Dig Another Well (New Beginnings UMC)

I'm preaching today on one of my favorite stories in the Bible,

and I've never preached on this before.

And it's I've been waiting for like 30 years to preach this

sermon since it actually probably longer.

Yeah, definitely longer than that because it's since I first

heard the song by Paul Overstreet.

Dig another. Well, we're actually going to

listen to that song in a few minutes.

But this story of Isaac and the wells and how his wells kept

getting filled up with dirt by his enemies and then his enemies

were stealing his wells and, and, and what's he going to do

about it? What's his response going to be?

It's not a story that gets a lot of air time, if you will, but I

think it's one of for me, it's one of the most powerful stories

in the Bible, spiritually powerful stories in the Bible,

the story of Isaac who who dug another well and to really kind

of see, oh, I turned it off. It was on before and I turned it

off. I don't know why I did that, but

I did. Now it's back on to really see

how the the power behind the story.

I want us to get the context here.

So just as a reminder where we are in the timeline of the

story, Abraham has died, Sarah has been dead for a number of

years, and Abraham has just died.

And now Isaac is the patriarch of the family.

Being the patriarch means that there is a tremendous burden of

responsibility on him. He is responsible for every

single person in his household, whether they are blood relatives

or servants or, or or whomever. If they're part of his household

and he's got a big household, he's responsible for making sure

that they have enough food, enough water, they have shelter,

they have protection from enemies.

They have everything they need to live lives of, of joy and

hope and and peace in the world that's on his shoulders.

And like his father, Abraham and his mother Sarah, he is a

stranger in the land. He's a foreigner.

He's an alien. He owns no real estate other

than the The Cave where his parents are buried.

He owns that. And that's the only real estate

he has. And on top of that, he's a

farmer. I don't know how how you make a

living as a farmer when you have no real estate, but he farmed

crops, he farmed animals, he had sheep and he had goats and and

he was doing all of that purely on the willingness of the

political powers that were around him allowing him to be on

their land. Worse still, after Abraham dies,

and while he's still a stranger and a foreigner in this land,

God comes to Isaac. And God says, Isaac, there's

going to be a famine. You're going to be tempted to

flee to Egypt. That makes sense.

Egypt is where the water is. You got the Nile River.

If there's a drought there, if there's no rain there, it's all

right. The Nile River still is going to

flood. There's still going to be plenty

of arable land. It's a great place to be,

particularly in a famine down there where there is abundance

of resource. God says don't go to Egypt, stay

right here. One day all of this land will

belong to your descendants. I will make your descendants

into a great nation, and the nations of the world will be

blessed through you. And so Isaac stays in the land,

and there is a famine. And during that famine, Isaac

the farmer, God blesses him, and he prospers greatly.

And he becomes very wealthy. So wealthy that one of the local

kings, Abimelech, is the nearest to him, tells him, get away from

us, you're too powerful, go away, go away.

Plus, to make sure he understands that he's not

welcome anymore, the Philistines fill up all of his wells with

dirt wells that his father dug him, his, you know, they, they

were dug by his. I mean, his father Abraham

didn't do the digging. He was a wealthy man too.

He hired, he had people that were part of his household, his

servants, the dig, the digging. But his father was responsible

for those wells being there. They filled up his wells with

dirt and Isaac dug him back out and they filled him up again.

And Isaac moved on and he found the new place and he dug a well

there and he found water there. And people came in and they

stole the well from him and kicked him off the land.

And he moved someplace else, and he dug another well.

And people came in and they took that well.

And he moved someplace else and he dug another well.

And no one quarrelled over it. No one came to take it.

This is the context which this is happening, in which a, a lone

household LED for the first time.

I mean, Abraham had been leading the household for years.

Now Isaac is in charge. He's a farmer, he's a stranger,

he's a foreigner, he's got no land.

There's a famine and people are taking his wells.

This is not the issue here is not a question of wants.

You have to have a well if you're going to farm, if you're

going to raise animals, particularly during a famine,

you have to have a well for your family to survive.

You have to have a well for your animals to survive.

You have to have a well for the crops to survive.

You have to have a well. And they keep taking as well.

And this is the situation that Isaac is in now.

I'm going to preach after I'm going to about another 20

minutes here and I'm about to play a song.

I put a kind of a cheesy video behind it.

So you got something to look at while we listen to the song.

It's about a three minute song and Paul Overstreet preaches

this sermon in 3 minutes better than I'm going to preach it in

the next 20. But if you want short sermons,

you need to hire a poet. Poets are very good at, you

know, conveying deep things in a short amount of space.

I'm not a poet. Paul Overstreet is, he's a great

songwriter. And, and, and I think this is,

is as good an interpretation of this passage as you're going to

find anywhere. So, so let's listen to the song

and then we're going to talk about all of this in the context

of this story. So let's check this out.

Well I had a blessing from the Lord up above.

Gave him a beautiful woman to love, a place to live and some

land farm. 2 good legs and two good arms.

Well the devil came sneaking around one night.

Decided he would do a little evil to life.

Figured he would hit a life where it hurt, so it filled up

all of oxwells with dirt. And when I went not for his

morning drink, he got a dipper full of dirt and his heart did

sink. But he knew it was a devil.

So he said with a grin, God bless me once and he can do it

again. He bless me once and he can do

it again. So when the rays don't fall and

the crops all fail and the cows ain't putting any milk in the

pail, don't sit around waiting for a check in the mail.

Just pick up the shovel and dig another whale.

Pick up the show and dig another.

Well, now me and old I got a lot in common.

The Lord bless me with a beautiful woman.

He gave me a job, He gave me a home, He gave me a will to call

my own. Now when I go out for my morning

drink and get a different full of dirt and my heart does sink,

but I think of old I can, I have to grin.

This God bless me once and he can do it again.

He bless me once and he can do it again.

So when the rains don't fall and the crops all fail, the cows

ain't putting any milk in the pail.

Don't sit around waiting for a check in the mail.

Just pick up the shelf, dig another well, pick up the

shovel, and dig another well. Well, the good book says I

finally won. Pick up the shovel.

And dig another well. The devil got tired and he left

him alone. Pick up the shovel.

Take another. Well, and I know someday I'm

going to win, dude. Pick up the shovel.

Take another Well, the house. The good book tells me what to

do. Pick up the shovel and.

Take. Another well pick up.

The shovel. And take another well.

Pick up the shovel and take another well.

Pick up the shovel and take another well.

Pick up the shovel, dig another. Well, that was Isaac's response

to what was going on. But before we can really kind of

grasp and, and, and, and get a grip on the significance of this

passage, we need to make it a little more personal.

So I got a question for you. What's your well?

What's your well? Now, I'm not talking about

what's something you'd really, really like to have or something

you really, really do have. I'm talking about what are the

what's the thing or things that you need in order for your life

to work and continue? Isaac needed water.

His family needed water. This was not some luxury item.

He needed this thing and it was being taken from him.

What is it that you need? There are a lot of things that

can be wells. Maybe it's a job, maybe it's a

relationship, maybe it's a talent OR an ability, maybe it's

a dream or a plan, maybe it's something else entirely.

But what is it that you feel like that you need or that you

know that you need? And if you don't get it, it's

done. Or if you've got it and you lose

it, man, God, you can take anything from me, but do not

take that. If I lose that, it's all over.

One of the people I think of when I think about this story, a

more contemporary person. I'm not sure if he's still

living or not, but I don't know if any of you know the name Dave

Drovecki. Is that a name that that rings a

bell for anyone? He was a Major League pitcher

back in the 80s, nineties and and he was successful.

He was not one of the greatest of all times, but he was very,

very good. Made it to an All Star game one

year, pitched a lot of innings, had a lot of success.

One point late in his career he was diagnosed.

He was a lefty, was diagnosed with cancer in his pitching arm,

up around his shoulder, in his upper arm.

And the doctor said to get that out, we have to do surgery and

where it is and what we have to take out to remove that cancer.

You can kiss your baseball career goodbye.

You're done. Highly unlikely you'll ever

pitch again, much less be able to pitch at that level.

I got to think, you don't get to be a Major League pitcher

without investing a lot of time, energy and without having a lot

of desire. You have to really want that.

You want to. I talked to kids.

You're not going to be a professional basketball player

and you could ask him when was the last time you played

basketball? Well, like 2 weeks ago.

You're not going to be a professional basketball player

unless unless playing basketball is something you need to do and

that you're driven to do. This is Dravecky, and now it's

gone. That aren't that ability to

throw a baseball. Dave Durvecki A well, what do we

need? What do you need?

That if you lose, life is done. And now imagine you've lost

that. That's been taken away from you,

and not in a nice way, not in a beautiful way.

It was just taken from you. Not in a just way, not in a

fairway. It was just taken from you like

Isaac's water was taken from him.

What can you do when your well gets filled with dirt?

Isaac had lots of options. We have lots of options as well.

One option is to quit. I'm done, I'm out of here.

Quit and run away. I'm done.

I'm out of here. It would have been very simple,

very easy for Isaac to say, look, God, I know you said to

stay here, but there's a famine and it was all right when I had

wells. Every time I dig a well, it gets

filled up. I'm I'm tired of this.

I don't want to fight over it. I don't want to do with this.

My family is at risk. We're going to Egypt.

I quit. I'm out.

We're done. I'm running away.

That's an option that Isaac has. It's an option that we have to

quit and to run away, to complain and blame.

This is my favorite, very good at complaining.

I've been doing it for a very long time and, and I've got lots

of experience and lots of practice and, and, and there's

something just fun about complaining.

I don't know, I enjoy it way too much, but this is this is this

is my one, one of my many issues is complaining and blaming.

And blaming is easy too. You just find someone up the

ladder, up the chain, and whatever it is, it's their

fault. It's that person, it's those

people, it's that group, it's that politician, is it?

And you complain, you blame, it's their fault.

It's all on them. My life is over and things are

terrible and it's someone else's fault.

Complain and blame, or you can fight.

That was also an option that Isaac had.

Abraham fought at times, at least one time when when his

nephew Lott and Lott's family were taking political prisoners

and Abraham raised his own private army and he went and he

took on an alliance of five kingdoms and he won.

He went and he fought. Isaac could have done that.

He could have said, forget this, waiting for God to give me this

land. I have as much right to be here

as anybody else. I dug these wells.

My father dug these wells. We're going to fight for him.

We're going to take him back. We're going to hold him by

violence if necessary. He could have fought like we can

fight and someone's taken our well or, or we can do what Isaac

did and dig another well. Yep, we have to be careful here

because every good thing in the scripture can get twisted and

become a bad thing. And I want to be clear that this

doesn't get twisted. The story about Isaac is not in

here to teach us some kind of bootstrap theology where God

expects us to just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps

and get on with life and fix our own problems and take care of

business on our own. That's not what this is.

And this is also not a suck it up and walk it off theology

where God says, I don't care how much it hurts.

I don't care how much it cost you just keep moving.

Just keep moving. Walk it off.

Get over it. It'll all be OK.

Just get over it. That's not what this is.

This is so much beyond that, so much better than that.

This this Isaac digging another. Well, there are two sides that

it's a, it's a, it's like a gold coin and it's got 2 beautiful

sides. One side is faith and the other

is generosity. On the one hand, Isaac is simply

acting out of faith. He has seen God provide for him.

He has seen God give him and his family everything they need.

Maybe not everything they want, but everything they need.

He's got it, He's received it, and he has this promise from

God. Your descendants are going to be

a great nation and all of this land is one day going to belong

to you. And God has blessed him.

Even in the midst of this famine, God has blessed him.

And so Isaac says, why do I need to worry?

If my well has been filled up with dirt, I'll just dig another

well. God hasn't brought me to this

point to abandon me. God hasn't brought me this far

into my life to forsake me. Isaacson is like 60s at this

point. He's lived a little.

He knows that his life is in God's hands.

He learned that in a very powerful way when he was lying

on the altar and his dad had a knife over his chest.

And God saved his life. And Isaac knew from that point

on, my life does not belong to me.

My life belongs to God, my life belongs to God, and God is God.

I have faith that God will keep his promises.

That's one side of it, the faith, the other side of it, I

think is, is, is just as incredible.

And that's generosity. There's a famine in the land and

these people out here who are his enemies, who are taking his

water away from him, who are trying to kick them out of of

their land, send them away, get rid of him.

And Isaac says, you know what, they need water too.

There's a famine in the land. My enemies need water too.

Let them keep that well. Let them keep it.

I'll dig another one. It'll be OK because, because

God's made a promise he'll give me water.

We're not going to die. God promised they can have the

water. They need it.

They need it too. I'll just dig another well, it's

not bootstrap. It's not suck it up and bear it

and get over it. It's faith and generosity that

lead Isaac to dig another well. Now, another piece we got to

take a look at here is where's the devil in this story?

And I bring that up because like I said, I was I the confession.

I'm not sure if I said this here yet or not.

I I first heard the story through the Psalm and, and I

went digging through the Bible looking for it and when I found

it I was like, where's the devil?

Where's the devil? The song says the devil filled

up Ike's wells with dirt and the Bible says the Philistines

filled up Isaac's wells with dirt.

Where's the devil? The devil is in the story.

The devil is in the story and he's in the story through 1

little word that has very significant consequences.

He, that is Isaac, had so many flocks and herds and servants

that the Philistines envied him. So all the wells that his

father's servants A dug at the time of his father Abraham, the

Philistines stopped up filling them with earth.

The devil was in the envy. That devil loves envy.

That's one of the places the devil dances and plays and

laughs and sings is an envy. And the devil was whispering in

the Philistines ears. Ah, you know, life's tough right

now. Life's tough right now.

You're struggling. You're struggling.

That guy Isaac, he's doing well, and he's a foreigner.

You're struggling. He's on your land and he's a

foreigner. That Isaac.

Isaac over there, you know, he's got all that money, He's got all

that wealth. He's got all those flocks.

Everything's going fine for him. He's on your land.

He's taking your water. You're going to stand for that.

No envy. Envy.

It's not fair. Isaac's got all of that.

He's doing so well while we're struggling in this famine.

It's not fair. We're going to take it.

We're going to take it. Envy is a spiritual cancer.

Envy robs people of joy. Envy destroys even the

possibility of relationships. Try to be in a loving

relationship for someone that you envy.

Try. And maybe you've been in a

situation where people have envied you and you try to be

kind, you try to build relationship, but they envy.

It's, it's nearly impossible to be in any kind of meaningful

relationship of love and, and, and mutual encouragement with

when one person is envying the other or one group is envying

the other in that relationship. Envy is a spiritual cancer.

I'm not, you know, I, I believe the devil's real.

I believe demons are real and I think, I think that's, and I

don't think that's just mythology.

I think that's real. I also don't believe there's a

demon hiding behind every Bush. But I believe Paul when he says

this, when you're in a conflict, when you're in a fight, you need

to remember this. The battle is not against flesh

and blood. Those human beings are not your

real enemy. Your real enemy are the

principalities and powers, the spiritual forces of darkness in

this world. Those are your real enemies, and

they're whispering in people's ears, just like sometimes they

whisper in our ears. And one of the things they try

to inspire is envy. Other things too.

Hatred, lust, contempt, despair. There's a lot of things the

devil tries to inspire, but Envy's one of them.

Wrecks people's lives, wrecks relationships, wrecks

communities. And Isaac, even though the devil

is never mentioned in this passage, Isaac behaves like

someone who understands that the Philistines, even they're

though, even though they're the ones filling up his wells, even

though they're the ones stealing his wells, that they're not

really the enemy. They're not really the enemy.

And so he can show grace to them and generosity to them and

compassion to them and just dig another well, knowing that God's

going to take care of him, just just dig another well.

Isaac understood and lived like, or you know, lived like, you

understood. We have the benefit of we don't

only know Isaac's story, we also know all of Abraham's story,

Isaac's story, all of descendants to, we know Jacob

and Esau, we know Jesus, we know all of those stories.

Isaac just, you know, he didn't have as much information as we

have, but he lived like he understood this too, that the

devil's attacks always have to bow to God, God's sovereignty,

whenever the devil comes at us, no matter who he's coming at us

through, whether it's friend, family, enemy, whatever, that,

that the devil's attacks always have to bow to God's

sovereignty, whatever God has promised, God will fulfill.

And because we know Jesus's story, we know that even if our

enemy conspires to achieve our death, God gives us our life

back in the end. God's sovereignty always wins.

God's will always triumphs, always triumphs in the end.

And the devil's attacks always have to bow to that.

And we see in Isaac's attitude that God wasn't going to bow to

the OR, that Isaac wasn't going to bow to the devil.

He wasn't going to quit, he wasn't going to run away, He

wasn't going to blame and complain, and he wasn't going to

fight. He was just going to dig another

well, just going to dig another well and the end of the story.

This is what we see. God renews his promise to Isaac.

The night, that night, the night that Isaac dug a well and no one

took it from him. So good night in the Isaac

household dug a well and no one took it from him.

God appeared to him again with with an affirmation.

I am the God of your father, Abraham.

Do not be afraid. You need to fear.

Don't. You're right, Isaac, you don't

need to fear the Philistines. You don't need to fear what they

can do to you, for I am with you.

I will bless you. I will increase the number of

your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham.

God renewed the promise and Isaac worshipped.

Isaac built an altar there, and he called on the name of the

Lord. Isaac wasn't going to bow down

to the devil. He wasn't going to give in to

the Philistines. Isaac bowed down to God and

said, once again, I am yours, my life is in your hands.

And he dug another well there. He pitched his tent and there

his servants dug a well. We worship, we dig another well.

This is the response. This is Thanksgiving week.

I probably should mention that it's Thanksgiving week.

Good thing, good thing to mention.

I, I, I believe that it is impossible to hold both envy and

gratitude simultaneously in our spirits, that we can't hold both

of those. Envy drives out gratitude,

gratitude drives out envy. Isaac seemed to have lived with

gratitude, gratitude for the blessings that he'd received

from God, gratitude for all that God had given him.

And, and he didn't give in to envy.

He could have envied the Philistines right back.

Yeah, God's blessed me now. But you own all of his land.

God, I don't have anything to call my own here other than what

I can carry around in a wagon. This all belongs to you.

Why can't I have what you have? Why can't I have the security of

of owning the land, of defining my own borders, of securing

those borders against my enemies?

Why can't I get to do that? Isaac could have played that

game, but instead he looked at all that God had given him, and

he was filled with gratitude, and he was able to bless even

his enemies. It was enough not only to bless

his family, but also to bless his enemies.

Isaac was filled with gratitude and Isaac dug the wells.

This wasn't God providing water from a rock.

There was work Isaac had to do too.

He had to dig the wells. He had to dig the wells.

But he did it with faith. He did it with gratitude.

He did it with hope and God. And we can do the same thing.

We can worship. We can dig another well.

Dave Durvecki learned that he was a man of faith still.

I don't know whether he's still alive or not.

My a man of faith, he came back after the doctor said this is

not you're done, you're pitching, career is over.

He came back, he went to rehab, he trained, he trained, he

trained, he trained. He went back.

He pitched again in the major leagues for the Giants, his

first game back and this is this almost unheard of these days.

He pitched 8 innings, gave up one run in eight innings when he

was told he would never pitch again.

In his second game back, he got to the 6th inning and he he

reared back and he threw a pitch and his arm snapped the torque

and the force of throwing the pitch.

His arm was weakened by the treatments that he'd received

and the bone just broke in the pitch.

You can find video footage of it.

I didn't see the game. I wasn't watching the game when

it happened, but I remember seeing the replays on TV at the

time and the cancer returned. And this time a year later they

had to take his whole arm and that well full of dirt.

He was done. And for Durvecki to keep going

with a sense of hope and purpose, he had to find another

well. He had to find another well.

And he, he wrote some books and he did some interviews.

I'm going to read just a couple of short excerpts from an

interview that he did. Deidre Becky said.

I used to depend on myself. Now I depend more on God through

my own suffering. I've become more aware of his

and I love him more as a result. I realized my life wasn't in my

hands anymore. My life was in God's hands.

It was always in God's hands. Isaac had to dig new wells.

Durvecki had to dig new wells. All of us at some point in our

lives have to dig new wells. When the thing that we need gets

taken away, we can fight, we can quit, we can run away, We can

blame and complain. Or with the hope that comes from

trusting in a God who keeps his promises, we can dig another

well. We can live in gratitude for all

that God has done and dig another well in Jesus name.

Amen. Amen.