5th July 2026 : Genesis ch 26 v 1 - 33

Genesis ch 26 v 1 - 33

Let's pray. Lord, bless your word. It's caused and inspired from your Holy Spirit and will not return to you void. Lord, I have every confidence in this, your power to save, your power to heal, your power to deliver, to stretch out your hand and do the things you did before. And Lord, we just put this to you, Lord. Fill this house with your glory. Fill this house, fill our lives with your glory, Lord. and do again those things in the precious name of Jesus, that we might be restored, and Lord, that we might enter, Lord, beyond that veil into your presence in a way that we have not experienced before. A greater power and a greater sense of your holiness, and Lord, a greater bonding in the fellowship of your people. Lord, all these things we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

I haven't got anyone to do the reading today. Bit lazy, but it's a long reading, so I don't want to put that on somebody else, especially in the Bible. You do get some big words now and again. At the beginning of the service, we're in the book of Revelation and we were there at the end.

For now, we're at the beginning in Genesis chapter 26. Genesis chapter 26. So whether you follow this in the church Bible, your own Bible, or on a digital copy, it doesn't matter, but I recommend that you read it and see it for yourself. Always check things. Doesn't matter who it is speaking. Always look for yourself. Always inquire of God for yourself, especially if you're watching YouTube.

Genesis chapter 26, verse 1. begins like this.

There was a famine in the land besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimelech, king of the Philistines in Gerar. Then the Lord appeared to him and said, Do not go down to Egypt. Live in the land which I tell you. Dwell in this land, and I will be with you and bless you, for to you and your descendants I give all these lands, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father. And I will make your descendants multipliers as stars of heaven. I will give to your descendants all these lands, and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. So Isaac dwelt in Gerar. And the men of the place asked about his wife. And he said, she is my sister for he was afraid to say she is my wife, because he thought, lest the men of the place kill me for Rebecca because she is beautiful to behold.

Now it came to pass when he had been there a long time that Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked through a window and saw, and there was Isaac showing endearment to Rebecca, his wife. Then Abimelech called Isaac and said, quite obviously, she is your wife. So how could you say she is my sister? Isaac said to him, Because I said, lest I die on account of her. And Abimelech said, What is this you have done to us? One of the people might soon have lain with your wife and you would have brought guilt on us. So Abimelech charged all these people, saying, He who touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.

Then Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold, and the Lord blessed him. The man began to prosper and continued prospering until he became very prosperous, for he had possessions of flocks and possessions of herds and a great number of servants. So the Philistines envied him. They were jealous. Now the Philistines had stopped up all the wells which his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, and they had filled them with earth. And Abimelech said to Isaac, Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we. Then Isaac departed from there and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar and dwelt there. And Isaac dug again, the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham. He called them by the names which his father had called them.

Also Isaac's servants dug in the valley and found a well of running water there, but the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen, saying, The water is ours. So he called the name of the well Issek, which means quarrel or contend, because they quarreled with him. Then they dug another well and they quarreled over that one also. So he called his name Sitnar, which means enmity. And he moved from there and dug another well and they did not quarrel over it. So we called his name Rehoboth. because he said, for now the Lord has made room for us, and that's what it means, a space for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.

Then he went up from there to Beersheba, and the Lord appeared to him. And the same night said, I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for my servant Abraham's sake. So he built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord and he pitched his tent there and there Isaac's servants dug a well.

Then Abimelech came to him from Gerar with Ahuzath, one of his friends, and Phichol, the commander of his army. And Isaac said to them, Why have you come to me, since you hate me and have sent me away from you? But they said, we have certainly seen that the Lord is with you. So we said, let there now be an oath between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you, that you will do us no harm, since we have not touched you, and since we have done nothing to you but good, and has sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord. So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank. Then they arose early in the morning and swore an oath with one another, and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace.

It came to pass the same day that Isaac's servants came and told him about the well which they had dug, and said to him, We have found water. So he called it Sheba, Well of the Oath, or Well of the Seven. And therefore, the name of the city is Beersheba to this day. Amen.

It's funny, isn't it, how Abimelech said to him, we've done you no harm, we've sent you away in peace, yet they kept filling up the wells they'd dug. And they were jealous and argued with them. And the first time it was contention, it was quarrelling, and the second time it was enmity. Things got worse. The relationship was going downhill, and yet later they could say, we've done you no harm, we've only ever done you any good, make a good. But you know, people are funny, aren't they?

But one thing Isaac had at the end of that passage was the respect, the respect of unsaved people. And that's one thing I believe the church needs to cherish. You need to cherish for yourself individually. Your reputation and your testimony is something that's heard and looked at. And even if the world is not straight with you, remember to be straight about your faith with them.

All right. So I'm going ahead of myself now. Praise God. Let's go back to the beginning.

How did it start? It started with a famine. Just the thing you need, especially when God has promised you all these things. I'm going to give you this land. He promised it to Abraham. He promised it to Isaac. And in this passage, he promised it again twice and told him in no uncertain times, I am going to bless you.

And if you read through those blessings in the two sections where they appear from verse two, And of course, from verse 23 onwards, you'll see that the blessings themselves, if you read them out, if you were to read them over yourself and say, Lord, these blessings that were Isaac's, can I have some of that, please, in Jesus' name? Could you do that when you go home and you pray? Don't be afraid to. Don't be afraid to pray and approach God like that. He's got blessings prepared for you.

How do I know? Because scripture confirms it. 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 20 to 22. All God's great and precious promises are yes in Christ Jesus. And we speak The Amen in his name to those promises. It's important that you do that. So when you see these blessings, you think, hey, just a minute, Isaac's being blessed, bigger than me. He's been better than me. He's doing better than I am. And he was in the Old Testament and I'm in the New. Get jealous like the Philistines. If jealousy drives you to prayer, that'll do for me. It's better that you've got more noble motives than those. But if you go to prayer and you say, I want some of those blessings, I want what he had in Jesus' name, then look out. Because if you pray like that, God will show up.

He appeared to Isaac twice in this passage. Twice he appeared to him. And Isaac didn't deserve it any more than you or me. Let's look at the start. I said if we'd look at verse one, there was a famine in the land. You know what a famine is, don't you? No, you don't, actually, because we all think of these stereotype pictures, don't we? I think of a famine as an absence of food. I don't know, some burned out country that needs a breadbasket from another country or something like that. But there can be a famine of the Word of God. There can be a famine of the Holy Spirit.

And in a country or a place where you get famine like those, you'll see society decline. You'll see law and order go down into something negative experience. That's A famine. There's a spiritual reason underneath it. There is. It's a famine. If you look outside and you see a famine, I mean, there is a shortage, but it's not food, is it? All the food banks should give us the answer to that. They were unheard of 30 years ago, 20 years, I don't know.

In my experience growing up and as a young fellow, you never heard of them. They just weren't there. There's plenty of food, but there's a famine, isn't there of affordability?. That's A famine. When a country that goes into decline, economic or anything else, or moral, there's a spiritual reason underneath. The more and more they walk away from God, the more they enter into a spiritual famine. And if you read through the prophets of the Old Testament, it's more than one of them that says, there shall be a famine of the word of God. You will not hear from him until you repent.

And you know, that's reciprocated in the New Testament. Paul wrote to Timothy saying, in the last days, men will not listen. They'll not listen to sound doctrine anymore. They won't. They don't want to. They don't want to hear it. Instead, they'll listen to all those things their itching ears are longing to hear. And where will it lead them? Well, anyway, that's the outcome of a famine. It leads to hunger and thirst. And even in a famine like that, where you might be pursuing the things of God and not the things that they're pursuing, you're still in the midst of that famine.

You know, it says in the book of Proverbs that the hungry are tempted to steal. I think that's why you get so many Christians going from one conference to another. They're chasing blessings, they're chasing an experience that they can have at home. You know, God is not so far that you have to go to a conference, you have to go to the throne of grace, that's where you go for blessing. And there's a famine of such things. Even in our times, there's a famine of the presence, there's a famine of the outpouring of the Spirit. And those are things you and I have got to cherish. They're not cheap, they're not ordinary. Those things are supernaturally good and they're a free good as long as we're open and free with him.

Okay, so there's the famine. What do you do in a famine then? You call out to God, don't you? Well, Isaac didn't. He went down to the Philistines. Please help me. You know, he went to the Philistines. He went to Abimelech, king of Gerar. If I was in a famine, I wouldn't go there, would you? You know, some people, they're funny. I mean, he was a saved man. He knew he was a chosen man. He was saved before he was born. He was the child of promise to Abraham. From your own loins, I will give you a son. And Abraham was 100 years old. Impossible. Not with God. But Isaac knew that. He knew his own heritage, his own background. God appeared to him and guaranteed the blessing. And yet still when he was under trial, he did some extraordinary things, didn't he?

Moving on, he began to tell lies. What does it say in the New Testament about that? Try Colossians chapter 3 verse 9 starts off saying your life is hid with Christ in God. That's where your life is. You look for it anywhere else, you won't find it. But verse 9 goes on to say, no more lying to one another. Why does it say that? Because the human condition has a tendency, an urge to impress, to embellish, to dress up, to blag, and then eventually it can become a pack of lies. Isaac was lying to unsaved people and he got told off by unsaved people for doing it.

Beloved, you never want to be in that place. But what's the beginning of it? It's the same reason as the famine. It's unbelief. Unbelief gives away to fear. Fear gives away to anxiety. Anxiety says, what can I do? I'll go to the Philistines for help. And when he's there, he's frightened of them. And so he tells them his wife's his sister. There's only one way through a famine. If you're going through a spiritual famine of your own right now, the throne of grace is set for you. That's God's purpose. God does have a purpose in famine, and it's to draw people to him, to cause them to depend on him, to call out to him. Otherwise they will drift. The human condition wars with the spirit all the time. Read the book of Galatians if you don't believe me. They vie with each other. And as overcomers, that's where we started the service, you're conscious of the clothing, aren't you? Which is the blood of Jesus. And you remember this, that you're the blessed, you're the people, and you proclaim his covenant relationship with you. You overcome it with your testimony. The truth, the truth about God, for me, for you, that's yours. Don't count it cheap, it's precious.

So Isaac was making loads of mistakes. And it's funny, that last point I want to draw from those verses is simply this, that it was just like you and me. As blessed as he was. Twice God appeared to him and guaranteed him his own destiny. He was only going to be blessed. But twice we look into this passage and he's scared to death and does something contrary to faith. Remembering the trial, remembering the famine, remembering the test and the struggle, and you will have them beloved. Some of you are in them now. All sorts of personal struggles.

The throne of grace is the place where you go to. He's your go-to. He's my rock. He's the cornerstone. There's lots of names for him. He's the deliverer. You reach out to him and you wait patiently on the Lord. And so we come on to patience and then we get all these wells that got dug, aren't they lovely? And aren't the Philistines horrible? Every time they found life-giving, refreshing water, you know what that speaks of in the Bible, don't you? You know, what did Jesus say? John chapter 7, verse 37, on the greatest day of the feast, it called out in a loud voice, anyone that thirsts, come unto me and drink.

If you're thirsty, then when you come in from outside and it's hot, somebody said that earlier, I think it was Lorraine was on about the sun and the shade, and you come in with a glass of water, you gulp it down, don't you? You can't wait for the refreshment. Jesus was speaking about a well of eternal life. He said again in John 6:35, I am the bread of life. Anyone who eats that bread shall never hunger, even in the midst of a famine. He wasn't talking about food and drink, was he? And those who thirst, they shall never thirst again. There used to be a children's song that said that. Do you remember it, anyone? I'm not going to sing it, don't worry.

But the wells are all about life-giving and refreshment. And that's a testament to the Holy Spirit. And the enemy came along behind. And as often as powerfully and effectively as they dug a well, the enemy filled it in with rubbish. That's horrible, isn't it? Is that happening to you right now? You've received promises, you've received blessings, you might be looking around you and thinking, but something's wrong. This is not supposed to be happening. My circumstances are contrary to what God has spoken to me. And I don't feel like it, poor me. What the enemy has done is to fill in that precious well that you dug.

You dug it with prayer and praise and faith, didn't you? Didn't come overnight, didn't come with a click of the fingers. It's by faith from first to last. And then the enemy comes along and says, well, what a lovely well. What a lovely well. Well, first of all, let's call it quarrelling and then let's call it enmity, which is quite serious disagreement. The nearer you come to God, the more attractive you become also to the enemy. From quarrelling to enmity, to a rebuke, to a go away, you're too powerful. And all these wells got filled in and God allowed it.

God was allowing this to happen until Isaac reached the place where God wanted him to settle. It wasn't supposed to go to the Philistines. It wasn't supposed to be over there at Sitnar or Esek or anywhere else. It was supposed to be where God wanted him to be. Are you where God wants you to be right now? Beersheba, place of the oath, the place of the seven, the place of fulfillment, the place of refreshing, the place where the Holy Spirit ministers with freedom, not blocked, wide open and where the shepherds declare such grace of God, the Lord has brought us here to drink. Let's gulp it down.

Wonderful that, isn't it? Think of the Holy Spirit and the blessing of the Lord like that. Let's gulp it down. Let's have some of that now. Precious, life-giving, refreshing, Holy Spirit blessing. And that's where the story comes to a conclusion today. There they were at Beersheba until he made some more mistakes, just like you and me.

All right, I'm going to pray right now. I believe that's all the Lord wants me to say right now, but if refreshment is high on your agenda right now, as folks go for something to eat and drink, hang around, get someone to pray if you want, or just stay and reflect in the peace and the presence of the Lord. But get that refreshment. If your well's being blocked up in any way, get it open again. Those people had to dig down deep for that, and so do we.

In Jesus' name, Lord, we just pray for the refreshing power, the love and the mercy and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ to enter in such a way as we've not experienced before, things hoped for, things that we thought were lost, even the confusion. You're not a God of confusion, you're a God of order and you are faithful to every word, every promise. And we speak the Amen right now to all of them in Jesus' name. Can we have that now, Lord? There are people in this room, Lord, need to be confirmed, guaranteed. They need that confirmation that only your Spirit can give, that refreshing, that anointing that brings them again and restores the joy of their salvation to their very heart and their very testimony.

Lord, in the name of Jesus, we pray for a cleaning out and a cleansing of all the rubbish the enemy's poured in. And we open up again that well that brings us to the place where you are leading us right now. Lord, we recognise we're in a famine when we walk out through that door. But the god of this world is by no means a match for our God, for our God is greater. And we proclaim these things in the precious name of Jesus. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Holy Spirit. Amen.