Faithful Then, Faithful Now | The Path that God Blesses - Genesis 26(Apr 2) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Father, that is our prayer, God, that our lives would be used to magnify the greatness and the glory of your name.

And God, I pray that you would use this time right now, Lord, to sharpen that focus in our lives.

God, that you would use this time to show us the things in our life that don't magnify your name, Lord, the things in our life that might magnify our name, that might magnify our kingdom, that might magnify the things of this world, God, I'm so aware of in my own life.

The battle with idolatry, the battle with many temptations, Lord.

And God, I pray, Lord, that you would do this work in me, Lord.

Do this work in us to sharpen our focus, to live for the one thing for which we were created, God, for your glory and for your praise.

And so, God, use this time by the power of your Holy Spirit that's here, Lord, convict us of sin.

Show us the grace and mercy that can only be found in the cross of Jesus Christ and lead us, Lord, to the path of greatest blessing.

God, we pray this, Lord, trusting in your power to accomplish it, God.

And we pray it in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

It's good to be with you this morning.

As you grab your seat, you can take your copy of God's Word and open it up to Genesis 26.

And if you don't have a copy of God's word, maybe you can share with your neighbor beside you.

We want to dig deep into God's Word because this is a place where power is found.

It's a place where life transformation happens.

And so we want to find ourselves digging deep this morning into God's Word.

Throughout the history of God's people, one of the most important questions that have been asked and is still asked today by us is this question: How do I walk in the path of greatest blessing?

The question we ask is this: how do I live a life that's ultimately blessed by God?

And really you can use this lens of life being lived to look for God's blessing to understand the story of Scripture.

You remember at the very beginning that Adam and Eve were created and they were placed into a garden.

It was called the Garden of Eden, which means the garden of delight.

And in this garden, Adam and Eve were given every tree to eat in order that it may satisfy this.

This was the ultimate place of blessing, of walking with God, of being freed from the stain of sin.

All that their heart desired, they could find in the garden.

But when Adam and Eve made that decision to disobey God, something cataclysmic happened in their life.

Everything changed.

And all of a sudden, finding themselves at the very source of blessing, they found themselves cast out of the Garden of Eden, cast away from the presence of God, cast far away from the very source of blessing that they were created to find satisfaction and fulfillment in.

And since that day, mankind, including you and including me, have been on a journey.

And it's a journey to find blessing.

Whether we know Christ or not, we seek the restoration of this blessing.

We seek the fulfillment that can only come from God.

And so many seek it in the wrong place.

There are many in the darkness and ignorance of sin that are turning away from God to try to find the blessing that can only be found in Him.

Many of us fall into the same trap, all of us seeking blessings that maybe come from worldly treasures or blessings that might come from relationships or seeking pleasure from people.

Whatever the case is, God's word reveals to us a journey that each of us are on to find again, like Adam and Eve once had, this source of fulfillment, this source of blessing.

That's one narrative that tracks through the Bible.

Another narrative is that we serve a God who is adamant that his people find it.

Ever since the day that Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden, God has been near their side, calling them to walk on the path that leads to blessing.

This is why, if you look at the book of Psalms, the very first Psalm, which kind of is treated as a preface for the whole psalm, really all of Psalms 2 to 150 are commentaries on this first Psalm.

And that psalm begins like this: Blessed is the man.

And the rest of the psalm, and really the whole book of the Psalms, goes on to show what it looks like to live the life that leads to blessing.

This is why one of Jesus' very first sermons in Matthew chapter 5, when he had gathered that crowd to himself on the mountain, all had to do with God's blessing.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

When Jesus said such words as this, that blessed are the poor, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek.

What Jesus was doing for those people was showing them the path to God's greatest blessing.

The way that they need to live in order to be blessed by God.

All this to say, while we have been on the search for true blessing in life, God, in the greatness of his grace, in the riches of his mercy, has made it clear to us the path that we should walk on if we desire eternal blessing in him.

And God has continually, as he will do again this morning, as he has already done, as we have worshipped him, he's gonna call us from the dry wells of this world to the riches of satisfaction and fulfillment and blessing that can only be found in him.

Now, as we've walked through the book of Genesis, finding ourselves in Genesis chapter 26 this morning, we've seen God's blessing.

Genesis 26 · chapter mention

You could really name Genesis the book of God's blessing, because one of the themes that tracks through Genesis is just that, how God is going to bless his people.

And more specifically, for Israel, reading this in the desert, the question is, who's God gonna bless?

Who is God's chosen people?

And the constant encouragement that God's people find in Genesis, the constant encouragement that Israel would have found, the constant encouragement that we have found is that we by faith are the people that God has chosen to bless through the fulfillment of the promises that He gave to Abraham.

Now in Genesis chapter 25 last week, we saw that Abraham had blessed Isaac.

Genesis 25 · chapter mention

And really what happens in Genesis 26 is like proof of that verse.

What Moses wants to prove to us is that Isaac lives a blessed life.

And this is really important moving forward in Genesis because in chapter 27, when Isaac gives his blessing to his youngest son Jacob, the question that's going to be asked is what proves Isaac to be the man who had God's blessing?

The answer we find is it that chapter 26 proves that Isaac lived a blessed life.

As we see the blessing that Isaac receives from God in chapter 26, I want you to see the answer to this question.

How do we place ourselves in the path of greatest blessings?

How do we grab hold of that blessing which mankind has been seeking ever since the beginning of their creation?

I want you to see this in Genesis 26.

Let's read this together.

If you have a copy of God's word, read along with me.

I'm going to read the whole chapter in full so that we can set ourselves in the context of this story.

Dwell in the land which I shall tell you, sojourn sojourn in this land, and I will be with you, and will bless you.

For to you and your offspring I will give these lands, I will establish the oath that I swore to your Abraham to Abraham, your father.

I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and will give to your offspring all these lands, and in your offspring all these 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 settled in Jurar, and when the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, She is my sister, for he feared to say my wife, thinking lest the men of the place should kill me because of Rebecca, because she was attractive in appearance.

When he had been there a long time, Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked out of a window and saw Isaac laughing with Rebekah, his wife.

So Abimelech called Isaac and said, Behold, she is your wife.

How then could you say she is my sister?

Isaac said to him, Because I thought lest I die because of her.

Abimelech said, What is this that you have done to us?

One of your people, one of one of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.

So Abimelech warned all the people, saying, Whoever touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.

Verse 12 goes on, And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold.

The Lord blessed him.

The man became rich and gained more and more until he became very health wealthy.

He had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him.

The Philistines had stopped and filled with earth all the wells that his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father.

And Abimelech said to Isaac, Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we.

So Isaac departed from there, and encamped in the valley of Jarar, and settled there.

And Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, which the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham, and he gave them the names his father had given them.

But when Isaac's servants dug in the valley and found there a well of spring water, the herdsmen of Jarar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmans, saying, The water is ours.

So he called the name of the well Esek, because they contended with him.

Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that also.

So he called its name Sitna, and he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it, so he called its name Rehaboth, saying, For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.

From there he went up to Beersheba, and the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, I am the God of Abraham, your father.

Fear not, for I am with you, and will bless you, and multiply your offspring, for my servant Abraham's sake.

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 a well.

When Abimelech went to him from Jarar with Ahuzazath, his advisor, and Fikal, the commander of his army, Isaac said to him, Why have you come to me, seeing that you hate me and have sent me away from you?

They said, We plainly see that the Lord has been with you.

So we said, Let there be a sworn pact between us, between you and us.

Let us make a covenant with you, that you will do us no harm, just as we have not touched you and done have done you uh have done to you nothing but good, and have sent you away in peace.

You are now the blessed of the Lord.

So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank.

In the morning they rose and exchanged oaths, and Isaac sent them on their way, and they departed from him in peace.

That same day Isaac's servants came and told him about the well that they had dug, and said to him, We have found water, and he called it Sheba.

Therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day.

When Esau was forty years old, he took Judith, the daughter of Biri, the hit the Hittite, to be his wife, and Basmath the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.

I want you to see in Genesis chapter 26 the path that God blesses.

Genesis 26 · chapter mention

And I first want you to see this that the to place myself on the path that God blesses, I must take God at his word.

Place myself on the path that God blesses, I must take God at his word.

Now notice that in Genesis 26, verse 1, we uh read about the problem that Isaac encounters.

Genesis 26:1

The problem is that there is famine in the land.

Now, Moses is quick to point out that this is really nothing new.

And really what we find in all of Genesis 26 is nothing new.

Everything that we just read has already happened in the life of Abraham.

You remember when you know you're watching one of your favorite sitcoms?

They used to do this a lot, especially with older sitcoms, where you get to an episode and it's like a flashback episode.

It's a flashback of all the best moments of maybe the last few seasons.

Well, this is kind of like what Genesis 26 is, but I don't want you to do what you do with that episode and just skip it, okay?

I want to sit here because God has a purpose in showing us that Isaac in many ways is following in the footsteps of Abraham.

Did you notice as we read that, that Abraham's name is actually brought up even more than Isaac's?

And what Moses wants to show us is that just as Abraham was so obviously blessed by God through the covenant that God had made with him, Isaac is the one who carries on the blessing of Abraham.

See, the purpose is that in a condensed format, Moses wants to show us what life looks like when we are blessed by God.

So Isaac experiences blessing just like his father Abraham experienced blessing.

And one of the first ways that we see Isaac experiencing this blessing is that the Lord appears to him.

Look what it says in verse 2.

It says, The Lord appeared to him, and the Lord gives Isaac a command, just like he had given Abraham a command.

He says, Do not go down to Egypt, dwell in the land which I shall tell you.

Continually in Abraham's life, God showed up to him and commanded him to go places.

He was called to go to the mount, to Mount Moriah to sacrifice his son.

And just as Abraham was called to go to a certain geography, so Isaac here is called to obedience to God to go to the place that God calls him to go.

Now notice that the instruction for Isaac, it's really threefold.

First, he's told not to go down to Egypt, and then he's told to go where God tells him to go, and then you'll notice that he's told to live in the land which God would tell him.

To live in the land, it says in verse 3, sojourn in this land, in the land that he already was in.

I want you to recognize just how hard this would be.

Remember what we read in verse 1?

Remember that we read that the land that Isaac was in was currently in a famine.

And this isn't the first time that Isaac's family had experienced famine.

You remember when Abraham was in the land that experienced famine?

What was Abraham allowed to do?

Well, Abraham was allowed to go down to Egypt.

Abraham was allowed to leave the land that was currently experiencing famine in order to escape to a land in Egypt that had food.

And yet, here, what God is calling Isaac to do is stay in the land and to endure the famine.

And this is really important for you and I to hear.

Because it reminds us that the things that God calls us to are often incredibly hard things.

To follow God, to walk on his path, it's the difficult path.

This is why Jesus said the road that leads to heaven is narrow.

The other roads wide.

It's easy to drive on.

But to listen to God's word is incredibly difficult.

Well, why is that?

Well, it's because the word of God contradicts the will of our flesh.

It's painful to apply God's word to our life because in applying God's word to our life, we are doing the very opposite of what our flesh wants to do, of what we feel could provide comfort for us.

This is why the words that Scripture often uses for our battle with sin are words of warfare.

We are at war with the sin.

We are at war with our sinful flesh.

Reminded of what Paul says in Galatians 5 17, he says, For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit.

The desires of the spirit are against the flesh.

For these things are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

And so here is a promise to you, okay?

It's not a very encouraging one.

The promise is that every time God speaks to you, that word is going to be in conflict with your flesh, because the flesh by nature opposes what the word of God says.

There's a battle waging war within you.

I find myself in this situation almost constantly as I provide biblical counsel for people in our church.

And I and I find myself often wrapping up those conversations with kind of a discouraging word.

Hopefully, like 58 minutes of those 60 minutes have been really encouraging.

But in the last two minutes, I find myself having to stare into people's eyes and say, listen, listen, what you have learned today, what we have seen in God's word today, you're gonna leave these doors and you are walking into the battlefield.

Change in our life, it doesn't happen like this.

Don't we wish that?

Don't we wish like the only thing we were missing is like a nugget of information, a nugget of knowledge, then our whole life will be changed.

Instead, what happens is we hear God's word and then the battle begins.

To apply God's word to our life, that's when it gets hard.

That's why the writer of Hebrews says that the word of God is a double-edged sword.

The idea is this: the word of God is sharp.

It is going to inflict pain.

A modern-day equivalent of a double-edged sword would be like the surgeon's scalpel.

The word of God, when used correctly, it wounds to bring healing.

You ever talk to someone who's going into surgery and they say, I'm not really excited for like, you know, the healing that this surgery is going to bring?

I'm just so excited to go, you know, under the uh anesthetics and fall asleep and go under the surgeon's scalpel.

I'm really excited for the surgery itself.

No, that would be insane.

The surgery is not fun, but the reason that we're willing to endure a hard surgery is because it brings healing after.

And so it is with God's word.

When God's word is applied to our life, it is hard because it is a scalpel that is cutting away the wounds of our sinful flesh in order to bring gospel healing to us.

And so, my question to you this morning: if you want to experience God's deepest blessing, is this are you willing to go under the surgeon's scalpel of God's word?

Are you willing to hear hard things?

Isn't it so true that so many in our day are looking for churches that do not preach the truth of God's word?

Churches that hold back the punches of God's word.

And yet I'm reminded that only growth will only happen in our life as we are confronted by God's word.

And so let me ask you this question again.

Are you willing to sit under the scalpel of God's word?

Are you willing to open up God's word every time, whether it's right now, whether it's in your own personal devotions, whether it's with other believers, and say, God, wound me, wound me that I may find life.

Are you willing to do life with other believers who are willing, not eager, but willing to expose sin that they might see in your life?

To use God's word as a mirror to hold it up to your life and say, hey, I see one way that you're not living for God, or I see a way that you think that is not godly.

As believers, if we want to experience God's blessing, then we need to be willing to sin under the scalpel of his word.

See, when God calls us to experience his blessing, he calls us to experiencing the pain of a hard word given to us.

But notice that Isaac in verses three to five is shown that there's great reward for this.

This isn't all pain.

Just like the patient goes into surgery in order to experience the reward of healing, so Isaac is given a reward for his obedience.

It will be hard to stay in the land, but the promise is great.

Now notice what the first reward is.

In verse 3, he says, sojourn in this land, and look at what he then God says to Isaac.

He says, I will be with you.

I will be with you.

The first reward for Isaac is the presence of God.

The reason why Isaac should stay here is because it doesn't matter where God calls us to, if his presence is there, our desire as children of God should be to be there.

This is why all throughout the scriptures, when the people of God have thrived, their common saying has been this: go before us, Lord.

But go before us.

I do not want to depart from your presence in this path that you are calling me to.

And you need to hear these words of comfort and encouragement that when God calls us to obedience, even though it's hard, even though God's word is difficult, it is his presence that he promises to give to us.

This should be the greatest incentive of both reading God's word and then applying God's word to our lives.

Is that when we draw near to God in obedience, he draws nearer to us in the experience of his presence with us?

But the opposite of that is true too.

You know what the scriptures say about your sin is that your sin it quenches the Holy Spirit.

And so you want a surefire way to know that you will not experience the nearness of God?

It's to walk in sinfulness.

You'll never experience the blessing of the felt nearness of God so long as you remain in sin and continue to do the things that the Lord calls you not to do.

See, the reward of our obedience is the felt presence of God, but we learn of another reward of obedience, and here for Isaac, it is the reward of experienced blessing.

And so he says, I will be with you.

And then between verses three and five, God says to Isaac twice.

He repeats that Isaac will experience the blessings that God had promised to Abraham.

And this shows us another incentive for taking God at his word.

Not only do we experience his presence, but we also experience his blessings.

See, it is through obedience to God that Isaac would experience the blessings that God had given to Abraham.

So look what he says in verse 3.

He says, I will be with you, but listen to this, and will bless you, for to you and your offspring I will give these lands.

Remember the threefold promise that God had given to Abraham?

We've talked about it endlessly.

Like you're sick of hearing me say this.

That God had promised to Abraham land, seed, and blessing.

And there, in such a succinct format, Isaac prom- God promises to Isaac the same thing: that he will bless him, that he will be given seed, that he will be given lands.

And then look what God says.

He confirms that this is what he promised to Abraham.

He says, I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham, your father.

Now, if that wasn't enough for Isaac to know that the path of obedience is the path of God's greatest blessing, God does the exact, he says the exact same thing again.

This is a great tool, right?

If someone struggles to listen, just say it twice.

So God says it again.

Again, there it is.

Offspring, seed, blessing, and land.

The threefold promise of Abraham.

And look again at verse 5 that this is coming to Isaac because of Abraham's obedience.

He says, Because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.

Now something really weird is happening in these verses, isn't it?

God is compelling, trying to incentivize Isaac to obedience by talking about the things that he has already promised to Abraham.

Isn't that kind of odd if you think about it?

I don't talk to one of my daughters.

When I want to compel them to obedience, one of the best ways you can do it, every parent knows this, it's ice cream, isn't it?

Ice cream is one of the most powerful parenting tools you have in your tool belt.

And so when I want to encourage my daughters to obedience, I'll say, hey, listen, if you clean your room, I'm gonna take you out for ice cream.

It's like this if then deal we make with them.

Clean your room, then get ice cream.

What wouldn't make sense was if I said to my daughter, if you clean your room, I already promised my other daughter that I'm gonna take you both for ice cream anyways.

That wouldn't make any sense, and yet that's what God's doing here.

God is calling Isaac to obedience and saying that because of his obedience, he's gonna give what he's already promised through Abraham.

Isn't that odd?

That he calls Isaac to remain in the land, and then he says that the reward for remaining in the land is an oath that he already swore to Abraham his father.

It's a reward that Isaac already deserves because of the obedience of Abraham.

And I want you to draw from this a very important gospel theology.

I want you to understand that a heart of obedience will never come from a position of fear.

You will never obey God just because you think that through obedience you will get salvation.

That's not the way that the gospel transforms us.

A heart of obedience can only come from a desire to experience what God has already won for you.

This is why continually, when God commends his people to obedience, he first reminds them of what has already been accomplished for them.

Think about the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20.

Before God gets into the Ten Commandments, he first reminds Moses that it was him who redeemed them from slavery in Egypt.

Think about the pattern we see in the Gospels.

Think about the book of Ephesians, where Paul spends three chapters laying out a deep theology of God and the gospel.

And it isn't until chapter four, once we understand all that Christ has done to redeem us, it's not till chapter four that Paul says that we are to live in a way that is worthy of the gospel.

And I want you to see this, that taking God at His word requires that you have a heart impacted by the work that He has already done for you, by the victory that He has already won for you.

That's why I love when we sing songs like we sang this morning, that we are fighting a battle that God has already won, that we're fighting in the power that he gives us, because this is the Christian life.

We aren't obeying God in order to earn something we don't have, we are obeying God to experience something we've already been given, the blessing that has come to us through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so, in order to place ourselves on the path of God's blessing, we take God at His Word.

But there's a second way I want you to see this morning that we place ourselves on the path of God's blessing.

And the second way that we place ourselves on this path is by trusting God in our weakness.

We trust God in our weakness.

Now in verse 6, we find that Isaac is obedient to the command that God had given to him.

And so we read there that Isaac settled in Jurar.

He stays here even though trouble will find him.

See, though Isaac is promised God's presence, which should be a presence that brings him the comfort of safety and peace and knowledge that no matter how circumstances play out, he's going to be provided for.

Isaac should have been reminded that this God who promised his presence to him was the same God that was with him on Mount Moriah.

This is Jehovah Jirah, who will provide for his people.

And yet, instead of trusting God, we read here that Isaac's life is filled with fear.

You see that in verse 7.

It says, When the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, She is my sister, for he feared to say.

Isaac seeks his own safety and provision.

Instead of trusting God's promise that if he were to stay in the land, God would go with him.

Isaac believes that if he is honest about his wife Rebekah, then these men will kill him.

And really what Isaac's believing in this moment is that he can secure greater blessing for himself by not trusting God, but by trusting his own way.

And so even though he's been told by God to stay in the land, he decides to do it his own way.

He lies about his wife saying that she is her sister.

And I want you to understand that this is the heart of all our disobedience.

This is the heart of all our waywardness, is that we believe that our own way will secure more blessing for us than God's way.

At the heart of every sin, at the heart of all of our waywardness is this belief that my way is better than God's way.

And the reason that we struggle to follow God is because we just cannot imagine how God could bless us by walking in obedience to the word that He has given to us.

And so if we desire comfort, instead of acting in the way that God has told us, we will act in the way that we think best to get us comfort.

If we desire pleasure, instead of seeking pleasure the way that God has told us, we will seek pleasure in this world the way that we think will best please and satisfy us.

This is the reality of all of our sinfulness.

This is why following God, it requires great humility.

Because it requires the humility to say and admit that God knows better than we do.

And it requires us to admit that we don't know, but God does know.

And let me promise this to you in your life, the more humility you have to say that you know nothing and that God knows everything, the more you will walk on the path of God's blessing and the more you will experience his favor flowing through your life.

The problem for many of us, for all of us, is that instead of following God, we walk in the way that we think is best.

Instead of looking to God and saying, You're the master here, I'm just gonna follow your way, we follow our own way.

Now, I have a pretty constant uh illustration of this in my own life, and the illustration comes from the fact that I'm not very good with my hands.

Like when it comes to building things, I'm a great laborer, okay?

I can pick up a lot of wood, I can carry it pretty far, you know.

Like if you want to challenge me in con uh in a competition to see how far we can carry a sheet of drywall, I'm all over that.

But if you want to challenge me in a competition to put that drywall up and then mud it and then do all the other work that's really actually important, well, then I'm gonna lose.

See, I don't have the skills, I'm not a master when it comes to renovation.

So, what I like to do is find someone who knows what they're doing, and I just say to them, hey, listen, I'm just gonna follow you, okay?

You tell me what to do.

I'm gonna work as hard as I can to do what you tell me to.

I'm following your way.

You're the master here.

You know it all.

It would be foolish of me to put that person to the side and say, I can do this even though I don't know how.

Wisdom says this that if you don't know what's best, you subject yourself to someone who does.

And this is the Christian life.

We follow the God who knows all.

And so, really, the battle of the Christian life is then this to bring into subjection to God all areas of life, to say this to God.

God, your way, not my way.

The problem is that when we leave these doors, we are going to be filled, each of us, with fear that maybe God's way isn't the best way.

Well, what are some ways we might follow our own way, thinking that it's better than God's?

Well, I made a list of 30 to try to help you.

Try to help me as well.

Here are 30 ways we might follow our own way.

We might use anger to get what we want.

We might follow our own way by using pornography to try to find sexual satisfaction that God designed according to his way to be experienced in marriage.

We may be willing only to talk about ourselves rather than being interested in other people that God has created.

We might arrogantly believe that we are more important than others.

We might follow our own way by allowing wrong things other people say to us to make us bitter towards them rather than compassionate towards them.

We might boast in our own abilities.

We might hide who we really are in the presence of other people so that they can think better about us.

We might believe that the praise of other people would truly satisfy us.

We might follow our own way by instead of obeying authorities, we walk in disobedience because we think we just know better than them.

We follow our own way when we intoxicate our minds with alcohol and drugs.

That was 10 of the 30, okay?

I got 20 more for you.

Let's keep going here.

We follow our own way when we are filled with envy and feel discontent because another person has what we don't have.

What about when we lie to ourselves to make us seem better than we really are?

What about when we provoke our anger to children instead of leading them to the truth?

We walk in our own way when we entertain or engage in unwholesome talk.

When we find more joy in getting than we do in giving.

When we live for the pleasure of this world rather than satisfaction in God.

When we're motivated by money rather than God's glory.

When we hypocritically expect someone else to do something we are unwilling to do.

When we look at another person's life with jealousy, wishing that we had their life, when we're more concerned with caring for others than we are for caring for those that are around us.

When we're hearts are filled with lust after another man or a woman, when our hearts are filled with judgmental thoughts about others without compassionate concern for them.

We follow our way when we steal time from our employer when we should be working.

When we're discontent about not having something because we don't have enough money or resources to get it.

We follow our own way when we This is gonna get us all, alright?

You ready for this one?

When we lack self-control around food and are driven by impulse and cravings and desire.

We follow our own way when we spend significantly too much time watching TV, when we seek to find our worth and how many likes we get on social media, when we walk in our own power instead of dependence on God, when we spend our days not meditating on God or thinking about Him at all during the day, and when we're willing to gossip about other people and share information that is not ours.

Now here's my hope in sharing this list.

I hope that you, like me, have been condemned by this list.

I hope that there are many things in that list that you put up your hand and you say, Yeah, that's me.

I struggle.

I struggle with that.

I often think that that way is better than God's way.

Because I want you to understand that the gospel is for the weak.

And what God is doing here by exposing us to Isaac's weakness is showing us that the blessings that he reserves are for people who are too weak to win them by their own power.

See, Abimelech is the one who has to expose Isaac of this weakness.

Abimelech is the one who sees Isaac laughing with his wife and discovers that he's lied.

Abimelech is the one who exposes Isaac to his sinful reality, that he's walking in his own way instead of God's.

And yet the point of this passage isn't to condemn Isaac.

The point of this passage is to show that even though Isaac is unworthy of the blessing, what we read in verse 12 is that he still receives blessing.

God still blesses him.

God's exposing us to this reality that we all walk in our own way, that this is the very definition of sinfulness, to walk in our own way as opposed to God's.

And yet, if the blessing depended on our ability to walk perfectly, none of us would ever be blessed.

But we walk.

We walk with a God who is gracious, who, though we deserve condemnation, he pours out mercy.

That because of his mercy and grace, it's possible for us to experience in the bl experience the blessing that he has reserved for us.

And so can I ask you this question?

Have you embraced this weakness in your life?

Have you embraced weakness?

You know, I hope that when people walk through our doors, their first reaction isn't like, oh wow, everyone here really has their life together.

My desire is that when people first walk through these doors, they think, wow, these people are all really messed up.

Like if we're if we're really honest, if we're really vulnerable with each other, isn't that what people's reaction of us is gonna be?

Because none of us follows God's way perfectly.

All of us struggle in our own way, all of us are weak, and what God is gathering here is a community of weak people who are looking to a strong God to say, God, work through me so that you might be glorified, not so that my strength might be glorified.

And so we trust God in our weakness, and that's the path that we find, God's greatest blessing, because he desires to work in the weak.

The third thing I want you to see about the path of God's blessing is that we walk on it when we treasure God through life's worry.

When we treasure God's through life's worry.

See, Isaac's issues, they don't stop with just the fear of Abimelech.

In verse 16, Isaac's told to go away from Abimelech, and in verse 17, he listens.

Isaac is driven from Jurar to the valley of Jurar.

And there's this idea that Moses is getting at here.

He's kind of painting this picture that like this is bleak.

Isaac is being driven away even further from the place of blessing.

This is the valley.

But not only that, he uses this word encamped.

Now, I personally love camping, but there are some in this room that you like, when it comes to camping, you just cannot understand.

Why would someone ever leave the luxuries of home in order to live in a home with flimsy tent walls where you could be eaten by a bear?

There just seems nothing really appealing but from being away from home and living there.

And I understand that sentiment.

And this word encamped is to draw us to that reality because every time Moses uses this word again, it's in almost every time it's in reference to Israel in the desert.

When God's people encamp, the idea is like they're far away from home.

This is not the place that they are supposed to be.

Isaac encamps here, but he continually runs into problem after problem.

The first problem is that the Philistines had filled up all the wells that Abraham had dug so that there's no water.

And when Isaac goes to dig a well, then the shepherds of Jarar, they come and they fill the well again.

And it must be really interesting for Isaac, who was told to remain in this land, but by every visible sign.

As he tries to interpret his circumstances, it seems like this is not the place he's supposed to be.

Nothing's going well for him.

He's been driven out of the city.

He can't have any water, because every time he finds water, they fill the well back up again.

Certainly, it doesn't feel like things are going his way.

I wonder if you've ever looked at your life and felt the same.

You ever looked at life and just thought, this is not going the way that I would plan it?

You ever felt like you're trying to follow God, you're trying to do what he says, but you're just, it's it's like God's just chosen not to bless you for it.

And things aren't playing out the way that you thought they would.

And so instead of experiencing the comfort and peace that comes from knowing a sovereign God, often the things that we're filled with is worry and anxiety.

And we spend nights awake thinking about how we might be able to change our circumstance or change our situation or worrying about realities that might possibly happen in our life.

You see, worry comes from this belief that I know how life should go and then it's not going that way, and so now I'm filled with and consumed with thoughts of anxiety.

And yet, through this desert experience, what we see in Isaac is that Isaac just faithfully follows God.

I love what it says.

I feel like you could do a whole sermon on this.

In verse 22, when they fill up the well, it just says this, and he moved from there.

It's like Isaac has this understanding of God's sovereignty in his life, that when things don't go as planned, God's not out of control.

God's got it all under control.

God knows what he's doing.

So even though Isaac is promised land, and that land continually is being filled with enmity and hostility, and he continually gets driven farther and farther from where he thinks the land is, Isaac's just like, all right, well, it must be God's plan, and I trust God.

God said he was gonna give me land, and so I am going to believe what God said.

My question is then is how do you go through life like this?

How do you go through life where every twist and unforeseen circumstance, you just place yourself in the hands of God and trust that he is in control of your situation?

Because I know for me, when things don't go according to plan, I feel like everything's out of control.

I want you to see here how Isaac does it.

Notice that when Isaac gets into Jurar, into the valley of Jurar, he immediately starts going to the wells.

And in verse 18, we're told that Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, which the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham.

And notice this really interesting point.

And he gave them the names that his father had given him, given them.

See, the circumstances could make Isaac believe that God had been unfaithful to his promise to Abraham not to give him land.

But instead, what Isaac says is that God has said he's going to give us land, and he gave Abraham these wells, and so no matter what happens to the wells, these are God's wells.

These are Abraham's wells.

He's named them, and so these are his.

And so he undigs them and he renames them according to what they were already named by Abraham.

See, what Isaac needs to do is root himself in the truth of God.

God said that he would give them land, and so Isaac, looking at God's word, roots himself in the promise.

See, this is the opposite of what we often do, isn't it?

Often we don't think according to God's word.

We think according to our feelings.

Often we let our emotions be our leaders.

And so we look around at the things that are happening in our life, and we feel like God might have left us.

And so we allow our feelings to lead us.

I wonder if in your life you've ever felt a leader who just like doesn't lead well.

They never know what to do.

They're always switching back and forth.

Let's do this.

And so you start working on the one thing, but then two days later they come back and say, hey, I changed my mind, scrap that, let's go this way.

And they can just never make up their mind.

And that's how emotions lead you.

Because haven't you recognized that emotions are fleeting?

One night you can be on like the brink of depression.

The next morning you wake up and you're just fine.

Emotions, they go back and forth, and they're horrible leaders because they aren't based off truth, they're based off feeling.

See, feelings, they base themselves off circumstance.

And so when life is hard, we might feel like God's abandoned us.

When things don't go our way, we might feel like God is no longer trustworthy.

But what God is calling us to, not is to be emotionless.

We're not called to not have feelings, like just be like the stone cold, doesn't matter what happens in the world.

God is calling us to place our feet on the firm foundation of truth.

See, truth will lead you where you need to go.

That's why the most faithful followers of Christ have always experienced this nearness to him in the deepest sufferings.

Because their circumstances don't disprove the truth of who he is.

Instead, they find in their circumstances evidence of who God says he is.

And this is what we need to do.

This is what exactly the evidence that Isaac finds.

He believes that because God said he would give him land, that he will do it.

And so he undigs the wells.

It doesn't stop there.

Twice these wells are then filled in by the Philistines.

But Isaac isn't driven by circumstance, he's driven by the truth that God told him to remain here.

And just as Jehovah Jirah provided for his father on Mount Moriah, so God's going to provide for him.

And so he moves on to another well that is eventually filled in again by the Philistines.

And then he does this again in verse 22.

And we're told he finally digs a well that they don't quarrel over.

And it's significant because we're told in verse 23 that this well is close to Beersheba.

And we've been in Beersheba before as we've walked through Genesis.

This was the place that Abraham first made the covenant with Abimelech.

And God reminded Abraham there that he was the everlasting God.

And when Isaac gets to Beersheba, he finds God.

And look at what God says to him in verse 23.

He says, From there he went up to Bersheba, and the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, I am the God of Abraham your father, fear not, for I am with you, and will bless you and multiply your offspring.

See, when Isaac eventually gets to Beersheba, he finds himself in the presence of God.

And we're able to look back through all the suffering that Isaac had experienced.

We're able to look back and see that even Isaac's sinful actions and Gerard that cast him out, even the sinful actions of these Philistines that kept filling in the well, these were all used by God to lead Isaac into his presence.

See, what God wanted was for Isaac to be near to him.

And so God was willing to put Isaac through whatever suffering was necessary in order to lead him to Beersheba, where God would meet with him and remind him, I am with you.

And Christian, I want you to see this reality in your own life.

You know the things that you worry about?

Those are the very things that God is using in your life to drive you to Him.

This is why in Philippians 4.8, the verse that so many of us know well, God He does not say, sorry, this might be elsewhere in Philippians, he does not say, don't ever be anxious.

Instead, there he says, cast your anxieties on the Lord.

Because your anxieties are meant to drive you to the Lord, and it's the place where you find comfort and peace.

Your anxieties are meant to be seen when you found yourself in truth in the hand of the loving God.

He's leading you this way.

And instead of your allowing your anxiety to fill you with worry and drive you away from God and to think thoughts not about God, they're meant to drive you to God, to a place of comfort, knowing that He loves you and is ordaining things to be this way.

That's why I'm convinced that in so many of our lives, suffering comes from a place of God's love for us.

God loves when we're near to Him, when we long for His work in our life.

And so He's very willing, according to His love, He's very willing to put us in the furnace in order that we might experience a nearness to Him that we otherwise would not feel if we were placed in the furnace.

This is God's love for us.

Isn't there something incredibly comforting as a parent to hold and embrace your child in the midst of their suffering and tears because of the nearness that you encounter with them?

And so it is with God.

The fourth, last final thing I want you to see about placing ourselves in the path of God's blessing is that in order to do this, we must thank God for his work.

Notice that when the promise God gives to sorry, notice what the promise God gives to Isaac is dependent on.

You see it there in verse 24?

He says, I'll multiply your offspring at the end of verse 24.

For my servant Abraham's sake.

After this, Isaac's gonna build the altar and call upon the name of the Lord.

He's gonna worship and thank God.

He's gonna praise God and magnify the name of God.

And this is so significant for us.

Because it teaches us that we'll find blessing when we are struck with the reality, struck with a sense of awe of the things that God has already done for us.

As we just read, God is going to accomplish a lot for Isaac.

Through this covenant with Abimelech, Isaac's actually gonna experience the fulfillment of the promise more than Abraham's about to.

Something amazing is gonna be given to Isaac.

He's gonna be given safety and peace in the land.

But Isaac doesn't worship after he gets that.

He worships after he's reminded of all that God has already done on behalf of Abraham.

And Christian, I want you to understand that the greatest blessing that you could ever possibly receive is a blessing that has already been given to you in full.

Just as Isaac worships because God had already worked through Abraham, so we worship because God has already worked through Christ.

Do you understand that the greatest blessing God could ever pour out on you, He has already given to you in His Son Jesus Christ.

This is why Paul's able to say that in Christ we have every spiritual blessing.

Because God has said to us, through Christ on the cross, that he has not held back any blessing.

That the only thing you need to do in this very moment is in your heart, in your spirit, turn to the cross and reflect on it and stand in awe and realize that through the cross, God has provided for you every spiritual blessing.

See, worship and thankfulness can only ever flow from an increasing recognition of all that Christ has done for us in dying for our sin to pay for our penalty.

And I want to ask you this question: Do you value what God has done in the cross?

Don't you know this to be true about a human father?

If a human father, for whatever reason, were required to give up something, wouldn't the last thing he gave up be his own son?

Like he might give up a large sum of money before he gave up his own son.

A human father might give up, like maybe even his job before he gave up his son.

He might even give up his house before he gave up his son.

The very last thing he would ever give up is his one and only son.

And you recognize that God the Father has done just that for you.

He sent his one and only Son to die for you, so that when you place your faith in him, you then receive everything from him, so that there is nothing that you are left without.

Because Jesus Christ has come, you have been given every blessing.

And in light of the blessing that Jesus Christ brings, what other pursuit could bring us a blessing that's of any value?

I love what Paul says, once he encounters Jesus, what does he say?

Everything else is like rubbish to me.

Everything else is like garbage to me, because I know Jesus Christ.

Nothing can satisfy when we truly stand in awe of Jesus Christ.

That means that we live to stand in awe of the blessing that He has already poured out.

Church, let's pray together.

God, we thank you for this blessing that you have given us in Jesus Christ.

And God, we recognize that the path of greatest blessing, Lord, it ultimately leads to your son.

Lord, that we will know truest and deepest satisfaction and fulfillment when we know your Son, Jesus Christ.

And when we stand in a greater awe of who he is and all that he has done for us.

And so, God, in this moment as we end our time together here corporately worshiping you, Lord, I pray that we would take this moment as we respond in song to declare in our hearts personally that there is nothing of more value than to know you.

To say like Paul did, Lord, that all else is rubbish in comparison to just the knowledge of you.

And that God, because we know you, because we know all that you have done in your son, we now have every spiritual blessing given to us.

And so, God, drive us to the foot of the cross, drive us to your son.

And may we worship now in response to this belief we have, Lord, that in you we have everything and that you are worthy of our all.

So we give this praise to you, God, and we pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.