From the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster we present Let the Bible Speak. It's good to have you join us today as we spend time around the Word of God, preaching Christ in all His fullness to men and women in all their need. And we'll sing of thee on her way, through ice and rain, in every day, sun, rain, and sky on her ground, on her way to the higher ground. O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Lord, lead me on, and let me stand. I've made my way, and today I'll end. I am brave, and I have found. Lord, let my feet go higher ground. Lord, lead me on from mountainside. I'll reach the ground with grateful heart from higher ground. Lord, lift me up and let me stand. I think I'll never see the land a higher place than I have O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? A very warm welcome in the Savior's great name to our meeting. May the Lord bless you. May we know His presence today and His speaking voice. We're going to commit our time in a word of prayer. Let's seek the Lord. Our Heavenly Father, we do indeed thank you for that higher ground. We bless thee, Lord, for redemption ground. We thank you, Lord, that there is a preparation by our Savior. There's a work of redemption by our Lord Jesus Christ. prepared on Calvary. We thank You for the great victory that was won there. We thank You for the sharing of the precious blood. And we thank You, Lord, through that great transaction. Sinners can be made children of God. Lord, we bless Thee for the immense privilege which it is to be called a child of God. And Lord, we pray for Thy presence in our gathering today. We pray that we will know. Lord, we come And we come in faith, resting upon the Scriptures, resting upon the promise of God that where the two or three are gathered together in your name, there you'll be in the midst. But Lord, we seek an experience of thee. We seek to hear the voice of God. Lord, leave us not in silence. but have a word for our hearts. Bless every heart today. We come to Thee in all our several needs, coming from different situations, different scenarios within our life. Lord, we pray that You will feed us. We thank You for the Savior who looked out upon the crowd as sheep having no shepherd, and then proceeded to feed them to the full. And we pray that you will do that today. We pray that we will be fed on the finest of the wheat. Lord, I pray for the Reverend Wagner. Pray you'll bless him richly, Lord, that he will know liberty and great power, that you'll give him the very words to speak. And Lord, that we will be taught of the Holy Ghost, that your truth will be written upon our heart indelibly, and it will have its sanctifying effect. So continue with us now and bless us as we worship thee in Jesus' precious name. Amen. We'll turn in the Holy Scriptures to the book of Genesis and the chapter 26, and we'll read from verse 17 down to and including verse 25. So Genesis chapter 26 and verse 17. And Isaac departed thence, and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father. For the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham. And he called their names after the names by which his father had called them. And Isaac's servants digged in the valley, and found there a well of springing water. And the herdman of Gerar did strive with Isaac's herdmen, saying, The water is ours. And he called the name of the well Isaac, because they strove with him. And they digged another well, and strove for that also. And he called the name of it Sidna. And he removed from thence, and digged another well, and for that they strove not. And he called the name of it Rehoboth. And he said, for now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land. And he went up from thence to Beersheba. And the Lord appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father. Fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham's sake. and he builded an altar there, and called upon the name of the Lord, and pitched his tent there, and there Isaac's servants digged a well." Amen. This is the Word of the Lord, and we're confident that the Lord will bless the public reading of His Word. Let's turn in our hymn books now to the hymn 458, He Giveth More Grace. He sent for strength as the neighbors increased. To add an affliction, He added His mercy. Their multiplied smiles, His multiplied peace. His love has no limit, His grace has no measure, His power has no boundary, no one's domain. ♪ For I love this infant ♪ ♪ Christ is in Jesus ♪ ♪ Be nearer and giver ♪ ♪ And giveth the name ♪ ♪ When we have exhausted ♪ And leads to the end of our poetry's journey. God works so dearly, His only begotten. His love has no limit, His grace has no measure, His love has no boundary, no mountain high. ♪ O rock of Israel ♪ ♪ Great church in Jesus' name ♪ ♪ Give her, and give her, and give her life ♪ I'd like to thank Reverend Lackey for leading the meeting tonight. We're turning in Genesis 26, and the text I want to read before you is found in verse 25. And he builded an altar there, and called upon the name of the Lord, and pitched his tent there, and there Isaac's servants digged a well. From that text, I want to speak to you on three foundation stones upon which to build a life of faith. If we look at that verse, remembering that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, we'll see there's more to it than just the literal altar being built, and the well being dug, and the tent that he pitched. It's what those things actually typify that point very clearly to what that life of faith is really all about. It transcends the literal things going on, and it gets down to what it's going to be like for you and I to live a life of faith. We know that we can't please God apart from faith. We know that faith is the victory that overcomes the world. We need more and more and more to learn to live and to walk by faith and not by sight. But we have to lay these foundation stones, take good care of them if we're going to do that. The outstanding feature of Isaac's life is that it has no outstanding feature. He lived out his 180 years in obscurity, at least in comparison to his father Abraham and his son Jacob. Isaac, you might say, is quietly sandwiched in between those two larger-than-life biblical characters, and very few details in comparison are given of his life's story. He seems never to have wandered very far from this neighborhood of Beersheba, but in spite of the small footprint that his life has in Scripture, He's listed among the Old Testament saints in Hebrews chapter 11 where we read that by faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come. He's right up there with Abraham and Jacob and all those great Hall of Famers in the Hall of Faith. That blessing when he blessed Jacob and Esau was an act of faith because it was a blessing about something future. Isaac believed that God, what it told him, what he had promised, was going to come upon his seed. He believed it was true. And that's what the life of faith comes down to. We can really make it complicated, but it comes down to believing what God says about himself about His plan, about His people, about all things is true, and we act upon that. It's believing God's Word and God's promises, but not just satisfied with some intellectual asset to those, it's actually living on them, proving them, walking by them. That's the life of faith. That's what we want to look at. Faith expects. It expects what sense cannot certify. You're just trusting the Lord to be true to His Word. You're believing what He has said and walking by that. You believe that God will do exactly what He says He will do. He will not go back on His Word. He will not lie, and He cannot lie. He always speaks the truth. So, therefore, God is absolutely, 100% dependable. Now, when you embrace that truth with your heart, the more you live in light of the promises of God's Word, then you're going to have a greater walk of faith. You won't find your life a roller coaster, ups and downs, ups and downs, because circumstances change all the time. It'll be a steady walk. It'll be a contented walk, because it will be a walk by faith. So Isaac has returned to Beersheba with his family to dwell, the place where he and his father had spent many years earlier. On the very night he returns to Beersheba, the Lord appears to Isaac. And lo and behold, he renews the same covenant that he had made with his father, Abraham. That's what you read in verse 24. Isaac had just come through a lot of trouble with the Philistines and the land and the wells and all the fighting that went on because of that. And no doubt he was wondering that when he comes to Beersheba, am I going to have the same problem here in Beersheba? But so God comes to comfort Isaac and to assure him that it's okay, Isaac. I'm in control. Don't worry. Don't get discouraged. Don't get down. You just trust me. I told you I would do this. I promised your father I would do this, and I'm going to carry out what I said I would do." Immediately after this meeting with God, Isaac did three things, and it's those three things that reveal these three foundation stones for a life of faith. Notice in the first place that he built an altar. That's the first stone. I'm sure you know that an altar in the Old Testament was symbolic, typified the cross of Christ. The altar, the place of sacrifice, the place where the blood was shed. That's the foundation of any walk of faith. We have to come to the cross. We have to come to the light of Calvary. And the more we are living in the light of the cross and the truths that flow from that, we have nowhere near the time to expound that one, but the more we do that, the more we actually live by faith. So what is the place? What's the altar? What is it about? Building an altar in your life, building an altar in your home, building an altar in your family. Number one, it's communion, right? This is how we, this is the access we have to God. This is Jacob's ladder, you might say, where we talk to God and God talks to us. How? Through that cross. It's the death of Christ that gives us access to the Lord where we can commune with Him. We can talk. We can unburden our hearts, and the Lord comes and He talks to us. And we have to have that to have a life of faith. You know, where you are there, where you are in your communion with God has everything to say about where you are in your walk in faith. It's so critical, communion with the Lord. Faith, you see, is a grace, like joy and love and peace and all those wonderful graces, and that grace needs to grow, like every other grace, the grace of faith. And so it's going to be primarily, you know, that as we get alone with God and commune with Him and go to His Word and He speaks to us, that faith begins to grow. And we draw nearer to God, and God draws nearer to us. It's like you can face anything when you're living near the Lord. Get from Him, and your life falls apart. You're worried, you're fearful. Why? Well, you're not trusting. Why aren't you trusting? Why? Let's check up on the communion. Am I communing with the Lord? Am I in that place of prayer, just getting alone with God? Or am I rushing here and yawning, and my day is filled with so many things, I have so little time just to draw near God? You want that reversed, then start seeking the Lord, and you'll find your faith growing. The altar was also a place of cleansing. Calvary's about cleansing. where sins are atoned for by the blood. Our sins, our sins, our sins, our sins, they are so, so very many. And sins have this ability to just chill our faith. to cool our trust in the Lord. They bring distance between us and God. Sins unchecked, sins that go unconfessed daily. What's going to happen? Well, we're going to grow away from the Lord and not near Him. And when you go away from the Lord, the further you get from the Lord because of unconfessed, unrepentant of sin, then there's going to be problems in a walk by faith. It's just the cold fact of the matter. So if you want to live in light of the cross and grow faith and daily, every day, throughout the day, Lord forgive me. Shouldn't have done that, shouldn't have said that, shouldn't have thought that, Lord forgive me. Is that what you're doing? Life of faith will lead you to do that. It's also a place of confession. I don't mean confession of sin, that's previous. But you see that Isaac, it says, he built an altar there and called upon the name of the Lord. Now understand, he was still in enemy territory. And for him to build an altar in that place, he was declaring his religion. I'm one of Jehovah's people and I'm going to worship Jehovah. He wasn't ashamed of it. He wasn't trying to hide it. He was gladly publicly confessing, I belong to the Lord. And you know, that is critical to a life of faith. You don't hide it. Faith leads the people of God to live out that life of faith before this world. It doesn't matter how much they are an enemy, how much they seem to be against you. You live by faith, which means you are quite courageous and bold amongst all the ungodly. These Philistines hated what he did. They hated his religion, but that didn't stop him. He built the altar, and he calls upon the Lord. Faith was also a place of consecration. Remember that text in the Psalms about buying the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar? That was because, you know, some of those bullocks would just fight it. You've got to tie them down. And there they were sacrificed. They were consecrated to God. An important element, you know, of walking by faith. is that you have arrived at that place in your life where you consecrate yourself to the Lord. Lord, all I have, all I am, it's yours, whatever it is. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world, but be you transformed by the renewing of your mind. that you might prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God, that is a life of faith. But, oh, it's tied to consecration, and there's nothing like Christ on the cross that ties us to Him. We don't want to wander away. You want to walk by faith? Give yourself to the Lord afresh. Something else that he built, and that was a tent. A tent, what does a tent have to do with anything? Well, let's look beyond the literal thing. A tent, well a tent is a temporary dwelling place. It's not permanent. Isaac, like his father, was a tent dweller. It's suggestive of the mindset that says, this world is not my home. I'm just passing through. I'm not living as if everything around me is what I want in life. It's so important to me. No, what's more important is that I'm looking for another city. You see, when you live by faith, and the more you live by faith, the more you walk by faith, you see yourself as a pilgrim. You see yourself as a tent dweller. You are just a stranger in this world. You're a stranger, and the world looks upon you as strange, and that's a good thing. I'm glad when they look upon God's people. Those people are weird. That's okay. We are, you know, by their standard. My, how that declares we're living by faith, we're walking by faith, because we know we're heading for another city whose builder and maker is God. Our hearts, our minds are set upon things above, not on things on the earth. We're taken up with glory and with Christ and with what really matters, what's really important in life, and it's not in the world. Are you living like a tent dweller? Are you living like a pilgrim? That's what it is to walk by faith. Paul says in Hebrews chapter 11 that those who confess that they're strangers and pilgrims declare plainly that they seek a country. They didn't hide the fact. I'm not looking for my happiness in this world. I'm not looking to get settled down as if, you know, the big dream is a big house on a big hill and a lot of money and all the pleasures of life. It's not important. And you know what? A lot of Christians are living like that, that it's so important to them. And they're not walking by faith. They're not living by faith. They're living by sight. Focus is in the wrong place altogether. You want to walk by faith? Keep looking at yourself as a tent dweller. Those Old Testament believers that Paul indicates in Hebrews 11, they deserted the land. They deserted it. They turned their back on it. It's not my home. This is not my dwelling place. Have you done that? Paul says they had plenty of opportunities to return and that was the big problem with the Hebrew Christians. They were being persecuted big time and the temptation was go back to Judaism, go back to the Old Testament worship system, go back and you won't have these problems. They had opportunities but they didn't. You want to know why they didn't go back? Because they saw themselves as pilgrims, as tent dwellers. It is a foundation stone in our life as God's people. Is that how you look at yourself? I'm a stranger in this world, and the world is a stranger to me. I do not feel comfortable when I'm amidst the worldlings. I feel comfortable around God's people. I feel comfortable in a prayer meeting. I feel comfortable in a worship service, and I don't ever want to leave it. That's walking by faith, child of God. Is that how you're walking? This is the foundation stone. Pilgrims. Well, there's something else. All this is vital to our faith, but the last thing is he dug a well. A well. He had his servants dig it, but still, it's Isaac's well. What would you take that to mean if you were sitting down there? Okay, I've got it. He's talking about this altar. I get that. That's the cross, and yeah, I see the tent. He's a tent dweller. He doesn't have a fixed dwelling, so he's a sojourner, and I get that about the walk of faith. But what about the well? The well is the place you have to have sustenance by. It's the water that you need, and it is, brothers and sisters, the well of grace, the well of grace. It is there, but you gotta make use of the means of grace. You've got to go to that word. You've got to go to that place of prayer, quiet. You've got to go to the house of God and hear the word. That's how you get grace, and that's what sustains you in this wall. So, what do you do now? You build the altar, or restore it, depending on what it is. You pitch that tent, and you dig the well. That's a walk by faith. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, we thank Thee for the time in Thy Word. Bless us, Lord, with grace and power. May we walk out of here walking closer to our God, walking that simple childlike faith. In Christ's name, amen. Thank you for spending some time with us today around the Word of God. For further information visit our website at ltbs.tv. We look forward to joining with you next time as we seek to let the Bible speak once again.