The Good Fight

Genesis 26:1–4 NIV

Now there was a famine in the land—besides the previous famine in Abraham’s time—and Isaac went to Abimelek king of the Philistines in Gerar. The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham. I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed,

Genesis 26:12–15 NIV

Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold, because the Lord blessed him. The man became rich, and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy. He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him. So all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up, filling them with earth.

Genesis 26:19–22 NIV

Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and discovered a well of fresh water there. But the herders of Gerar quarreled with those of Isaac and said, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Esek, because they disputed with him. Then they dug another well, but they quarreled over that one also; so he named it Sitnah. He moved on from there and dug another well, and no one quarreled over it. He named it Rehoboth, saying, “Now the Lord has given us room and we will flourish in the land.”

Introduction

If you’ve been with us for any period of time you know that I like to begin a message by sharing with you a personal story. My family hates when I do this, and I have a lot of fun with it.

You know that I also talk a lot about growing up in the Pentecostal Holiness church. I’ll share some of the things I experienced, and what I learned from that experience. I try to be light hearted about it and not take too heavy of a swing reflecting on the church that I grew up in.

But today Lighthouse, I have to share with you a powerful thing about the church that I grew up in.

The church that I grew up in was a praying church. Listen, we might have gotten some stuff wrong when it came to legalism and how we treated people who fell into sin, but one thing my church taught us how to do was pray.

And would we pray...

My youth group had a gentlemen in our youth group that was too old to be in the youth group… you know what I mean? Lots of churches have those guys that missed the boat...

But every week after choir practice...

What do you know about choir practice?

We didn’t have Youth Group like you all do. We got together once a week, not to have pizza, play dodgeball and hear a word, but we got together for choir practice, because the youth choir sang every Sunday. And after every practice, this guy would walk, typically late, but he would walk in and he would lead us in prayer.

And boy would we pray!

We’d pray and pray and pray… we’d pray until people were slain in the spirit. We’d pray until people were having visions. We’d pray until there was an interpretation of tongues. We would pray!

Now hear comes the part that wasn’t healthy...

If you didn’t stay and pray, you were judged.

“How dare you not stay late and talk to Jesus with us! Who do you think you are!”

And that’s where the legalism and judgment kicked in.

Transition

And so that experience taught me some great things. It gave me moments that I carry with me today. And this morning I want to draw from the good of that experience as we go through Genesis 26 together.

It Begins with Obedience

The 26th chapter of Genesis is about Isaac fighting over wells in the Valley of Gerar.

But let’s peel back the text together.

Chapter 26 opens up with God saying to Isaac to not go down to Egypt. This is important because a famine has hit his land.

This is something that we in Southern California cannot relate to, but it is something that people of that time dealt with. When famine hit, it was usually due to weather, pestilence, or some other outside force that meant people could not grow their food and or hunt their animals. Their source of life was being squeezed and this meant that they would not be able to survive severe famine.

The response was to travel to a land that was not being affected and live as a visitor on someone else’s land until the famine had passed.

But God spoke to Isaac and told him not to leave to Egypt.

Everyone was going to Egypt, but Isaac would not go. God was testing the obedience of Isaac.

And this is important because for those of us that know the story, Isaac’s father Abraham was a man of obedience. He was so obedient to the voice of God that one time God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, and he had Isaac on the alter with the knife mid-air when God intervened and said, “That’s enough! Now I know that you trust me.”

But the thing about obedience is it cannot be handed down from one generation to the next.

Every single one of us will have our faith tested in the area of obedience. How you handle obedience will reveal your spiritual growth.

John Bevere wrote the following in his book The Bait of Satan:

“Physical growth is a function of time. Intellectual growth is a function of learning. Spiritual growth is neither a function of time nor learning, but a function of obedience.”

God had already tested the obedience of Abraham, but Isaac had not yet been tested.

So when God spoke to Isaac and told him to remain, you need to understand what God was saying. And this is what obedience demands of us:

Don’t follow everyone else.

God does not operate according to the economies of this world. There was a famine in the land, but God would do what only God can do, and that is make the impossible possible.

Listen, when the world is all headed in one direction, together, that is a good time to ask God, “But what do you want me and my family to do?”

You need to be more concerned with being obedient to God than you are blending in with the crowd.

Listen to my voice

When God spoke to Isaac and told him to go to Gerar it wasn’t going to be a pit stop. God asked of Isaac to stay for a while.

This meant that Isaac would be away from his home for a long period of time. This wasn’t going to be a place to hang out until the famine was over, but he would have to remain.

So we read in the story that Isaac began to plant crops. That was hard, hard work. That meant Isaac would have to prepare the ground, he would have to seed the ground, he would have to water the crops, he would have to then wait for seasons of seed time and harvest.

Isaac listened to the voice of God and he stayed in Gerar long enough to see God bless him, even in a famine.

Some say that, “even in a famine!”

When we are obedient to the voice of God, and when we begin to work in the area where God has called us to, we will see the word of God come to pass.

Stay until I release you

This is the third part about obedience that we see in Isaac. He needed to stay until God released him.

And for Isaac, that meant that there was going to be struggles with his the locals of the land.

The Bible records that there was strife with the Philistines and they began to close the wells in Gerar. Wells that his father had dug. And so Isaac decided that even though he was being blessed a hundredfold in the middle of a famine, he would move to a different part of Gerar and dig more wells.

I’m going to get into the significance of the wells in just a moment, but you need to see that when the opposition got heavy, Isaac did not leave Gerar.

He relocated within Gerar and dug a new well. When that one was closed, he opened another. When that one was closed, he opened another, until his enemy stopped contending with him.

Obedience demands that we remain until God himself releases us from our assignment.

Isaac did not leave when he was faced with opposition, which we so often do when things do not go our way. Isaac remained in Gerar, even when there was no peace.

And let me just dispel this lie, I’ve heard people say that if it’s from God, it will be easy, there will be a flow.

Let me just say that that is not an absolute. Yes, there are times when God opens a door that it becomes ridiculously easy… but there are also times when you’ve got to endure hardships, you will have to go through testing, and you will have to fight with an enemy.

God does not operate solely one way, and it is important that you discern God’s voice. But I will say this, if God calls you somewhere, you stay until you hear from him that it’s time to go.

I’ve heard so many times people say, “God called me to this,” and then leave the minute they had a little bit of opposition. If you say that God called you somewhere, then the only person who can lead you out of that location is God himself. You must remain until he calls you out of that place.

The Good Fight

Now let’s talk about the wells that Isaac had to fight for, because there is great spiritual application around these wells.

When you read the scriptures there are metaphors, analogies, and symbols. Water is symbolic of the move of God throughout the scriptures.

John 7:38 NIV

Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”

In Ezekiel 47 the prophet had a vision of waters flowing down from the temple.

When we go public with our faith, it happens through water baptism.

Water symbolizes the Holy Spirit because water is a vital life source. You can go more days without food than you can water.

So here in Genesis there is something not just happening in the physical with the wells, but there is something happening with spiritually as well.

Isaac not only planted crops, but he opened the wells of his father.

Now that he had an open well, there was a source of life.

Likewise, when we open spiritual wells we will begin to talk in new life.

What is a well spiritually speaking?

I believe that a well is a source of spiritual enablement in our lives. Like revival, it is found through prayer and fasting. But also, it is found through obedience. As we lean in to prayer and fasting, God will begin to speak to us and it will demand our obedience. Wells in our life will bring abundance to us, just as it did for Isaac. Wells in the spiritual produce in the natural.

And this is why the Philistines closed the wells of Abraham. This is why Isaac had to open these wells.

And here is why this is spiritual. Think about this for a second.

A closed well benefits nobody. The Philistines could have left the well open, and removed Isaac’s family, and enjoyed the benefit of that well.

But that’s not what happened. That well belonged to Abraham and Isaac, and so the blessing of that well only belonged to them. No one else would experience the provision of that well but them.

There are wells that God calls each of you to dig. Wells that are not for anyone but you. Wells that do not benefit anyone other than you. And your enemy will do everything he can to fill this well. In the times of the Bible they would simply fill the well with dirt. Today, it is filing the wells with distractions.

The enemies most effective tactic to cripple the believer is simply to distract them.

And we are more distracted than we have ever been. We consume our time with so many things that move us in the opposite direction of God’s plans for us.

So digging our wells is our hunger and desire for his presence. It’s prayer. It’s fasting. It’s bible reading. It’s worship. It’s devotion. It’s caring for others. It’s feeding the hungry. Like Isaac, is it putting down roots doing to things God has called us to do.

We are digging wells of our fathers. We are tapping into the move of the Spirit.

This is the good fight. This is the fight worth having. This is the where we should be contending.

Conclusion

And so church I ask you, are you digging the wells where God has called you to abide?

Isaac fought for four wells. When he got to the fourth he called the place Rehoboth, the Lord has made room for us.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re out of place dig the well.

If you’ve ever felt like your assignment was unclear, dig the well.

If you’ve ever felt like your family was being disrupted, dig the well.

It’s not a one time moment, but it’s a constant season of prayer and pleading for the thing that the enemy has attacked.

Fight the good fight.