to
swear it's God.
Englishmen like to say an Englishman's word is
his bond.
That's a lie of course because Englishmen tell
lies just like anyone else.
But they like to think that they are
true to their word.
But there is of course only one person
who is true to his word.
The very fact that we require people who
stand in a witness box to give an
oath is evidence of the knowledge of the
depravity of men.
But God stoops to the level of men's
weakness and not only gives the promise but
in addition gives an oath.
It's almost as if he says to the
saints of God, I love you, it's true,
I swear it, I swear it by my
name.
And then in faithfulness in time the Redeemer
comes and sheds his blood on the cross
in order that the promises might be fulfilled.
So he says I will establish the oath
which I swore to your father Abraham.
We really don't need any oaths.
All we need is the word of God.
If God has said it in the Scriptures
it is true.
It's really a sign of weakness to say
Lord will you swear to it and put
you on the witness box and have you
put your hand on the Bible and say
that you're going to keep your word.
Now notice the fifth verse.
He says I'm going to bless you, I'm
going to by your seed all the nations
of the earth shall be blessed because Abraham
obeyed me and kept my charge.
That might seem as if, if you read
it without the knowledge of the story of
Abraham, that might seem as if he were
saying Abraham's obedience is the ultimate cause of
the blessing which you're going to have Isaac.
But that's not true.
After all why did Abraham obey?
Well God called him out of Ur of
the Chaldees when he was worshiping other gods.
God called him, brought him into the land.
God brought him to the knowledge of justification.
In fact from the beginning of Abraham's life
on through to the end it was God
who in prevenient grace blessed him.
So Abraham's obedience may be spoken of as
the ground of blessing but the Scriptures make
it plain that Abraham's obedience is an effect
of the working of God, the previous working
of God.
So it's because Abraham obeyed but fundamentally it
is because Abraham obeyed out of response to
the fundamental pre-working of the Holy Spirit
of God.
You never can read the Bible properly if
you don't put it together, all together, and
read it in that way.
Now following this we read in the sixth
or seventh verse, Isaac lived in Gerar and
when the men of the place asked about
his wife he said, she's my sister.
So in response to the exhortation from the
Lord Isaac dwelt in Gerar but what is
it we say, like father like son.
When men ask about Rebecca he said she's
my sister.
He later says why, he said I was
afraid that the men might kill me on
account of Rebecca for she's beautiful.
Now Rebecca was about sixty years of age.
Some people, many people perhaps have difficulty thinking
that anyone sixty could be beautiful but women
sixty years of age may be beautiful.
Sarah was about ninety and she was beautiful.
So Rebecca was a beautiful woman and Isaac
lies, says she's my sister.
Now the thing that's interesting about this, one
of the things that's interesting about it is
that Isaac is a man of faith.
He is a man of faith.
He is a great man of faith, one
of the patriarchs.
He is singled out by God for special
mention all through the Bible.
But here he mixes with his faith, fear,
selfishness and other flaws.
He lied, think of that, a patriarch lying.
You can see how somebody in a believer's
chapel might lie.
But a patriarch, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Abraham lied,
Isaac lied, Jacob lied.
So he's a man of faith.
You see the story the Bible gives us
of the saints of God is not precisely
the story that we like to think of
is the story of a saint of God.
Men generally speaking hear the gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ and they hear the gospel
and they respond and in a moment they
pass from death into life, from darkness into
the marvelous light of the forgiveness of sins.
They have come to the knowledge of the
forgiveness of sins through the Lord Jesus Christ
and they are saved.
They become Christians.
But then for years, the history of most
of us is for years the Holy Spirit
works to conform us to the image of
the Lord Jesus.
Sanctification is a lengthy process.
So we don't expect the children of God
to be immediately great examples of men and
women of faith.
And at any time it is possible for
the saints of God to fail.
And here is one of the patriarchs failing.
This is one of the things that enables
us to see how unintelligible spiritually is the
criticism of the critics of the book of
Genesis.
For they look at this and say, ah,
in Genesis chapter 12 we read about Abraham
lying.
In Genesis chapter 20 we read about him
lying again about Sarah.
And now we read about Isaac lying about
Rebekah.
And furthermore they lie in the same way.
They say, she's my sister.
So what is this?
This is really one story.
There was just one time when this happened.
And what we have was three divergent accounts
built up by tradition.
They circulated separately.
Things were added and subtracted from them.
It really only happened once.
It's incredible that this should happen three times.
Well, really it's incredible it didn't happen more.
As a matter of fact, it happened more.
Because Abraham said, remember, we established a policy,
Sarah and I, when we came out that
every time this happened I would say, she's
my sister.
It's only recorded once or twice in the
Bible.
He probably lied a number of times about
that specific thing.
Because Sarah was beautiful.
Every little village he went through and stayed,
they would look and say, that man's married
to a beautiful woman.
He would say, she's my sister.
Because it was not uncommon to kill the
man to have the woman.
So it's not incredible that this should be
three times in the Bible.
It's incredible that it's only three times in
the Bible.
The critics, you see, not being believers, don't
understand the nature of man.
Man's nature is just as it is presented
in Scripture.
That's what I love about Scripture.
It really tells it like it is.
Child.
How does a child learn that a stove
is hot?
Through the lectures of the parents?
Oh, you know, you can deliver a lecture
to a child.
Now, don't touch that.
It's hot.
You can have an introduction, three points, and
a conclusion, and even use visual aids.
But it will not work.
The one thing that will really teach a
child is putting the finger on the stove.
So like father, like son, Isaac had heard
this story.
He'd heard the story of Abraham.
He knew all about Abraham and Sarah and
how he had lied about Sarah.
But he didn't profit from the example of
his father.
He had to try it out himself.
And, of course, it's simply an illustration of
the depravity of man.
Yes, the depravity of man.
Total depravity.
Now remember, when we say total depravity, we
don't mean that man is as bad as
he can be.
When people talk about the doctrine of total
depravity, they do not mean that.
Some people are put off by the term
total depravity because they can think of some
man who was perhaps a philanthropist and gave
some money so that the city is benefited
by some architectural masterpiece or some architectural blunder
that is in the city.
But when total depravity is referred to, it
means simply that man's sin has touched, the
sin of Adam has touched all of man's
being, all parts of his being.
Not to the degree that it might, but
his mind has been touched.
And so he's blinded.
His will has been touched.
And so he's rebellious.
His emotions have been touched.
So he's corrupt.
Total depravity means simply that all of the
man has been affected by sin.
And so the Bible is true to life
because men are totally depraved.
We are totally depraved.
Always think of the story that Dr. Barnhouse
used to tell so often about, and I've
told it before here, pardon me if you've
heard it, about the young man who had
been brought up in one of the worst
slums of New York.
He had come from one of the smaller
countries of Eastern Europe, but he managed to
obtain fame and fortune in the theatrical field
through his literary talents, which he developed.
Finally, he bought a yacht, and he hired
a man to run the yacht, and he
assumed the title of captain.
And so he got himself a resplendent uniform
with all of the gold braid and brass
buttons and invited his whole mother out to
take a look at the yacht and also
at him.
Now she had retained the native common sense
of a mother from Eastern Europe, and consequently
she had great skill in deflating egos.
And so he brought her on the boat,
and he went down below, he put on
his beautiful uniform, and he came up and
walked on the deck of the ship and
said, look, Mama, I'm a captain.
And she took a careful look at him,
and she said, Sammy, by you, you is
a captain, and by me, you is a
captain, but by captains, you is no captain.
And it illustrates the fact that when we
speak about whether a man is good or
bad, we tend to speak by human standards,
and we say he's a good man.
But when we speak by the divine standards,
there are no good men.
There is none good.
No, not one, the apostle Paul says.
Now when he said that, he did not
mean that men do not do good things.
He meant simply that in the sight of
God, men fall short of the standard of
God, and the sin of Adam has touched
all facets of our being.
And if God the Holy Spirit has brought
understanding to you, you will agree with me.
You will admit that your mind is blinded
with respect to spiritual things, and you will
admit that your heart is rebellious, not totally,
but just touched by sin, rebellious, and furthermore,
that your emotions are corrupt.
So I'm not surprised that Isaac lied.
This doesn't surprise me at all.
It merely lets us know that he's one
of the human race.
Now Abimelech found it out, and he found
it out in a most interesting way.
Evidently, he and Isaac lived not far apart,
because Abimelech could look out of his window
and look down upon Isaac and Rebekah.
And so we read in the eighth verse,
it came about when he had been there
a long time.
He got away with it for a long
time.
And everybody all over the little town of
Gerar was saying, that's his sister, that's his
sister.
But, as is often the case, his emotions
got out of control.
And so Abimelech looked down through a window.
You can just see him peeking down through
the lattice.
And there he saw Isaac caressing his wife
Rebekah.
Now I'm too old to know what he
was doing, of course.
The Authorized Version says he was sporting with
his wife.
Now Isaac's name means laughter, by the way.
And the word translated here, sporting, or translated
caressing, is from the same root.
So it's almost as if Isaac, whose name
means laughter, was taking playful, merry liberties with
Rebekah.
And he was doing some things that when
Abimelech looked down, he said, ah, she is
not his sister.
Matthew Henry says, nowhere may a man more
allow himself to be innocently merry than with
his own wife and children.
That's true.
And I hope if you're happily married, you
and your husband have some playful times too.
It's perfectly all right.
It's the way it ought to be.
I want to tell you something, because the
family's not here right now.
We have a lovely couple in the church.
I never would tell you, of course, who
they are, but a lovely couple, very, very
proper in every way, just the way people
ought to be.
And they also have some children.
I won't tell you when this happened.
It's a long time ago.
But the little boy came up to me
one time.
They tell preachers funny things.
They really do.
And he came up to me and he
said, Dr. Johnson, he said, people think that
my father is very quiet and reserved.
He didn't use these terms, but this is
what he was saying.
People think my father is very quiet and
reserved, but at home he's different with Mama.
I suspected it anyway, but he told me.
So Isaac was caressing Rebecca, his wife, and
sporting with her in a bimolec, saw the
truth and called Isaac to him.
And he said, Isaac, what is it that
you've done to us?
One of the people might easily have lain
with your wife and you would have brought
guilt upon us.
So here is the heathen rebuking the believer
again.
When a Christian disobeys, you can almost always
be sure that the whirling will be peeking
out of the window.
And he will see and observe.
And sometimes he will bring reproach on the
name of the God that the Christian worships
because of the Christian's sin.
God, it could be, it easily could be,
could prevent this.
But he doesn't do it.
He permits his name to be reproached by
the disobedience of believers.
And in this case, Isaac had lied and
now he's found out.
And the embarrassing thing about it is that
he's found out by the unbelieving bimolec.
Well, the section that follows details the fluctuating
fortunes of Isaac.
If you get one of the Believer's Bible
bulletins, you can read some of the material
there.
I'm just going to mention a couple of
things since our time is almost gone.
Isn't it striking that right after this lying
on Isaac's part, we have no indication that
he confessed his sin, but still God blesses
Isaac.
We read in verse 12, Now Isaac sowed
in that land and reaped in the same
year a hundredfold, and the Lord blessed him.
He became a very wealthy man.
He had possessions of flocks and herds and
a great household.
He had all of the money and possessions
that Abraham had.
For Abraham gave everything to Isaac, but now
he has multiplied the material wealth of Abraham
so that he is a very wealthy man.
It is an illustration of the sovereignty of
the grace of God in blessing men.
And he blesses him, no doubt.
I mean, no doubt he had private ways
in which he dealt with Isaac.
But publicly, Isaac was a man blessed of
the Lord because this was a testimony to
the great greatness of his God, Yahweh.
The envy that the Philistines felt soon turned
to spite, and as a result, they began
to fill up the wells that Isaac was
digging, which Abraham had built.
He needed these wells.
He had great flocks, great herds.
He needed water.
But they would go around filling them up,
and so trouble came, and it was necessary
for him to leave the land.
Evidently, they did not want him to have
wells in the land because that might be
a tacit admission that he had a right
to be there and own property.
Well, we read in the latter part of
that section in verses 15 through 22 about
how that happened.
And now the last part of the chapter
has to do with the covenant that was
made at Beersheba.
Finally, we read in verse 23 that Isaac
went up from there to Beersheba, and the
very moment that he arrived in Beersheba, the
Lord appeared to him.
And I think that does perhaps indicate that
it was never God's will for Isaac to
leave the land for Gerar.
He said, I'm the God of your father
Abraham.
There is no merit in it for Isaac.
He blesses Isaac for the sake of Abraham,
and in turn blessed Abraham for the sake
of his own name.
And as a result of the reiteration of
the promises to Isaac, we read in verse
25, So Isaac built an altar there, and
called upon the name of the Lord, and
pinched his tent there.
And there Isaac's servants dug a well.
And here is the place where Isaac is
in perfect harmony with Abraham and with Jacob.
He builds the altar because he is fundamentally
convinced that the way that men approach God
is by virtue of sacrifice.
So he builds the altar, he puts the
animal upon the sacrifice, he slays the animal,
the blood is shed, and in this way
he worships the Lord.
This is nothing more than what we've been
saying all along.
It is an anticipation of the ultimate sacrifice
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is all typical of him.
And thus in the building of the altar
we can see the affirmation of the theology
of the patriarchs.
And it is a theology of the penal
substitutionary sacrifice as the means of approach to
God.
The animal must die under the judgment of
the priest or the person who slays the
animal in token of the fact that the
animal should die, the animal standing for the
individual.
He acknowledges that he stands under judgment.
So when the Lord Jesus cried out, My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
He was dying under the judgment of God
for our sin.
The animal is slain rather than Isaac.
And the Lord Jesus Christ is slain rather
than the saints of God.
It is penal substitutionary sacrifice.
And as a result of the fire and
the smoke that ascends up on high, God
smells a sweet savor.
And he smelled a sweet savor when the
Lord Jesus died on Calvary's cross.
He cried out, It is finished.
He was satisfied.
The Father was satisfied, propitiated because his holiness,
his righteousness had received that which satisfied him.
This is the gospel we proclaim, that you
should die under the judgment of God.
But a substitute has died for sinners and
has satisfied the claims of a righteous and
holy God, and you who stand in him
have acceptance with him.
He built an altar.
Not only that, he called on the name
of the Lord.
He extolled the virtues and merits of the
person, of this individual called Yahweh, whom he
worshiped.
These altars are significant signposts, and they are
followed by worship, calling upon the name of
the Lord.
He pitched his tent there, right around the
altar that he had constructed in token of
his communion with the Lord on the basis
of the sacrifice.
Then he dug wells.
I guess that's significant of the service that
one renders.
Those verbs of verse 25 express those aspects
of what it means to know the true
God.
Is it not interesting and somewhat striking that
in the flag of the United States of
America we should have red, white, and blue.
We speak of the red, white, and blue.
We don't speak of the white, blue, and
red, or the white, red, and blue, or
the blue, red, and white.
It's always the red, white, and blue, because
there was a theological reason for that.
The red suggesting the sacrifice, the white suggesting
the purity that flows out of the sacrifice,
and the blue suggestive of heaven.
Even in the flag of this country, there
was bound up some theology, red, white, and
blue, suggestive of the truth of Holy Scripture.
Well the conclusion of the covenant is an
apt illustration of Romans chapter 12 and verse
18.
Isaac has only a very, very mild rebuke
for Abimelech.
He could have said a great deal, but
he said, why have you come to me
since you hate me?
And then Abimelech says, we've done nothing but
good to you.
We've treated you well.
He was lying himself.
Isaac said nothing about it.
He said, we'll conclude the covenant.
The next morning they concluded the covenant.
And I say it was an apt illustration
of being at peace with all men.
It's also a beautiful illustration of when a
man's ways are pleasing to the Lord, he
makes even his enemies to be at peace
with him.
It's Abimelech who comes and asks for the
covenant.
Well the chapter concludes with that final note
of the open defiance of Esau.
He defied the defined principles.
He neither desired the blessing of God, nor
did he dread the curse of God.
He illustrates again the sovereignty of the grace
of God.
There was a family in Noyon in France
that had two children, two men, two boys.
One of them was named John.
From his earliest days he was studious, thoughtful,
reverent.
And later at the age of 27, he
wrote the first edition of a book that
became one of the world's greatest books, and
certainly one of the greatest in the Western
world, affecting our Western civilization probably more than
any other one volume.
It was entitled The Institutes of the Christian
Religion.
When he died in Geneva in 1564, he
bequeathed to the Western world some of the
great principles by which we live today.
He had another brother.
His name was Charles.
Charles was different from John.
He pursued a course of profligacy and dissipation,
lived a life as worthless and infamous as
his brother's life was noble and glorious.
How do you explain the difference between the
two men?
A Presbyterian minister said you explain the difference
in choice.
Well how do you explain the choice?
Well you explain the choice by which John
Calvin became the man that he did, and
Charles Calvin became the choice, became the man
that he became.
You explain the choice by the sovereign mercy
of God.
That's the way John explained it.
That's the way Paul explains it.
That's the way Malachi explains it.
That's the way Moses explained it.
Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated.
It's the sovereignty of the grace of God.
But it's justified and men are responsible and
Esau is responsible and evidence is his own
failure by the kind of life that he
lived.
Well I said Isaac was the ordinary son
of a great father, and he's the ordinary
father of a great son, and incidentally you
can also say he was the ordinary husband
of a very clever wife.
And we shall read about her and study
about her next week.
But he was a splendid character, and I
think you can see in his response to
the trivial difficulties that he faced some things
that are very important for us.
I wonder how the other men of the
patriarchal triumvirate would have handled the wells.
And I think when the Philistines began to
fill up the wells that Abraham had dug,
he would have protested.
After all, he went out with 300 men
and won a great military victory.
I can just imagine that he would have
protested very strongly if they had done that
to him.
And Jacob, how would he have acted?
Well, he would have gone down and he
would have talked it over with them and
it wouldn't be long before he not only
had his wells back, but he would have
some of theirs too.
He was that kind of patriarch.
But Isaac, what did he do?
He just went on digging more wells.
He was truly a meek man in the
proper sense.
One of the Puritans said, to lengthen my
patience is the best way to shorten my
troubles.
And Isaac is an illustration of that.
The final analysis, of course, he stands as
a beautiful example of Philippians chapter 1 and
verse 6, where Paul writes, being confident of
this very thing, that he that hath begun
a good work in you will perform it
until the day of Jesus Christ.
It's one of the great promises of the
Word of God.
Now those who have believed in the Lord
Jesus Christ will be sanctified, for God loves
his saints and works toward their ultimate sanctification.
We may make it difficult for him, but
the sovereignty of grace shall ultimately triumph.
If you're here this morning and you do
not know the Lord Jesus Christ, of course,
you do not have the Holy Spirit working
in your life to your ultimate sanctification.
We invite you to put your trust in
him whom to know as life eternal, who
is offered the one sacrifice, who has been
slain as the sacrifice for sinners, and through
whom you may have forgiveness of sins.
You may become a child of God through
faith in him.
May God, the Holy Spirit, bring you to
the knowledge of your sin, guilt, and condemnation,
and may by the grace of God you
flee to the cross for the remedy.
May we stand for the benediction.
Father, we are grateful to thee for these
ancient stories which so relevantly portray the life
that thou hast given us to live many
centuries later.
Enable us, O God, to respond in faith
to the experiences of life.
We know that so often, like Isaac, we
mix with faith fear, selfishness, rebellion.
Through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, deliver
us from ourselves and from our sin.
Fashion us like unto the Lord Jesus Christ.
And Lord, for those who may be here
without him, we pray, O God, that thou
wilt work mightily, giving faith in the salvation
that means eternal life.
May grace and mercy and peace go with
us for Jesus' sake.
Amen.