The Blessing that Prevails

Thank you for choosing to, worship with us. Today, for our time of study and God's word, this morning, I wanna invite you to turn in your Bibles to Deuteronomy. Our Deuteronomy, Genesis. Genesis chapter 26.

Genesis 26. We all have a variety of things that are going on in our lives right now, and this is just a time where, we're not just asking how does the Bible apply to me, but how does my life apply to the Bible. And where we lose ourselves in the story of the Bible and then ask how does my life apply to this and what is God saying to me through His word and this is one of those passages where we have opportunity to do that. If you wanna give a title to the message this morning, it would be the blessing that Prevails.

The blessing that prevails and we'll be looking at Genesis 26:15 to 33. this, this morning. A couple of weeks ago when we were in Genesis 26:1 through 14, we saw that one of the, the big themes of Genesis 26 is the theme of blessing. This is impossible to, to miss as you read through the length of this chapter.

Look at all the mentions of the word bless in this chapter. In verse 3, God says to Isaac, I will bless you. In verse 4, God says to Isaac, by your descendants, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. In verse 12, the text says, the Lord blessed him.

In verse 24, God once again says to Isaac, I will bless you. And in verse 29, Abimelech looks at Isaac and says, you are now the blessed. Of the Lord. It's even better than, than this.

One of the ways of saying that God is blessing somebody is to say that God is with them. And we find that expression three times in this same chapter. In verse 3, God says to Isaac, I will be with you. In verse 23, God says to Isaac, I am with you.

And in verse 28, King Abimelech looks at Isaac and says, we see plainly that the Lord has been with you. How many of you this morning want the Lord to be with you and for his special blessing to be upon your life? Raise your hand. OK.

We all want that, I think, but be careful what you wish for. Because the blessing of God upon your life, God being with you in the way that We'll be seeing this morning in Genesis 26 will make you a problem. For some people, and that's what we see happening to Isaac in Genesis 26. If you're interested in living the truly blessed life, you should pay attention to this chapter and let yourself be both forewarned and encouraged and taught and instructed by what you see in this chapter.

First of all, just a very quick review. This will take about one minute. 2 weeks ago, we saw in verses 1 through 14, how a famine came to the land of promise in response to that famine. Isaac travels to a city called Jerar, intending very likely to go on from there down to Egypt.

But when he arrives in Girar, God appears to Isaac and speaks to him and tells him, stay here in the land, do not go down to Egypt. And God then promises to bless. Isaac in the land. So Isaac decides to trust God.

And he trusts God enough to stay in the promised land, which included the region of Gerar, but he does start feeling afraid when men come around asking about his wife, Rebecca. So Isaac gives way to fear and tells the men that Rebecca is his sister, so that none of them will get the idea of killing him so that they can have Rebecca. As their own wife. Well, Isaac we saw eventually gets caught in this deception.

He gets rebuked for it by King Abimelech. However, Abimelech very kindly. Delivers a decree. That if anyone in Gerard touches Isaac or Rebecca in any hurtful way, they will be put to death.

And so Isaac settles down. And Gerard and he plants seed and we saw in verse 14 how or verse 13, how he reaps a 100-fold harvest. As a result, we're told in verse 13 and 14 that the man, Isaac became rich and continued to grow richer until he became very wealthy, for he had possessions of flocks and herds and a great household, which literally means a great contingent of Service. He has a great workforce working for him of many, many people.

So God is blessing Isaac to a wonderful degree, just as God had promised Isaac that he would do in the land. But notice the last clause of verse 14. It says so that the Philistines envied him. This blessing of God upon Isaac makes him a problem to the Philistines.

They envied him. God is blessing Isaac and the Philistines don't like it. They begrudge Isaac the blessings from God that he now enjoys. They become resentful and in our passage today, we're gonna see them rising up.

And working at cross purposes with the blessing of God in Isaac's life, but we're going to observe how they absolutely do not succeed. God's blessing on Isaac will prevail over all obstacles and hindrances and all opposition leveled against him, and that's the story in this passage today, and it's your story too, as we'll see. So the way we'll break down our study of the passage today is we'll observe 7 developments in the story of God's blessing upon Isaac prevailing over opposition.

From the Philistines.

And the first of these developments is the Philistines rudely withdraw. Their hospitality from Isaac. Observe what happens in verse 15, says 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 or dirt. And guys, this is pure spite.

The Philistines are not trying to seize the wells and, and claim them for their own use. They're just seeking to vandalize. And render these wells of Abraham and Isaac, rendering them worthless, as one writer says, their only thought is that this will put an end. To Isaac's success.

To appreciate what's happening here, it's best that you picture. Isaac's, I just lost some of you that Hopefully, we'll get the lights turned back up. But to appreciate what's happening here, it's best that you picture Isaac's enterprises on hundreds of acres scattered in various places within the city and sprawling outside of the city as well with farmland in some places and fields and other places in which his livestock can graze and in the sprawling expanse of all of those lands, there would be a number of wells.

Wells that would have included the ones that had been dug by Abraham's servants decades earlier.

Isaac is using these wells, which he is entitled to do as Abraham's son. Isaac was dependent upon these wells as a supply of fresh water for his crops and for his family, his workforce, and his livestock. So this is a big deal that the Philistines would vandalize these wells and fill them in with, with dirt and render them unusable. Famine is still in the land.

And even in a year of normal rainfall, people were dependent upon these wells, yet the Philistines are plugging them up spitefully. with dirt because they envy the blessing of God upon Isaac. Imagine that you're staying at someone's guest house and you wake up one morning and notice that they've turned off the water. And all the utilities to the part of the house you are staying in, would, would you not begin to feel unwelcome?

That's what's happening here to Isaac. Then in verse 16, he gets his eviction notice, observe what happens, says in verse 16, then Abimelech said to Isaac, go away from us, for you are too powerful for us. In the mind of Abimelech, Isaac is getting stronger and more prosperous by The day and his growing power makes him a threat to Abimelech and to the Philistines. So Abimelech says to Isaac, go away from us, go live somewhere else.

You are too powerful for us. If you look later in the chapter, and we'll get to this today, you'll see in verse 27 that this eviction. was personally very hurtful to Isaac. In verse 27, Isaac says to Abimelech, you hate me and have sent me away from you.

He feels like this is a betrayal of some sort. He actually views Abimelech as coming from a place of hatred and, and giving this command for Isaac to leave Gerard, and there's probably some truth in Isaac's interpretation of what Abimelech is doing here. Keep in mind, again, that water was scarce in the surrounding areas outside of Garar and Abimelech knows this. And sending Isaac out of Garar, Abimelech isn't just wanting to get him out of Garar, he's also intending that this move will diminish Isaac's wealth.

As he hits hard times in the waterless regions that he's now going to be forced to move to. This would especially be so with the wells. That Abraham's servants had dug now filled in and unusable. Have you ever felt forced by people into a situation That was designed by their intention to make you less successful.

That's what is happening to Isaac here. He's being thrust out. And thrust into a situation where the chances of him prospering are far less likely. Amazingly, rather than using his power, To cling to this location.

Isaac actually honors Abimelech's demand. Look at verse 17. The text says, and Isaac departed from there and camped in the valley of Gerar and settled there. And when you see the word valley, don't think of valley in necessarily the modern day sense of the term.

This is what's called a, a torrent valley or a waddy. which refers to a riverbed that had water flowing in it only when rains fell. For example, our city here is called Riverside. Because we live along a riverbed that is supposedly a river, but it only has water in it when we have sufficient rains.

The riverbed that runs through the heart of Riverside is technically a waddi. It's a torrent valley. And it is alongside of such a waddi. That Isaac settles somewhere on the outskirts of Gerrar to the south, and I have a map behind me that has a squiggly red line that follows that particular wadi that scholars suggest is where Abraham would have settled alongside of.

Well, once Isaac makes this move, he sets about to righting some wrongs and finding a water source to sustain his family. And to sustain its large contingent of workers, and this brings us to the next development in this account of God's blessing upon Isaac prevailing over opposition from the Philistines. Number 2, Isaac encounters quarrels from the Philistines regarding wells that were his. Observe what Isaac does in verse 18.

It says 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. Evidently Isaac is not going to let the Philistines vandalism. Go unanswered and re-digging these wells and giving them the same name that his father Abraham had given them. Isaac is preserving his father's honor and he's establishing his own proprietary rights over these wells as Abraham's son.

But please don't miss this, guys. The truth is that Isaac can't even use some of these wells anymore. Because he has to move. But he uncovers and makes all of them operational anyway.

Maybe some of them toward the south would be for his use. But some of them would be for the use of any of the Philistines that wanted to use them. On one level, this is a remarkable act of goodwill on Isaac's part towards the very people that have envied him. And evicted him.

In addition to getting Abraham's wells operational again, Isaac also has his men look for other sources of water out closer to where he has to live now that he's moved. And while they're doing this, they make a discovery. Look at verse 19. But when Isaac's servants dug in the valley, in other words, in this waddy, in this riverbed, this dry riverbed, and found there a well of flowing water.

Let's stop right there for just a second. The text says Isaac's servants found a well. flowing water, which means that they're discovering an old abandoned well that no one living knew about. That had been buried maybe centuries earlier, and this was not just a well that had water in it, but the Hebrew reads it was a well of living water.

In other words, this is not a well that you drop a bucket down into in order to get some water. This is a well that has water springing up out of it. Once they sufficiently dig out this old well, water just comes springing forth. Imagine what an exciting find that would be.

This is an incredible find and a wonderful sign of God's blessing upon Isaac. Whatever worries Isaac may have had are now being put at ease. He will now have water in this. Region He's probably now thinking, Lord, you're amazing, you're so good to me.

You promised to bless me and that's exactly what you're doing. I've been expelled from the city of Gerarar for no reason at all, no wrongdoing on my part, and I got to live out here in the desert, but you have provided for me a spring. Thank you, Lord, for providing water for me in this desert. Yet No sooner Do Isaac and his men make this discovery that we're told in verse 20.

That the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with the herdsmen of Isaac, saying, the water is ours. This quarreling would have No doubt gone on for days, back and forth arguing and quarreling for a period of days, causing this blessing. That was initially a source of great joy to Isaac to suddenly become a source of pain. And consternation.

Isaac hadn't come up with a name even for the well yet, but now he knows what to name it. Look at the end of verse 20. So he named the well Essek. Which means quarrel because they contended with him.

Literally the Hebrew reads, so he named the well quarrel because they quarreled with him. You're pretty discouraged. If that's the name that you're giving to a well from which you receive water. He does the work, he discovers this old abandoned spring, and once he gets it operational, the Philistines show up and say, hey, that's ours.

So Isaac And his servants start digging elsewhere. In verse 21, the text says, then they dug another well. In other words, this time they're digging a well from scratch, meaning that this is all of their doing, and no one could contest their ownership. of it, but once that well is dug and becomes operational, observe what happens in verse 21, it says, and they, meaning the Philistines, quarreled over it too, so he, Isaac, named it Sitna.

The word sitna is a stronger word than the Hebrew word for quarrel. It's the Hebrew word for hostility. Clearly tensions are rising. And it seems right now that no matter what Isaac does, they're is obstacles and dispute.

This is a man who is genuinely blessed of God. Don't forget, God is with him, yet his father's wells have been vandalized. He's been expelled from a city, and here he is naming his wells with names like quarrel and hostility because the Philistines are arguing and claiming them as his own. Seems though he's blessed of God that he can't catch a break.

So what does Isaac do in a situation like this? What would you do? In a situation like this. Keep in mind that Isaac is a powerful man who has a huge contingent of people who are working for him.

Abimelech earlier described him as too powerful for us. Which means that if Isaac wanted to, he could have easily overpowered anyone trying to lay claim to his wells. But amazingly, he doesn't do that. One writer says it this way.

He says it seems that in these conflicts, Isaac chose not to fight back. He simply relinquished one well after another until God's blessing outdid human opposition. And that's what Isaac does here and this brings us to the next development in the story of God's blessing upon Isaac prevailing over opposition from the Philistines. Number 3, Isaac moves away.

And digs another well around which he settles. Look at what happens in verse 22. says he moved away from there and dug another well. This is simply amazing to me.

He moved away from there. This powerful man just gets up and moves away, leaving these wells that he discovered and dug behind. As one writer says, Isaac took another step toward establishing good relations with his neighbors by moving yet again. And is moving away again.

In the mind of this commentator, and I would agree, was an act of generosity toward the Philistines. Letting them have these wells. We learn here guys that sometimes it is the path of wisdom to let a genuine blessing from God go. And let others have it.

And trust God to provide for you elsewhere. That's what Isaac does here. He doesn't cling to these recently dug wells as if his happiness depends on them. He lets the Philistines have them, and he's trusting the fact that God will provide for me.

He promised to bless me. He'll provide for me wherever I end up going. And keep in mind too, guys, that in verse 4, God had told Isaac that through him, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. It's not just a promise that Isaac would be blessed, but all of the peoples of the earth would be blessed through him and through his descendants.

So perhaps Isaac is being mindful of that promise and he's letting these wells go so that the Philistines could have them and be blessed by them even though they clearly were not deserving. Isaac uproots and he moves to a different location further southeast. If we judge by the modern city that bears a similar name to the one that Isaac will eventually give this new place that he's moving to, Isaac is moving about 10 to 15 miles southeast. From where he is right now.

And in this new location, he digs a well. And once he digs this well, he surely expected someone to show up and say, Hey, that's my well. But the text says in verse 22, he moved away from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. No philistine shows up trying to lay claim to the well.

Perhaps. They were shamed by Isaac's generous behavior. And giving up the earlier wells and then Isaac behaving the way he did, he may have very well laid the groundwork for them leaving him alone. With this well Either way, Isaac is ecstatic.

He breathes a sigh of relief. Look at the second half of verse 22. So he named it Rehoboth. And the Hebrew word rehaboth means rooms or open spaces, for he said, at last, the Lord has made.

Room for us and we will be fruitful. In the land There's something Truly beautiful to appreciate. About Isaac's actions and God's faithfulness and how Both of those work together. In relationship with each other.

Isaac is so trustful of God's promise to bless him that he's willing to move away and give up these wells to the Philistines. He releases them, he moves on, knowing that God's gonna go with me. These wells aren't gonna go with me, but God will go with me, and he's promised to bless me wherever I go, and this is exactly what ends up happening as God is faithful to his promise to Isaac. As Alan Ross, the commentator says, God was blessing Isaac and that blessing could not be hindered.

In the long term And upon finding this water supply, In rehab boats. Isaac, as you see in the passage, gives Jehovah all the glory for it, saying the Lord has made room for us. Isaac doesn't applaud himself for his ability to find water. He doesn't say, am I not the best at finding water wherever I go?

No, he speaks of this blessing as God's doing and he gives God the glory. Forgiving him Water. In this place. Well, Isaac lives in Rehoboth for an indefinite period of time, making no doubt this well the center of his physical existence there, but it seems that eventually the famine conditions in the land subside and Isaac pulls up stakes and heads back to where he used to live with his father, Abraham.

And that is Beersheba. And this brings us to the next development in the story of God's blessing upon. Isaac prevailing over opposition from the Philistines. Number 4, Jehovah appears to Isaac and promises again to bless him.

I love the relationship between Isaac and the Lord as it's played out in these verses. Observe what happens in verse 23. Then he went up from there to Beersheba and on the very night he arrives in Beersheba. Something wonderful happens.

It's almost as if God was there waiting for Isaac. All along at the end of this long roundabout trip in which God has taken such good care of Isaac. And that even the quarreling over the wells and forcing Isaac to move, all of that was providential to lead Isaac to this place in Beersheba, where the Lord is waiting for him and appears to him. And speaks to him.

Verse 24, the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, I am the God of your father, Abraham. Do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham. God had appeared to Isaac months earlier and made promises to him when Isaac arrived in Gar.

Earlier in the chapter and now God appears to Isaac here on the backside of all of this journeying and the blessing. In ways that God has shown Himself faithful to him, and he delivers to Isaac a fresh restatement of his promises. And notice again that God's promise to bless Isaac is not based on Isaac. But upon Abraham, God says that he will fulfill these promises to Isaac for the sake of my servant.

Abraham Just implied in this is the fact that Abraham is still alive in the presence of God. It's almost as if God is saying to Isaac, your father Abraham is alive with me in paradise and I am seeking to bless him right now by continuing to be good to you. And Isaac responds to God's appearance and God's fresh revelation of promises in the most fitting way, and this brings us to the, the 5th development. In this story of God's blessing upon Isaac prevailing over opposition and obstacles from the Philistines.

Number 5, Isaac worships, settles. And digs a well. And the place where God appeared to him. Observe what Isaac does in verse 25.

So, 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. Oh well, Notice the 3 times that you see the word there. In verse 25 It's the same in the Hebrew text actually. God has appeared to Isaac and spoken his promises to him afresh, and this inspires Isaac to do three things in the very location where God had appeared to him and spoken afresh.

To him. The first thing he does is he builds an altar. And keep in mind this is a public act. This is not some private altar.

This is an altar he's building as a gathering place for true worshippers. of Jehovah, including himself, and then the text says he calls upon the name of the Lord. This would have been calling upon the name of the Lord in prayer, and in the worship of his God, and commentators will tell you that embodied in this is also a proclamation of the Lord. About God to other people.

He's preaching here. One commentator says that here Isaac is engaging in public worship in the course of which God's character and his works are extolled. For the benefit of all who would see and, and hear. The second thing that Isaac does is he pitched his tent there in the place where God had appeared and spoken to him.

I love this. In Isaac's mind, the place of God speaking is the place where Isaac wanted to live. I could ask you this question this morning. Is the Bible the thing you go to?

In order to hear God's voice, or is it also the place where you have set up camp and decided to live? For Isaac, he chose to live in the place of God's revelation. But Isaac wants to do yet one more thing. He needs to find water.

A water supply, so he has his servants dig a well in this location. If God has spoken to him here and wants Isaac evidently to settle here in this location, then Isaac assumes God's gonna provide for me here. Water that I need to be able to live here in the place in which God has revealed Himself to me. And so he has his servants dig a well.

We can actually translate the expression in verse 25 this way, and there Isaac's servants started digging. Oh well. We're not told about the outcome of this project just yet, but we will see the outcome in a few verses. For now though, I just wanna Appreciate together with you the balance in Isaac's life between the spiritual.

And the physical in this passage. Isaac builds an altar for worship, but he also tends to the practical matter of digging a well so that he can provide for his family and for others. I love what one commentator says about this. He says life is more than worshiping at altars.

While Isaac is building an altar, his servants are excavating a new well. Both kinds of labor projects are important. And that's so true. We should never become so preoccupied with spiritual things that we neglect to provide for.

Our families. And we should never let ourselves become so preoccupied with providing for our families and for ourselves that we neglect the worship of God. Isaac was a good balance of both priorities, worshiping God and watering his household, as it were. And notice guys, between those two priorities, what came first.

Worship. It is while Isaac is tending to such matters that he gets a most surprising visit from a most unlikely visitor. Abimelech. And this brings us to the 6th development in the story of God's blessing upon Isaac prevailing over all opposition from the Philistines.

Number 6, Abimelech obtains a covenant of peace from Isaac. This is amazing. Look at verse 26. Then Abimelech came to him from Gerar with his advisor, Ahaza and Faiko, the commander of his army.

At an earlier time, Isaac would have been thrilled to get a visit from Abimelech and his men, but things have changed. Observe how Isaac initially responds to Abimelech's visit and imagine someone greeting you at their door with this being their first words. In verse 27, The text says Isaac said to them, Why have you come to me since you hate me? And have sent me away from you.

And it's here that we see how deep the personal wound was that Abimelechk had inflicted on Isaac many months earlier. Isaac felt personally hated by Abimelech and believed that Abimelech was acting out of hate towards him when he expelled him from Gerar, and Isaac is still carrying the hurt from that and he's giving expression to that here now that Abimelech shows up at his doorstep. And I have to think that Abimelech would have expected that Isaac was wounded and hurt by what he had done.

So it actually says something good to me about Abimelech that he was willing to show up, to travel this distance and show up at Isaac's doorstep to have a conversation with him.

But look at Abimelech and his men's response in verse 28. They said, We plainly see that the Lord. Has been with you Abimelech offers no protest to what Isaac. Just said About the hatefulness of his expulsion from Gerrard.

Yes, Abimelech did send Isaac away in the hopes that it would diminish his prosperity. But all Abimelech. can say now is that his thinking has changed toward Isaac since then based on what he has seen over the last several months. In the way of God providing for Isaac as well as Isaac's generous behavior toward other people.

So Abimelech and his men say, we see plainly that the Lord has been with you. You, there's evidence that God has blessed you, but also we see evidence that you have lived like a man who knows that his God is with him. In the Hebrew text, the verb see occurs twice and we lose this in our English translations. Literally, they're saying, we see, comma, we really see.

That the Lord has been with you. And you live like a man who knows that the Lord is with you. Abimelech continues in verse 28. 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. And have sent you away in peace, you are now the blessed of the Lord. I think Abimelech's stretching things a little bit. he's trying to put a positive spin on what had happened, earlier, but this isn't totally disingenuous on his part.

It's possible that Abimelech is simply referring to how kindly he treated Isaac when Isaac initially visited Gerard and how he was gracious to Isaac after Isaac's deception about Rebecca was discovered and how he, Abimelech actually delivered a decree that if anyone touches Isaac and Rebecca to harm them, they will die. And yes, even though some bad things have happened to Isaac since then, no one had actually laid a hand on Isaac. Or Rebecca. To physically hurt them and Abimelech evidently thinks he's entitled to some appreciation for that.

You're still alive. No one's physically hurt you. However, to his credit, Abimelech knows now where Isaac's blessing comes from. And that's the Lord.

He says, we see plainly that the Lord is with you, and he says, you are now the blessed of the Lord, and in both of those statements, He uses the personal name of God, Jehovah, Yahweh. As he tells Isaac about what he has observed, and because Abimelech believes this, that Jehovah has been with Isaac and that Isaac is blessed of Jehovah. And he sees that so clearly with such full evidence. That Abimelech now realizes that the safest thing for me to do is to go to Isaac and enter into a covenant of peace with this man who is so blessed of the Lord and whose God is with him, this man who lives like he knows that his God is with him.

What a moment A vindication this must have been for Isaac. He gets banished from Gerard, yet God prospers him to such a degree that now the very people who banished him are paying him a visit, saying, God is with you, please promise that you won't hurt us. Talk about total vindication. This is the prevailing blessing of God upon Isaac.

God handles this. Isaac didn't need to. And with a heart flushed with the goodness of God, Isaac responds with grace and with generosity. Look at verse 30, then he made them, he, Isaac, made them a feast.

And they ate And drank. This is a feast. He doesn't just say, here's some water and crackers, cause that's all you deserve and you don't even deserve that. No, he makes them a feast and they ate and drank, meaning they ate and drank together.

This is an amazing act of kindness on Isaac's part to show this hospitality to a man who had expelled him. Earlier, this is also a pre-covenant ritual. Isaac is welcoming Abimelech and his men into his circle of friends, and he's laying the groundwork for the covenant to be made the next morning that that covenant would be made as friend with friend. Look at verse 31.

In the morning, they arose early and exchanged oaths. And in that oath, we don't know specifically what it was, but we know that Isaac promises not to hurt Abimelech or his people, and Abimelech would have made a similar promise to Isaac. After they exchanged these o's, the text then says, then Isaac sent them away and they departed from him. In peace.

And how good Isaac must feel as he sees Abimelech and his men leaving in peace as friends. God has been more than faithful to Isaac. And maybe Isaac is thinking, man, can things get any better for me? Actually, yes, and this leads us to the final development in this account of God.

God's blessing upon Isaac prevailing over Opposition from the Philistines. Number 7, God provides yet another well for Isaac. In Beersheba. You remember back in verse 25 where it was said that Isaac's servants started digging a well after God had appeared to Isaac and had spoken to him.

Well, we see the outcome of this project in verse 32. The text says now it came about on the same day, in other words, the very day that Isaac and Abimelech had entered into a covenant with each other and Abimelech has now departed. On the same day that Isaac's servants came in and told him, Isaac, about the well, which they had dug and said to him, we have found water. And look at Isaac's Response in verse 33.

So he called it, in other words, he called the well Shiba. Which in the Hebrew, this is the word for oath. Therefore, the name of the city is Bear Sheba. Which literally means well of oath to this day, Moses says.

This is essentially the same name that Abraham had given to this location years earlier and Isaac is simply affirming and renewing this name just like he did his father's wells earlier in the passage. Isaac forever wants to remember that this well was discovered on the day of his covenant with Abimelech. This would have been an honor to Abimelech. And also a point of accountability for both him and Abimelech.

And Moses is, he's writing this hundreds of years later, and he says to the Israelites that the name of the city is Beersheba to this very day in which I, Moses, am writing this to you Israelites. He wants the Israelites to know that even the name of the city to this very day bears the imprint. of this victorious moment of vindication, graciousness, and restored friendship and covenant between Isaac. And Abimelech.

And by the way, if you visit this particular city today in 2018, You will find that the name of the city today, thousands of years later, is still Beersheba. Things don't always turn out this way. But we see here something that sometimes comes true, that Solomon speaks about in Proverbs 16:7, that when a man's ways are pleasing to the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace. With him, and that's what Isaac experiences at this particular moment of his life.

Well, there's much for us to take away. From this passage, but let me, let me start by asking you just a few questions. Do you give God the credit for the blessings He has brought into your life? As we see Isaac doing, or do you take credit for those blessings yourself?

Do you fight with a white knuckled intensity for everything that is rightfully yours, or do you ever let yourself loose sometimes? And trust God For the road ahead. Some of you, I suspect, have a perfect record of nothing but victories and fighting for the things you have the right to. Do you have a perfect record?

Of victories when it comes to fighting for your rights, or do you sometimes Intentionally lose. Do you have some intentional losses along the way, like Jesus does. Sometimes letting yourself lose a fight, an argument. And then letting God bless you after that loss.

is the precise way that God is wanting to glorify Himself through you. Do you ever let God glorify Himself that way through your life on the other side of a loss? That's exactly what Jesus did at the cross. It's exactly what Isaiah does here in Genesis 26.

I would ask you as well, are you a gracious and generous person in defeat? And are you gracious and generous in victory. Isaac was In both defeat and victory. And so is Jesus.

There's only one thing that would like free us up to actually live out this ethic. And that is the certain knowledge that God's blessing upon his people is a blessing that always prevails in the end. Always, if not in this life and the life to come. I don't know what your present circumstances are right now, but if you're a Christian, I do know that you are blessed of the Lord.

With blessings greater than Isaac enjoyed. God tells us in Ephesians 1:3 that he's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. And what do we do with that blessing? There's many things we do with that blessing, but for one, God tells us in 1 Peter 3:9 that when people wrong us, that's when this blessing ethic should impose itself upon us.

When someone wrongs us, we should not be returning evil for evil. But giving a blessing instead. Why? For you were called for this very purpose that you might inherit a blessing.

You guys understand that? The logic there? The reason we can be so free and giving blessing to those who do evil against us is because God has saved us so that we might and will inherit a blessing. That prevails And we should be secure and gracious and generous.

toward others as we traffic in that blessing of God as it stands now and as we know it will be when we receive our full inheritance. Think about it this way, guys, if you're a Christian, God doesn't come to you in the midst of your trials and say to you, hey, I, I, I know your life has a lot of trials in it. Right now and a lot of pain in it, but hey, at, at least there's some blessing too. So at least you have something to be grateful for.

Aren't there any blessings you can count in the midst of all the brokenness and the hardship and the trials? That's actually not the way God through the gospel speaks to us. What the gospel teaches us is this. Listen carefully.

In your broken life of trial and hardship, God has planted the seeds of blessing. And that blessing will grow and flourish and ultimately prevail to the point where Your life eventually will be nothing but blessing. For all of eternity with God in heaven. And there's nothing that Satan can do, there's nothing that the world can do to stop the rising tide of God's blessing in your life and to prevent the full tide of his blessing from coming into you.

In eternity. Even when God allows hardships and trials into your life, he only allows them because he intends to use those trials to do good to you. He forces your hardships and the quarrels and the hostility and the trials to pay tribute to you and improving your character, growing you. And yielding up good to you in those ways.

And Paul teaches us that the sufferings of this present time. are not even worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us. Even the sufferings that come into our life in the here and now. are only allowed by God because he intends to work them together for good.

are good in His glory and only because those hardships and trials will serve to enhance the blessing in the end. But let's not be naive. Blessing makes you a target. The blessing of God upon you in Christ makes you a target of God's enemies.

You can count on this. If God saves you and he blesses you in Christ, Satan will not like that. His demons will not like that. The world will not like that.

They will envy your joy. Your peace, they will envy your clear conscience made clean by the blood of Jesus. They will envy your relationship with God and your holiness of life, and they will do all they can to hinder you from walking in the blessing of God. They will spy out your liberty in Christ and seek to bring you back into bondage.

The blessings of God upon you in Christ will literally make you stink to some people. And that will make you a target. And there's not one aspect of God's blessing in your life in the here and now that's going to go unchallenged by Satan and by the world. And as a result, many hurtful things happen to me and to you.

But don't be dismayed You can know that God's blessing will not be hindered. God's blessing will prevail in the end. Right now, you have blessing and you have brokenness in your life. In heaven, you and I will have only blessing for all of eternity.

And the seeds of that eternal blessing have already been planted and they're already sprouting now amidst all of the brokenness and the hardships and the trials. In the here and now, let Satan do his worst. One day the blessing of God will prevail and sweep away all the brokenness and only blessing will remain. Just imagine that guy's in heaven.

Our existence will be only blessing. Only blessing. And the blessings that we experienced in this broken world, and our pilgrimage to this world were just the first fruits of that great harvest of blessing that ultimately prevails. And if you're being attacked right now, if you're being harassed by the enemy, Right now, be encouraged.

That's what Satan does to blessed ones. Because he's envious. And he hates blessed ones. If you doubt this, Think of Jesus whom our story points us to today.

Jesus is the greater Isaac. Nicodemus himself recognized that God was with Jesus in a special way, basically says no one can do the things you do unless God is with him. He's saying to Jesus something similar to what Abimelech says to Isaac. God bless Jesus with divine approval throughout his life and his public ministry.

God spoke from heaven. Upon Jesus on two occasions saying this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And he conveyed his approval of his son. By Empowering miracles on thousands of occasions.

But God's blessing upon Jesus provoked the religious rulers of the Jews to envy. In Mark 15:10, even Pilate was smart enough to know they handed him over to me out of envy. Jesus' enemies treated him worse than Isaac's enemies treated him. They opposed and challenged Jesus at every turn.

They eventually arrested him, they falsely accused him, they pronounced him guilty and worthy of death, they scourged him, they left him thirsty for water upon the cross. They crucified him and they killed him, thinking that they had successfully gotten rid of him from out of their midst. Yet the blessing of God upon Jesus prevailed. God raised him from the dead and ascended Jesus to his own right hand, and 10 days after Jesus' ascension, some of the very people who had crucified Jesus and thrust him out.

were repenting of their sin and being baptized in the name of Jesus and entering into a covenant of peace with Him on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. That's why we can know that if we're in Christ, the blessing of God upon us. will prevail in the end. Jesus showed us that.

And if you're here today and you're not at peace, With Jesus I would urge you to pursue peace with him. Today. You gotta admire Abimelech. He was a smart guy.

He looked for the most blessed person of the Lord in his day, and he pursued peace with him. He went out of his way to pursue peace with this one who was blessed of the Lord. God is with you, he says to Isaac, you're blessed of the Lord. And he wanted to enter into a covenant with this man who was blessed of the Lord in this way, even though he had hatefully expelled Isaac months earlier.

When I read this chapter, guys, in all honesty, I see Jesus in Isaac. And I am Abimelech. In fact, this room is filled with a bunch of Abimelechs. Like me who once rejected Jesus.

But who have since come to him and obtained peace with him. And if you've never done that, I would encourage you to join us in pursuing peace. Entering into covenant with Jesus. You should look at Jesus as he's revealed in scripture, even as we've just spoken about him and see how the Father is blessing Jesus at his right hand, having raised him from the dead after his crucifixion.

And then come to Jesus and say, I really see that God is with you. You're seated together on the throne. You are truly the blessed one of the Lord. I cast you out, I crucified you, but look at you now, seated at the right hand of God with all authority in heaven and on earth being given to you by the Father.

You are truly blessed of the Lord. Could you enter into a covenant of peace with me? And if you come to Jesus in that way, Today believing in him. He's not gonna cast you out.

He'll be nicer to you than Isaac was to Abimelech, saying, why do you come to me since you hate me? No, he'll be different He'll say, sit down and let's, let's have a meal. Together And he'll provide a feast for you and he'll welcome you into a circle of friends. And in that feast, he'll take the bread and say, this is my body which is for you.

Take this and eat it. And he'll take the cup of wine and say, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Drink this. cup that I give to you, and he'll happily, he'll be pleasured to bring you into his blessing.

And if you do that, guys, and you believe in Jesus, I promise you on the authority of Scripture that from that moment forward for the rest of your life, all the way into eternity, over your life will be the banner, blessed of the Lord. Let's pray together If the Lord is Brought life to any heart in this room and You feel and Your spirit, God beckoning you to Jesus. Please do not harden your heart, but respond to him. Anyone who comes to him, he will not cast out.

No matter your sins. He's already provided atonement for your sins to the cross. Just if you believe in Him, you'll come under that atonement, and there is atonement and forgiveness for all sins. And he will enter into a covenant.

Of peace with you Through his own shed blood. Lord, we just thank you for your word and the example that we see put before us in this passage today. I think some of us need to become better losers. To become more gracious and more forgiving.

In defeat And we need to learn what it's like to trust you. To bless us on the other side of loss. At the same time, Lord, I know there's brothers and sisters who are just They're in the season of their life where if they could give labels to things, they would be giving them names like quarrel and hostility. And it seems that they can't catch a break and they do the right thing and Allow themselves to lose like Jesus did, and they go elsewhere and And nothing seems solved, and there's yet another quarrel and another fight, and another loss.

And I just, I pray, Lord, that you would give to them and to all of us. The assurance of your presence with us, that we are entering into the sufferings of Christ when we go through such things. And Lord The day will come, if not in this life, but in glory, vindication will come. And there will be nothing but blessing left.

And heaven will be our eternal rehabo. Our open place where we will be fruitful and experience nothing but blessing. Keep our eyes fixed on eternity. Lord As we make our way through the brokenness and the trials and the quarrels and the hostility of our earthly pilgrimage.

But while on the way, Lord, help us to exhibit the graciousness and the generosity of Christ, that others may see Jesus in us just like we see Jesus in Isaac. Thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to give of our offerings to you, receive these funds, do much with everything that is given in this offering for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray And all God's people said,