Well, hello everyone, and welcome back. This is our Daily Devotional for Tuesday, January 28th, 2024, and I am delighted to have this time with you. I hope that it finds everybody doing well and making their way through this work week or retirement week or school week or, well, I don't know, whatever kind of week it is for you. I'm glad that we have this opportunity together, and I appreciate the little interlude you let me take yesterday as we addressed a different subject. Namely the things that have been going on around the church and thank you all for your kind words nevertheless today We are back at it y'all back at it Genesis chapter 26 actually finished chapter 25 We're just rolling through and finishing chapter 25 Oh, unless my memory serves me incorrectly. Yes, we're in chapter 26. There's only 50 chapters in Genesis. So we are making our way through. It is really my hope and my prayer that we finish up Genesis. I would love to finish it up by the time we take our summer break. I don't know. We'll have to see. Days like today, we take a little bit larger piece of Genesis. There's been days where we've focused in on a verse. Yet again, that reminds me, when you're reading the scriptures, don't be in a rush, y'all. Take the time necessary to understand what you are reading, okay? This is not about checking off something on a list or whatever like that, no. We go to God's Word because it is the living Word of God. It is the Word of life, and we are captive to the Word of God. And so it's not just a matter of checking it off of a list, okay? Is it good to read the Bible? Yes, absolutely. Is it good to read the Bible just to say that you read the Bible? Not so much, okay? Read God's Word expecting the Holy Spirit to illuminate it to you, asking God to show you what he would have you see. That's why I pray that way every time we get together, but Nevertheless, enough of that. Let's get to where we are today. Yesterday, again, we had a little interlude. When we were together on Friday, we saw the account of Jacob and Esau, right, where Esau despised his birthright, sold it to Jacob. Jacob was deceptive. And if you're ever wondering, well, where did he get it from? And if you just say, well, he got it from his granddaddy. Abraham was a deceptive dude, and sometimes he was. Well, it's not just from his granddaddy. It's also from Isaac. Why do I say that? Well, we'll see today as we read a story about Isaac and Abimelech and something that just sounds so familiar. I wonder where it's like deja vu all over again. Anyway, let's pray and then we'll dig in and we'll see what's going on here. Father, would you be with us now and guide us by your Holy Spirit? As I've just talked about, it's our desire to know, to understand, to see what you would have us to see and be convicted by your word so that we would go forward well. So please, Father, work in our hearts and minds in this time by your Holy Spirit, and we pray it all in Jesus' name, amen. All right, y'all. So Genesis chapter 26 is fascinating. What's the timeline of this? Do we have chapter 25 as an overarching chapter where we're introduced to Jacob and Esau? I think so. Chapter 26 drops back some. We'll go back to Jacob and Esau. But nevertheless, where we find ourselves in Genesis chapter 26, and the timeline's not terribly important, but we see life progressing. Okay? And we've seen several examples of this as we've read the narratives of Abraham's life. Well, now we're doing the same thing with Isaac. And what we find is fascinating. Again, I said it's like deja vu all over again. Why? Well, chapter 26, verse 1, it says, Now there was a famine in the land, besides the earlier famine of Abraham's time. And Isaac went to Abimelech, king of the Philistines, in Gerob. All right, time out. We're given a little hint about this in chapter 26, but what it's actually referencing is all the way back in Genesis chapter 12. Abraham receives the call from God. He's still Abram at this point, not Abraham yet. But in chapter 12, verse 10, now there was a famine in the land, and Abraham went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. Different set of circumstances, but famine nonetheless. You know what famine is? It's a time of drought, it's when the crops don't make, I mean, it is not a happy time, okay? In fact, it's a devastating time. Lots and lots of people die from starvation, amongst other things. And the common practice was if there's a famine in the land, you go to a place where there's not a famine. So, as we just read here, there was a famine in the land besides the earlier famine of Abraham's time. And Isaac went to a Biblical king of the Philistines in Gerar. Verse two, 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 continue the oath I swore to your father, Abraham. He continues on, verse 4, it says, 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, because Abraham obeyed me and kept my requirements and my commands and my decrees and my laws. So, Isaac stayed in Gerar. All right, now, There's a couple of things that we need to bring out here. One of which is God's faithfulness. God's faithfulness in continuing his covenant promises. He's the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for a reason, y'all. He made these promises to Abraham. He's continuing them to Isaac. And while that specific promise, we don't exactly see that same thing here where it's a promise that God attaches to a specific plot of land, you know, that kind of thing. Fast forward to Acts chapter 2, what do we find? We find that Peter preaches his great sermon at Pentecost and the men are cut to the heart and said, brothers, what must we do to be saved? And he says to them, repent, believe on the name of Jesus Christ to be baptized. This promise is for you and for your children. and for those who are far off. It's the promise of faith, y'all. And as we just read about here, this promise was to Abraham and to Isaac. And realize, verse five can be misunderstood. He says, because Abraham obeyed me and kept my requirements and my commands and my decrees and my laws. This sounds like a works-based righteousness. It's not. Rewind again, and we're not gonna read it back to chapter 12. It wasn't his works that justified Abraham. Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. It was always about the faith. But God is referencing Abraham's faithfulness here. And in doing so, he said, hey, listen, your dad did this. You should do this too. So we see God's covenant renewed. His promise is given. And just what is that covenant? Two main features, okay? There's stuff in the there and in the then, okay? The lands that I will show you, I'm gonna give them to you, possessions, all these different things. But deeper than that, this promise of all nations on earth will be blessed. Y'all, this is not talking about ethnic Judaism. I mean, ethnic Judaism has been a blessing. Jews have done a lot of really good things. But, y'all, what he's talking about there is Jesus. For it's in the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that the Messiah would come. That's the source of the descendants being as numerous as the stars in the skies, right? Remember Galatians chapter three? If your faith is in Jesus Christ, you are, or Abraham is your father. Okay, that's the real spiritual descendancy of Abraham. So that's confirmed, all right? And we say, okay, great. Isaac is not gonna do what Abraham did. If you rewind, you find out in chapter 12 that Abraham did go down to Egypt, and he got there, and it talks about the fact that his wife Sarai was exceedingly beautiful, And he was scared that one of the men of Egypt was gonna kill him and take her. And so when they got there, he said, oh, yeah, that's my sister. Pharaoh took her into his household, took her to be his, a plague befell them, all sorts of bad things happened. And you might say, yeah, okay, woo, that's weird. Glad that stuff never happened again. Verse seven, when the men of that place asked him about his wife, he said, She is my sister, because he was afraid to say she is my wife. You know, this is where if I had, what is it? Oh, what's this, the trombone? Maybe, I don't know, go wah, wah, wah, wah. You know, if I had one, I would do that. I should have had a soundboard to play that with, because he does the same thing that his dad did, y'all. No, not exactly. I mean, he stayed in the land that God said, but same exact principle. And she was, she was a beautiful woman, But y'all, I mean, I just got to say this. Where's the manliness here? I mean, I don't understand. And God got hold of Abraham, right? God got hold of Abraham and he snapped to his senses and got things under control eventually. But at what point does the husband say, that's my wife. That's my wife that you're talking about here. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, Isaac was terrified. We know that he was a stranger in a strange land. He was living as an alien, but nevertheless, he said, she is my wife, he thought. Continuing on, the men of this place might kill me on account of Rebecca because she is beautiful. Right there at the end of verse eight. Now, unlike what happened in Genesis chapter 12 with Abraham and with Egypt, Thankfully, the Lord intervened. Verse 8, when Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife, Rebekah. So you get the idea. He looks down and he sees Isaac doing something that you wouldn't do with your sister. Okay, and I'm just gonna leave it at that. All right, so that's what he sees. Verse nine, so Abimelech summoned Isaac and said, she is really your wife. Why did you say she's my sister? Isaac answered him, because I thought I might lose my life on account of her. Then Abimelech said, what is this you have done to us? One of the men might well have slept with your wife and you would have brought guilt upon us all. So Abimelech gave orders to all the people, anyone who molests this man or his wife shall surely be put to death. Now, time out, we're gonna stop right here because y'all, there's two more lessons to be learned here. And the first one is this, you can do something for, look, there's lots of ways to say this, you can do the wrong thing for the right reasons and it's still wrong. You can do the right thing for the wrong reasons, and it's still wrong. What Isaac did here was he was deceptive, okay? He was a deceiver. He came up with this ruse, this cunning attempt to trick Abimelech and all the men of Gerar in an effort to protect himself. And y'all, there's nothing wrong with protecting yourself. Yeah, that's a right thing to do, but he did it by the wrong means, you see. And he acted deceptively, and so the first lesson that this teaches us is when you act deceptively, the propensity to harm yourself is not just there. Also, there's a grand propensity to harm others. You know, this is Isaac. He's the one that was supposed to be right with the Lord Jehovah. God came to him to give this warning, don't go down to Egypt, all this kind of stuff, and yet it's the king of the Philistines that say, what are you doing, man? You could have cursed all of us with this. What's wrong with you? And then he gives this order that any man who molests Isaac or his wife be put to death, molest in the truest sense of the word, in terms of hassles them, causes them problems. The king of the Philistines got it, but Isaac didn't. Which leads to the second lesson here, y'all. You know, when we talk about the Lord's intervention and when we talk about the ways that the Lord provides, we have lots of things in mind, but one of the ways that the Lord provides is he intervenes not because of us, but in spite of us. Or he works in our situations, not through our wisdom and grandeur, but in spite of our stupidity. He's really, really good at doing that. I speak from experience. Okay, but here's the thing. Here's the challenge that we face. As it is with prayer, so it is with things that we really want, things that we plan for. Sometimes the Lord doesn't do things like we think he should do things. That's just how it goes. Sometimes we might want something so badly and we pray and pray and pray for it, and for whatever reason, the answer is no, or not yet, or instead of giving you this thing right here, I'm gonna give you that thing over there. Sometimes, I had this conversation with a lady that visited our church this past Lord's Day. She talked about her adult children and how none of them are in church. And she's an older lady, and I said, ma'am, I said, I want to encourage you with something. You know that prayer has no expiration date. And the moment that you die, it doesn't mean that your prayers just wear off. God hears your prayers, but sometimes his timeline and answering doesn't exactly fit into our timeline of when it ought to be answered. But y'all, often enough, you know what that is? That's the Lord intervening. That's the Lord working in the situations that we find ourselves in that are seemingly unredeemable. That's the Lord taking situations that you look at and you say, how did that even happen? He's always working. He uses so many different things to be at the forefront of our lives, because you see, that's what God wants. It's not hard to figure out. We serve a jealous God. That doesn't mean jealous in a sinful sense, but jealous as in He loves us and He doesn't want us to go astray. There's a reason why the commandments begin as they do, no other gods before Him. And then it moves on to graven images. The Lord intervenes to prevent us from facing the consequences oftentimes of our own very poor decisions. And a third lesson that I'll kind of sort of get to today, I'll just say it this way. Isaac shows us something really valuable, and that is that the Lord can draw a straight line with a crooked stick. Say that again, the Lord can draw a straight line with a crooked stick. If he could use a man like Isaac, he could use a man like Abraham. If he could use a man like Jacob, he can use a man like me. and I don't deserve for him to, but he's in the business of that. So, with all these things in mind, I think a shorter devotional is fitting today. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our God and our Father, we thank you so much that you are able. Oh, you're able to do immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine. And when we're in those situations where things aren't working like we think they should, help us to trust you. Let us turn to you, not doubting your powerful hand, knowing that you work, not only because of us, you work in spite of us, and you love us. So help us to love you and one another, and we pray it in Christ's name, amen. Well, I'd like to thank you all for being a part of this time. Lord willing, we'll be back tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. Now look, we're getting close here. Tomorrow is Wednesday, so that means Wednesday night, 6.45 to 7.30, Bible study, we're in the book of Hebrews, but you can ask questions about anything in the world you wanna ask questions about. If it's about a long time ago, I'll probably say I was young and I needed the money. That's my standard line. But really and truly, if it's about Revelation, we started Revelation this past week, whatever, absolutely love to have you there. It's informal, interactive. It's not a worship service. It's just Bible study, and then we pray, and that's it. So we would love to have you here at Old Providence in Providence Hall 645 tomorrow, not tonight. unless you're watching this Wednesday, the 29th. But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. Take care, and we'll see you soon.