Genesis 26 - Part A

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I'm coming right behind you. Tonight we read about the man who came right behind Abraham. That was his son, Isaac. He was, unfortunately, following in his father's footsteps.

The wrong footsteps. Abraham was a man of faith. Isaac, I suppose, was as well, for God does speak to him and promised to bless him. But the footsteps that Isaac follows from Abraham were not the best choices.

You've heard the old axiom, like father, like son. And we're going to see how he was like his father in two respects, two failures that are familiar to us by now. Number one, he ran away at a time of famine to a place he thought would provide better for him than the place God told him to be in, the land of promise. Abraham did that twice. And, interestingly, he lies about his wife calling his wife his sister.

Rings a bell? Dad did that twice. Once in chapter 12, when there was a famine, he went down to Egypt. And once in chapter 20, when there was a famine, and he went down to Gerar, where the Philistines dwelt. And that is where his son goes, following in his father's footsteps. Following in the bad, wrong example of his father. Now, I want to clear up an issue, because it seems to be an issue every few years that surfaces in the Christian church about this idea of generational curses.

Certain pockets of Christendom seem to gravitate toward the false doctrine of, if your parents did something, you have a curse, and it's generational, and there's only certain kind of incantational things that can break that curse. And it stems from, originally, the second commandment. And I want you to turn to the second commandment for just a moment, and that is Exodus chapter 20. Exodus chapter 20. I know you're thinking, wait a minute, you said Genesis 26 tonight, now you're starting us off in Exodus 20.

Well, you're used to that by now. The second commandment is verse 4, you shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments. First of all, you'll notice something, that God is referring to unbelievers. Those who hate me is the curse promised to, not to his children who are believers. A believer in God, a follower of Christ, could hardly be under the category of those who hate God. So the curse is to those who hate me.

But, verse 6, showing mercy to thousands, I'll reserve that for later tonight, to those who love me and keep my commandments. Now certainly children will feel the negative impact of a parent's decision. That is, and in the context here of idolatry, if a parent exposes the family to idolatry via his or her own practice of idolatry, whatever a child sees, reinforced in the behavior patterns of mom and dad, that child is more likely to commit that same kind of sin from one generation to the next, because they're exposed.

Now here's the greater lesson. We never sin in isolation. When Abraham sinned, when he failed to obey and failed to believe God on a couple of those occasions by running away and then subsequently by lying, he just didn't sin in isolation. It wasn't just him sinning against God. It affected his family. It affected certainly Sarah, his wife. But his kids would find out eventually about the shenanigans of Pops and how he lapsed in faith and they who looked up to their father. This would certainly have an impact upon them.

So simply put, a disobedient believer is a menace to everyone, as Abraham was and as Isaac is. So there are certain things that your parents did that they passed down to you. Are you affected by your parents' choices and behavior? Certainly. Would you have a propensity to do the same kinds of things? Absolutely. But do you have to do them because there's some generational curse?

Absolutely not. That curse or pattern of sin is broken by the power of God in your life. Let God's power break it.

Now, my parents had certain behaviors, all of our parents do, and perhaps that instilled certain inclination and proclivities in myself to do the same kinds of things. For instance, whenever my dad got frustrated, he had a short fuse and he got angry very quickly. He'd blow up. And when he'd blow up, he'd swear.

We all heard it. I had three older brothers who also saw that and they also did that. I'm not saying they did it and I didn't.

I did it as well. They simply reinforced that it was okay to swear when you're frustrated and you get angry. But when I came to Christ, I watched God deal with that area of my life. I no longer get frustrated or angered easily, and when I do get angered, I don't swear. My mother was a smoker when I was younger, always had a cigarette in her hand. That made an impression on me so that when I was 10 years of age, I had my first cigarette and I kept smoking until I was 20. When I came to Christ, I quit.

The behaviors of your parents or the environment in which you were raised does not necessitate a stronghold upon your life. If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away.

Behold, all things have become new. But unfortunately, you live in a culture that is enabling you to label behaviors as well. It's a disease or it's codependency or you're the adult child of a left-handed cigar-smoking golfer.

So chances are you're going to be a left-handed cigar-smoking golfer too. Isaac did not have to. In fact, 90 years have passed between Abraham's foray into Gerar and over 100 years when he sauntered down to Egypt to disbelieve God.

A long time had passed. There really was no excuse for him at all. So we go now to chapter 26 of Genesis and we watch his first failure in the first few verses. There was a famine in the land, the land being the land God promised to Abraham and now Isaac and later Jacob. Beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham and Isaac went to Abimelech, the king of the Philistines in Gerar.

That's his first failure. Then the Lord appeared to him and said, Do not go down to Egypt, live in the land of which I shall tell you. You discover that twice in Isaac's life the Lord appeared to him.

Now that's significant. I've never had the Lord really appear to me. Twice the Lord appeared to him.

Once at the beginning of this chapter and later on once toward the end of the chapter. But with Abraham, the Lord appeared eight different times. On eight different occasions the Lord appeared to Abraham.

Now there's something to make a note of. Isaac is one of the great patriarchs, but he's not a remarkable person. What I mean by that is if you go simply by real estate in the Bible, there's not a whole lot said about him. There's a lot said about Abraham, 14 chapters. There's a lot said about Jacob, 11 chapters, but just about everything that Isaac did is in one chapter.

This is it. Oh, there's a little bit in chapter 25 about him praying for his wife and about the kids that they had, but really it's incidental to the main story of the two kids, Jacob and Esau, which will follow in chapter 27. This is sort of a parenthetical statement to show you the two failures of this man's life.

So just about everything he did is in one chapter, 14 for Abraham, 11 for Jacob. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we return to Skip's teaching, if you've ever wondered what the Bible has to say about some of our culture's big issues, we have a great resource for you. When you give a gift of $50 or more this month to support the ministry of Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send you God Speaks, Biblical Answers for Today's Issues. This special resource bundle contains six of Pastor Skip's booklets that address topics like suicide, why the truth matters, heaven and hell, and the church's response to racism. You'll gain valuable insight into what God's word says about the big questions in our culture and get equipped to stand for the timeless truth of scripture.

Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copy when you give $50 or more. Now let's get back to Skip for more of today's teaching. As Griffith Thomas said of him, Isaac was the ordinary son of a great father and the ordinary father of a great son. Yet he is still to be respected and honored because he was one of the patriarchs. By the way, one of God's names is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

So I'm not saying he's a lightweight at all. But in comparison to the others, he just doesn't have the real estate that is given to him. Well, evidently, Isaac is on his way to Egypt.

How do I know that? Because God says, don't go down to Egypt. Which would indicate he's on his way down to Egypt, exactly. So he's on the way down to Egypt because there's a famine in the land, much like what Abraham did in chapter 12 of Genesis, a hundred plus years before this.

Because there's a famine and he must not believe that God is able to take care of him in the land of Canaan. By the way, if you wonder why would he go down to Egypt, why would he go down south if there's a famine in that region, wouldn't there be a famine down in Egypt as well as Canaan? Well, yes, but Egypt was better equipped. It was the breadbasket of the ancient world.

And here was the difference. They had a big river, the Nile River, and it emptied at the Nile River Delta into the ocean. And so that water provided a lush basis for agriculture that did not necessarily depend on rainfall, whereas the land of Canaan was almost solely dependent on rainfall. Even its lake, the Galilee, and its river, the Jordan, needed to be early replenished and still does with rainwater. That's why in Deuteronomy, the 11th chapter, God tells the children of Israel, the land that I am taking you into is not like the land of Egypt, where you had plenty of water, the Nile River. But the land that I bring you into is a land of hills and valleys that drinks in the water from the rain of heaven. And if you obey me and trust me, I will give you the early rain as well as the latter rain. The whole winter season at the early part and the latter part, what they call in Hebrew the yoreh and the malkosh, the early and the latter rain, I'll bless you with that. So to be in the land of Canaan was a place of faith. You couldn't just go down to the river and pump the water into your vegetable garden. You had to trust that the Lord was going to bring it from heaven. Well, it hadn't rained for a long time. There's a famine in the land.

What do you do? Do what Dad did. Dad went down to Egypt.

He survived. But Egypt is always seen as a negative move in the Bible. It would be sort of like equating it to the world, going back to the world to get your provision rather than trusting the Lord in your new place, the new life, looking to the world. Now, unfortunately, a lot of us believers begin the Christian life with these unrealistic expectations. And we leave the prayer room and we think what they told us was happily ever after. Well, true. Ultimately, that is true. But in the meantime, there's hills and valleys and places of trust and places of blessing and places of famine. But because they have the happily ever after white picket fence, everything's going to be perfect. I'll never struggle ever, ever again. The first struggle that happens in their life, they want to run back to Egypt. This isn't what I expected.

This is hard. Oh, that's a good enough reason to sort of bag the whole Christian thing and go back to what? The path to hell?

Not a good idea. But that's how a lot of us think. So it brings up this question. If there's famine in the promised land, why? If that's the land God said, I'll bless you in, why would God allow there to be a famine in the land God told them to go to? Here God telling them to go to this land as soon as they get there, famine. And then later on more famine. And now more famine.

Why? Well, the answer is pretty easy. Because your faith in God is really worthless unless it's tested. How do you know if your faith is really valuable, if it really works? Do you think your faith only grows by a steady diet of blessing after blessing after blessing?

I'm under the spout where the glory comes out? 24-7? That's the Christian life?

Your best life now? It takes no faith for that. I'll tell you what takes faith is when you look at your cupboards and there's nothing in them in your bank account, and there's, oh boy, nothing there.

In fact, negative balance. And you say as you close it, God is good. All the time. He'll take care of me no matter what. This is the land He brought me into. If I die, I die.

What's the worst that can happen? I die, I lose a few pounds, or I die and I go to heaven. God says, dwell in this land.

And I will be with you and bless you. For to you and your descendants, I give all of these lands, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father. Stay in the land. Now, he was in Gerar. That's where God stopped him.

Gerar is where the Philistines, the early Philistine encampments settled in Gerar, before it became known as Philistia, later on in David's time. But this is really in the land of Canaan, but on the border, that threshold as you go down to Egypt. God tells him to stay. God tells him He would bless him. And look at verse 4. And I will make your descendants. Now, listen how this sounds so much like the promise God gave to Abraham.

It's a reiteration of it. I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven. I will give to your descendants all these lands, and in your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. Because you're such a wonderful person. Because you're such a man of faith, and I couldn't resist you. No, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. This blows my mind.

I got to tell you why. Here's a disobedient patriarch, like father, like son, going down to Gerar, actually going down to Egypt. God stops him. And when God appears to him and speaks to him, notice what God doesn't say. He doesn't say, What is the deal with you stupid patriarchs? Every time there's a famine, you go rushing down to Egypt.

I'm sick of this. No, what God does is pronounce a blessing upon him. A blessing upon him. The disobedient patriarch, God, reiterates the grand blessing that he gave to Abraham. This is called mercy.

And oh, how we love it. The merciful, great God. Okay, I know we're in Genesis 26 barely, but I want to direct your attention one more time, if you don't mind, to Psalm 103. Psalm 103 is David's synopsis of the history of his people, going all the way back through Moses up to the present time.

And it's all about how God dealt with them. And I want you to get this under your belt tonight, because you just may be in a place where you need to experience God's mercy and favor and grace. Psalm 103, I could just read it, but you know, it was fun a couple weeks ago when on a Sunday we did a responsive reading, do you remember that? So I'm going to read verse 1 and the odd numbered verses, and then you out loud read verse 2 and the even numbered verses, and you go down to verse 10 and I'll close with verse 11.

Got it? Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your right of construction, who nourishes you with all your kindness, who satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. Lord, I thank you that your presence is fulfilled for all the world to come. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the children of Israel. Lord, it is merciful in your nations, but so will the anger of our beings. He will not always strive with us, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not fail, but so will the mercy of our nations. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward those who fear him. Isn't that great? That's where we stop.

Now, here's the point. Our faults, and there's a lot of those, right? Our faults are like a grain of sand next to the high mountain of God's mercy. That's how those last few verses render if I were to spin it, the poetic kind of a spin. It's like a grain of sand next to the mountain of God's mercy. Paul in Ephesians 2 said, God who is rich in mercy. Jeremiah was looking at the destruction of Jerusalem, but the saving of a few, and he said in Lamentations 3, it's through the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed his mercy. Because his compassion, they fail not, he went on to say, they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. So, don't be too surprised when you find people like Isaac doing all of the stupid things that one does as they fumble and bumble their way on the pathway of their journey of faith. Don't be surprised when God, who is merciful, blesses.

Again, not because of Isaac, but because God made a promise to Abraham. We're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember that when you give $50 or more to help reach more people with the gospel through Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send you God Speaks, Biblical Answers for Today's Issues, which contains six of Pastor Skip's booklets to help you understand what the Bible says about big issues like racism, the importance of truth, suicide, and heaven and hell. To request your copy of God Speaks, Biblical Answers for Today's Issues, call 800-922-1888.

That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. For more from Skip, be sure to check out the many resources available at connectwithskip.com slash store. Come back next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's Word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His Word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.