THROUGH THE BIBLE - Genesis..

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com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Genesis chapter 26 this evening, as we always do, continue with the corporate reading of scripture. And we are going to be addressing this evening chapter 26.

We're just crossing the half of this book of Genesis written by Moses. So let's read with much attention and with reverent hearts the words of God. Chapter 26 in the book of Genesis. Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimelech, king of the Philistines.

And the Lord appeared to him and said, do not go down to Egypt. Dwell in the land of which I shall tell you. Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you, and will bless you. For to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore 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 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 settled in Gerrard. 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 Rebecca, 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 you have done to us?

One of the people might easily have lain with your wife and you would have brought guilt upon us. So Abimelech were all the people saying, whoever touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death. And Isaac sought in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him, and the man became rich and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. He had possessions of flocks and herds.

and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him. Now the Philistines had stopped and filled with earth all the wells that his father's servant 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 with the valley of Gerard 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 that his father had given them. But when Isaac's servant dug in the valley and found there was a well of spring water, the herdsmen of Gerard quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen, saying, The water is ours. So he called the name of the well Zech, because they contended with him. Then they dug another Well, and they quarreled over that also, so he called its name Sidna. And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it, so he called its name Rehoboth, 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 servant dug a well. When Abimelech went to him from Gerar with Ahuzat, his advisor, and Phicol, the commander of his army, Isaac said to them, Why have you come to me, seeing that you hate me and have sent me away from you?

They said, We see plainly that the Lord has been with you. So we said, Let there be a sworn pact between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you, that you will do us no harm, just as we have not touched you, and have done to you nothing but good, and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord." So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank. In the morning, they rose early and exchanged oaths, and Isaac sent them on their way, and they departed from him in peace.

That same day Isaac's servant came and told him about the well that they had dug, and said to him, We have found water. He called it Sheba. Therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day." Verse 34, When Esau was forty years old, he took to death the daughter of Beree, that he tied to be his wife, and Basemath, the daughter of Elan, the Hittite, and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah. Amen, beloved.

This is the words of God. Here we have. a very important chapter, probably every time that I come here I say that every chapter is very important because indeed every chapter is important in the transition of this story. I was just listening to someone speaking about the book of Genesis and they say that this is basically the story of a family, the story of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and here the importance of this chapter is founded upon this. that you might have seen, and you might have seen how we explain these chapters, the preeminence of the role of Abraham throughout the book of Genesis.

From chapter 12 to chapter 25, Abraham has a lot of preeminence, while Isaac is that person that the promise is pointing to, but Isaac does not take that much preeminence as Abraham has. Isaac is going to be named or is going to be accounted for in a couple of chapters, chapter 25, 26, and then 27, and then he is going to disappear. Then the transition will be into Jacob. So we have Abraham, Isaac, and then the story will continue with Jacob. Now, because of the short appearance of Isaac, Moses is trying to do something very important with this chapter 26.

With chapter 26, Moses is trying to prove to the immediate audience, that is the Israelites, the ones that were freed from Egypt, the first audience of this book, is trying to prove to them that Isaac is indeed the offspring that was coming from Abraham. So if we were going to summarize chapter 26, we could say that chapter 26 is a confirmation of the offspring or the heirship of Isaac as the son of Abraham. And the way that Moses, the author of this book, is going to prove that to us is by comparing the life of Isaac with the life of Abraham. Moses is going to give us information of the life, providentially, by the power of God, of course, that happened in the life of Isaac, that are very similar to those things that happened in the life of Abraham, his father. By doing so, Moses is proving that providentially, not only by the birth or by being born, Isaac is the offspring, but that the Lord is confirming the promise that was given to Abraham in chapter 12.

Now it's been confirmed and given again to Isaac. Now, remember that Abraham is dead. He is not there anymore. So we have Isaac. He's just by himself.

And all the promise that was given to Abraham, he knows now that he's on his shoulders. So the first thing that we have here in this chapter is the confirmation of the promise. So the Lord comes and appears to Isaac. And he says, and he established once again the promise that was given to Abraham. And something, brothers and sisters and friends, that I wanted you to remember from this promise is that that promise had three elements.

One is the land that was promised to him. The other one was his offspring. I will make you a great nation. And the third one was the blessing. So, I land an offspring and a blessing.

And these three things are confirmed and given once again to Isaac in the beginning of chapter 26. He says, I will multiply you. I'm going to make you a great nation. I'm going to make you like the stars in verse 4 and verse 3. I'm going to bless you.

This is the confirmation of the promise given to Isaac. And then, Isaac goes and his faith is tested and here we can see a comparison as I said between the life of Abraham and the life of Isaac because in the same sense or in the same way that there was a famine in the land in Genesis 12 and 13, and Abraham decided to go to Egypt, there is now a famine in the land, and Isaac, it seems that he thinks about going to Egypt, but then the Lord appears to him and says, do not go to Egypt. Stay in this land. in Gerar. Stay in that land and I will guide you and I will establish my promise here.

The Lord said that to him. But now we move into the testing of the faith of Isaac just as the faith of Abraham was tested. And Isaac in the same way that his father did, he's going to lie about who his wife was, saying that his wife was his sister. Very similar things. Beloved, The most important thing, and if I can point by the help of the Spirit, the most important thing that we can see in this chapter is that the confirmation of that promise given to Isaac is not necessarily by what the Lord says to him, but with something very important, and that is the presence of God.

the promise of the presence of God, the fulfillment of the presence of God, and the recognition of the presence of God. And I want you to see that in the text. In verse 3, the Lord is going to say something very important to Isaac. Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you. The Lord says to Isaac, I will be with you.

His father Abraham had passed away. He was on his own. He was the recipient of all of these promises. But then the Lord says, I will be with you. After that, Isaac is tested and he fails what he does.

He lies about his wife. But even that, after that, the Lord is going to appear once again to Isaac and he's going to say something very important. If you turn your page and then go to verse 23, after Isaac had lied about his wife and after he had departed from the presence of Abimelech the king he finds some wells with water and he has some issues with the herdsmen of the people of that land but then the law is going to appear to him and then he says in verse 23 From there, from that land, 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. He had said in verse three, I will be with you.

Now he says, I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham's sake. The Lord had promised not only that the promise given to Abraham was the promise of Isaac, but that the God of Abraham that was with Abraham through his sojourning was now going to be with Isaac. It was not only a promise that came out of the mouth of God, but it was the presence of God Himself in the life of Isaac. And now this presence that was promised by God and now confirmed with God Himself appearing as a theophany of God appearing Himself to Isaac was also witnessed and recognized by those who were around Isaac. So if you go then to verse 28, you will see that when Isaac departs from the presence of Abimelech, then Abimelech is going to come back to him to say, let's make a covenant, let's make a pact, an agreement, so that we will treat each other in goodness.

And now Abimelech is going to say something very important in verse 28. He says, they said, We see, and not only see, but we see plainly that the Lord has been with you. So we said, let there be a sworn pact between us. Those who were around the recipient, the heir of the promise, were plainly seeing that he was not only the heir of Abraham, but that God himself was with him. And now, God proved to Isaac that he was the heir of this promise not only by saying that but he prospered him in everything that in the same way that he had prospered Abraham with many things with many possessions with land and all of these things but more importantly brothers and sisters with the presence of God himself, taking him through this land with the presence of God himself.

Now, this is very important because the Abrahamic promise or the Abrahamic covenant which is now given to Isaac is a shadow of the new covenant that the church has with Jesus Christ. Now, the presence of God that was promised to Abraham and was promised to Isaac Now, in the New Covenant is fulfilled and is given entirely because we have Immanuel. We have God with us. We have been united by grace through faith to Christ, and in Him we dwell in the presence of God all the time. So, when we are walking towards the wilderness of this present evil age, when we are walking towards the promised land we are walking not only with the promise that we're going to make it till the end which is sufficient because it comes from the holy mouth of God but we're walking with the holy presence of God himself in Christ Jesus so he is the one that takes his people in his hands and he is the one that modifies his people taking them towards the promised land to establish the final fulfillment of that promise All of these things, brothers and sisters, were pointing towards that fulfillment of the consummation of the presence of God with us.

So then Christ, through his Spirit, dwells in each one of us, and the church is the abiding place of God himself. And then when the eschaton, when the last day comes, this presence is going to be fulfilled and consummated and that this is salvation can be just summarized in this special and deep relationship that from eternity past we were united to Jesus Christ and that is going to be fulfilled in the time that it is to come a pure relationship with God we are going to be partakers of the divine nature or we are partakers of the divine nature by merits of Jesus Christ in the union that we have with the Second Person of the Trinity. Beloved, that we might see how our walking towards this wilderness It is not in our efforts. It is not just simply based on something that we've heard, but it is empowered by God himself. And he is the one that has promised that he is going to bring all of these things to completion.

And he is the one that is taking us, modifying us and shaping us, fulfilling the promise that because he's God and he does not lie and that he does not change, a promise that will be eventually fulfilled and completed. Amen.