Please turn in your Bibles to Genesis 26. And verse 18, we hope to look at the section we read together and some of the context as well. But let us take as our focus verse 18. And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abram his father. For the Philistines has stopped them after the death of Abraham. And he called their names after the names by which his father had called them." Well, congregation, we come to the life of Isaac and Isaac may be the more neglected one of the three patriarchs, Abram, Isaac, and Jacob. He comes in the middle, and sometimes we overlook what's in the middle. And maybe with Isaac, that's the case as well. But there's a lot to learn from God's word about Isaac. And the most important thing that we can take from Isaac is that God was not ashamed to call himself the God of Isaac. He was not ashamed to call himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We read in the Bible in Exodus 3 verse 15. And that is a miracle because Isaac was a sinner like you and like me. And even just previous to our scripture reading, we find him among the Philistines lying about his relationship to Rebecca, a sin that also his father fell into. You see how there can be generational sins that sons fall into, the sins of the fathers. They repeat them. But the Bible doesn't leave us there, where sin abounds, grace much more abounds. And God is not ashamed to call himself the God of Isaac. It's all the love of God. It's all the grace of God. And it's true that grace doesn't run in the veins, so to speak. We can never presume that simply because we had a godly father or a godly mother that all is well. And yet, the Lord is often pleased to work His grace in the line of the generations. And we ought to pray for that. And we ought to be diligent in raising the generation to come in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Of course, always looking to the Lord for Him to do that wonder of grace. and to call himself the God of our children as well. So that, first of all, God calls himself the God of Isaac. But the second thing, and it's related to it, and that is that Isaac owes everything to God. All good that comes his way, whether temporal or spiritual, for soul, for body, for life, for death, it all comes from God. He's the God of Isaac. And Isaac lives today with God. God is not a God of the dead, but a God of the living. As the Lord Jesus says when he mentions Isaac in Matthew 22, verse 32, he says, God does not call himself the God of the dead, but rather of the living. Isaac owed everything, including life, including his eternal inheritance he owed to the Lord. But here in our chapter, we see more concrete and more practical things, and we see three things here up front. And that is that prosperity comes to Isaac from the Lord. And you see that in verse 12 through 14, that the Lord gives Isaac prosperity. In fact, great prosperity. Isaac sowed and received in the same year a hundredfold. In the parable of the sower, the Lord speaks of some 30, some 60, some a hundredfold. And Isaac receives in this one year a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him. But there's not just prosperity in the life of God's people, there's also adversity and right on the heels of it. As so often also in our own lives. There's the checkerboard, isn't there, as one has called it. The checkerboard of black and white, of dark and light. And God knows exactly how to meet that out. And we not only see prosperity, we see adversity. Because there is in the life of Isaac, besides this good harvest, there are also disappointments, especially in his relationship with the surrounding people, with the Philistines. Though Isaac seems to have been a peace-loving man, It seems like the Philistines are constantly at his heel. And there's a trail of fighting and strife that comes behind Isaac. Look at verse 20. And the herdsmen of Gerar did strive with Isaac's herdmen, saying, the water is ours. He called the name of the well Esek, which means strife. So he had to leave this place and forever in his mind it was known as strife. And then it gets even worse because in verse 21, they digged an other well and strove for that also. He thought he escaped the one strife, but here he's in even worse strife. He called the name of it sitna, which means hatred. There was such toxicness between him and the Philistines at this point that the only thing he could say was hatred. And for a peace-loving man like Isaac, this was most difficult. No doubt he could have identified with Psalm 120, where the psalmist says, woe unto me that I dwell in Mesech, in the tents of Kadar. And he goes on to say, I am for peace, but the people around me, they want war. They are for war. And Isaac could no doubt have said that as well. So there's prosperity in his life, there's adversity in his life. And then there's this remarkable instance where on the heels of this strife and hatred, there's this remarkable evidence of the Lord's hand making room for Isaac and his family. Verse 22, and he removed from fence 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. He doesn't ascribe this season of peace and rest to himself. or to good fortune, or even to the Philistines. No, he ascribes it to the Lord. He sees the hand of the Lord at work. The Lord has made room for Isaac and for his family. And he calls that place the Lord who makes room. And what a monument that is. What a testimony that is for us as well. You know, there are seasons in the life of God's people in which they feel hemmed in, oppressed even, where you long for room, for space to breathe. Have you never had that? When it seems like you can't catch your breath, where you're oppressed on every side, You go over there, and that doesn't work out. You go over there, and there's war. There's difficulty. And you're about to give up, and wonderfully, mysteriously, something happens. There's room. There's space. There's a place to breathe. and you didn't do that yourself, and others even didn't make that for you, but you say, Rehoboth, the Lord has made room. And we just take that word, just for a brief moment here, Rehoboth. Rehoboth really gets at what the Lord does in his grace, doesn't he? He is a room maker. He makes room where there's no room. He does that still today. Because in human hearts, where there is by nature no room for the Lord, the Lord can come and does. And he's done this in each of our lives in whom the Lord has worked. He makes room for himself. He stretches. He opens what is closed. He bends. He melts, He renders pliable that which is recalcitrant. He bends and He makes room for Himself. Thanks be to God that when the Lord Jesus Christ came into this world and He came to Bethlehem where there was no room for Him in the inn, that he made room for himself. Even in a stable. Even in the open field, we would say. Even among the animals. He was content to be there, outside. And his whole life long, he went about making room. making room for his father, making room for his grace, making room for himself, making room for the Holy Spirit in his heart. And even when he is about to go to heaven, he says to his disciples, I go to prepare a place for you. They hadn't prepared a place for him. But He makes room. And of course, there is in the heart of God from all eternity, in the heart of the Father, there is by grace, there is room. But Christ goes and makes room by His one sacrifice for sin forever. He, as it were, He covers it with blood, His own blood. Because there would be no room for me as a sinner, for you as a sinner. apart from the blood of Christ. Because of the blood, there is room in the Father's house with the many rooms, with the many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you. Isn't it amazing that the Lord, for whom we never prepared any room, that He goes and prepares a room, not on the earth, but in heaven, in the heart of the Father. Amazing grace. And that's, congregation, why we can breathe the fresh air of the Spirit of God, who gives room, who gives life, who gives rest, who gives peace. And right on the heels of this experience of Rehoboth, the Lord appears to Isaac and seals some of this very thing to Isaac's heart. And he went up from there. Went up from there. From thence to Beersheba and the Lord appeared unto him the same night and said I am the God of Abram thy father fear not for I am with thee and will bless thee and multiply thy seed for my servant Abram's sake. In other words The Lord comes here to Isaac. Isaac's not just content with an experience in Providence whereby the Lord just remarkably makes some space for him. No, that's not enough. But the Lord himself comes and he says, Isaac, I am God. I'm the God of Abraham, your father. Don't be afraid because I'm with you. I am dwelling with you. I am near to you. I will come and fill this place that I've made for you. And I'm with you. And together, you will have blessing. And you will multiply. And your seed will multiply. and you will be truly fruitful as you said, but because of me and because of my presence. Isn't this what we call in the New Testament, Christ with you, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Do you know how Paul prays it? I wonder if you pray this. He says, I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and on earth is named, that he would give you strength, that Christ might dwell in your hearts by faith. that rooted and grounded in love you might know what it's impossible to know except with all the saints. And when the Lord strengthens you, you know it. And that is Christ with you and the love of Christ of which there are no boundaries. That you may know something of the height and the depth and the breadth and the length of the love of God which passes knowledge. That is space. That is infinite space that the Lord makes room for, his love in your heart, and that he himself comes along with that, and he pours that out in your heart. And that is so enriching. Then the Philistines don't matter. Then your herds and your flocks and your bank accounts and even your prosperity and adversity, they all fall away compared to Christ with me. I shall not fear what a host of sin would do. Do you know this God? of Rehoboth, the God who makes room for sinners. Remember, Isaac is a sinner like you, like me. Someone who doesn't of himself make room for the Lord, but the Lord comes and makes room for him and lives with him. Well, the covenant made in days of old with Abraham, he does uphold. And that connection between what God did for Abraham and what God did for Isaac and how that worked out in his life, that's what I wanna focus on the rest of our time. And we wanna see that especially from verse 18, rather briefly. 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 Abram. And he called their names after the names by which his father had called them. There's a nugget of truth here. And I believe it relates to us, to all of us, and to our lives here today. And there's three final lessons I want us to take from this. And the first is this. May we never forget where our faithful fathers and mothers found life. We do well never to forget where our faithful fathers and mothers found spiritual life. Now in the Middle East, as really anywhere, you can't go long without water. You live near a lake or a river, fresh water, and if you don't, you make a well for yourself, or you have a cistern that can collect the water that falls, and you have these rocky cisterns that can hold it. But here for Isaac, this is a desert region, and he can't depend on rainfall. The Mediterranean Sea is salty. So he needs a source of water. And this describes all of us spiritually, that since paradise, we are removed from the fountain of living waters. And Isaac here finds water in the same place that Abraham found it. He goes and digs in the place where Abraham, in a previous day, found water. He must have remembered. And if he himself didn't remember, oh, my father found water there. maybe from Eliezer or from other family members, ah, this is where Abraham dug and he found water. In the need of the moment, it made Isaac and his family look and dig for water. And the lesson that I want us to take from this is that we do well to ask where it was that the Lord spoke to those who went before us, who were true fathers and mothers in Israel. We shouldn't be so arrogant as to act as if we can find the truth ourselves. We can look here, we can look there. We'll dig over there, we'll dig over there without asking where did the faithful who went before, where did they find thirst quenching, soul enriching water? We've had a number of deaths in the midst of the congregation recently and the Chansky Martin family have just lost a dear mother who for many years found water in the word of God and in the son of God. And people like that who have gone before us have so much to teach us. We do well to learn from the generation that has gone before us. And they do well to teach us as much as they are able. The Bible talks about this. Psalm 78 that we looked at a number of weeks ago. That fathers would teach their children to set their hope in God and not forsake the God of their fathers. And that's why Abram's name is mentioned here a number of times. The Lord says in verse 24, I am the God of Abram, thy father. And Isaac here has learned to go back to those places where Abraham dug and found water. And if we just wanna take this lesson from us, younger people, I urge you, while you're young, to learn from those who have found the Lord in their life, in their youth, or later on. and who are used to communion with God. And who know the places where God meets with his people. Obviously on the basis of God's word, we'll come to that later. And to learn from them. And to not reinvent the wheel as if there's nothing to be learned from the past. No, the Bible says look to the old paths in which there is life. That you might find life. So often, our own generation and generations before us, they think that let us set aside everything from the past and let's go our own way and we'll figure it out ourselves and everything from the past is bad and everything from today is good. Well, that is historically ignorant and it's not biblical. Indeed, if there's error in the past, we must throw it away. But that which is good, That's what that which has proved revitalizing, strengthening, satisfying in the true sense of the word. May we search and find there this life-giving water. We sang of it, I long as in the times of old, I power and glory to behold. within thy holy place, the place where God has met with his people in times past. So that, first of all, we do well not to forget where our faithful fathers and mothers found life. But secondly, this is a sobering lesson, the spiritual riches of the past get covered over and the wells get plugged up. Spiritual riches from the past get covered over and wells get plugged up. It's a remarkable thing that we read here about the Philistines that they had stopped them. So here was a well that Abram had dug and from which he had drunk and his flocks and his herds and his families. And presumably in his absence, as he was traveling around, the Philistines didn't just leave these open. They came around and they filled them up. They threw dirt and sand and rocks and other things. They filled up these wells. Amazing thing, isn't it? Why would they do that? Well, I read about this and it seems that different people groups, if they didn't want other people groups near them, they'd plug up their wells so as to drive them away. So that if these people would come back and look for their old wells and not find them, well maybe they'd move on. And this was a way of marking out your territory and keeping these other nations that you perceived as a threat, you'd keep them small, you'd keep them at a distance, and you would play games this way. And certainly, these Philistines, they were, for the most part, not friends to the patriarchs. They strove with them, as we saw. They fought with them. And clearly, by stopping up these wells of Abraham, they sought to drive Isaac and other descendants of Abraham away. Dear friends, isn't this exactly what Satan loves to do in our own day, as well? And the world around us does not like it, that the church has its fresh wells from which to drink and from which it survives and thrives. Satan is constantly throwing rocks and mud and dirt into the things and the places where the godly have found refreshment and satisfaction and solace throughout the ages. Satan is warring constantly to deprive the church and God's people of their water sources. And the world is as well. Why do you think for hundreds of years Satan and the world have assaulted the doctrine of scripture? Telling people in university and everywhere that the Bible cannot be trusted. That you shouldn't look there for the water of life. And how many university professors and theorists and atheists and unbelievers have been throwing rocks and mud and dirt into those wells from which the godly have drunk countless times? So much so that people come there and your college professor says, oh, don't believe this book. It's old-fashioned. There's nothing there. Move on. Look over here. Look at the wisdom over here. Look over there for the meaning of life. It's just as well and easier. This is constantly going on. Why is there such venom, such hatred on the part of the world, the part of Satan, those very places where the church has drawn fresh water for the souls of thirsty people time and again. I mentioned the Bible. What a well the Bible is. Oh, what a well to keep unstopped, to keep open, to keep as it were right there. You can't go a day without your Bible. You need fresh water from the word of God. How about Christ and the doctrine of Christ? Have you ever seen such a war against Christ as the Son of God, as the God-man in whom there is reconciliation, full and free? It seems like every heresy or every other heresy has to do with Christ. Somehow you can't trust his sinlessness. Or that he's not truly God. Or that he's not truly man. Or it seems like all the heretics, they go after the doctrine of Christ. And what are they doing? They're stopping up the well of water from which every godly person the world over has ever found refreshment and life. Christ himself said, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. No wonder the world has made Christ the target of what it tries to hide, what it tries to cover up. Or how about thirdly, the atonement? The death of death in the death of Christ. Oh, what a well of comfort, of life the atonement is, Calvary. And yet how many clog it up? All sorts of ways. They detract from it by movies that try to depict this. And they never touch it. And they're idolatrous to begin with. Or theories about the atonement. And there seems to be every year, every couple years, there's a new doctrine of the atonement. In congregation, it's the Philistines who are trying to cover up this well of the atonement from which refreshing water can flow and be found. Sadly, even in the church. Sadly, our own human hearts can't be trusted because so often we go around the atonement. We go away from the atonement. How we need to pray, keep thou thy cross before my closing eyes. Lord, thy cross. is all my soul needs. Or how about the gospel? What a well the gospel is, the gospel of free and sovereign grace. Oh, how open this fountain is for sin and for uncleanness, where sinners may come and drink freely, and yet so many are covering it up. Even in the church, they're protecting the gospel, they think. And so they build all kinds of fences around it. And one thing they make very clear is, sinners as they are in their sin, they can't just come to the gospel. It needs to be guarded. It needs to be hemmed in. And essentially what's happening is we're covering it up. We're throwing stones into it. Mud and dirt and the thirsty. I was going to say they can drink. The congregation here we come to the third point and may the Lord impress this upon this upon all of us. The third lesson besides we should never forget where our faithful fathers and mothers found life. We should realize that the spiritual riches of the past get covered over and wells get plugged up again and again. But thirdly and lastly, we do well to make it our life's business to unplug the wells that have been plugged up and drink and call others to drink. from the wells of salvation. We do well to unplug the wells that have been plugged up and to drink and to call others far and wide to come to the well of salvation and drink. What did it look like? Isaac and his men, they came somewhere and Isaac said, I think I remember a well right here. Yeah, there was a stone there, there was this over here, I think it's right here. Men start digging. And there they were. They would dig, and they would dig, and maybe after a while nothing happened. And they kept on digging, and they kept on digging. Hard work, but water. You need water. You can't do without water. And sure enough, the last shovel went in. I think I got water, and water would spring up, and the well that the Philistines had stopped up, it opened up, and water began to flow again. Oh, dear friends, that, so we must make the business of our life to go to those wells and to dig and to drink until we thirst no more. Oh, dear friends, we're tempted, aren't we? I find this in myself. Maybe you do, too, especially in days like today. We mourn. We grieve. We wring our hands. How bad the world is. Oh, it couldn't get any worse. And the Philistines are so busy. And the wells are covered up. And where is this all going to go? And I wonder if there's ever going to be a drop of water again for myself and for my children and for the next generation. Oh, dear friends, don't stand there wringing your hands, but put in the shovel and start digging and find the soul-refreshing life-giving water that has always been there. It's always there. The river of God, the Bible says, is full of water. for sinners. It matters not who. I don't care if you came in this building and you've never drunk before, but there is in the Word of God, in the Christ of God, in the Calvary that was in the heart of God, and in the gospel of God, there's water for thirsty souls to drink. Oh, friends, come, come then close and put in the shovel of faith and drink till you thirst no more. And call others, call others and say, you know, those Philistines, they covered them up. Those wells are open. The well of Scripture is still open. The well of the gospel is still open. The well of the love of God in Christ on Calvary is still open. Oh, thirsty soul, stoop, slack your thirst. This is it. This is our calling. This is our hope. This is our life. Don't look to the Philistines. Don't look even to your own sins. All the times maybe you through some rocks, through some mud, through some dirt. The river is there, oh drink, drink abundantly and be satisfied with the riches of the river of God, which is full of water.