All right, friends, we are going to be reading in Genesis chapter
26 today. So if you have a Bible, you can
turn there. If you don't, there should be 1
underneath your seat. And if you don't own a Bible,
that is our gift to you, so you can take that with you.
So Genesis chapter 26, you can find that on page 19.
All right. Genesis 26 Now there was a
famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the
days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar, to
Abimelech, king of the Philistines.
And the Lord appeared to him and said, Do not go down to Egypt,
dwell in the land of which I shall tell you, sojourn in this
land, and I will be with you and will bless you.
For to you and your to your offspring, I will give all these
lands. And I will establish the oath
that I swore to Abraham your father.
I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and will
give to your offspring all these lands, and in your offspring all
the nations of the earth shall be blessed.
Because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my
commandments, my statutes and my laws.
So Isaac settled in Gerar. When the men of the place asked
about his wife, he said She is my sister.
For he feared to say, My wife thinking less the men of this
place, she'll should kill me because of Rebecca, because she
was attractive in appearance when he had been there a long
time. Abimelech, king of the
Philistines, looked out of the window and saw Isaac laughing
with Rebecca, his wife. So Abimelech called Isaac and
said, Behold, she is your wife, How then could you say she is my
sister? Isaac said to him, Because I
thought lest I die because of her?
Abimelech said, What is this you have done to US?
One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and
you would have brought guilt upon us.
So abimelech all the warned, all the people, saying, Whoever
touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.
And Isaac sowed in the land and reaped in the same year a
hundredfold. The Lord blessed him, and the
man became rich and gained more and more until he became very
wealthy. He had possessions of flocks and
herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him.
Now the Philistines has stopped and filled with earth all the
wells that his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham.
His father and Abimelech said to Isaac, Go away from us, for you
are much mightier than we. So Isaac departed from there and
encamped in the valley of Gerar and settled there.
And Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the
days of Abraham his father, which the Philistines has
stopped after the death of Abraham.
And he gave them the names that his father had given them.
But when Isaac's servants dug in the valley and found there a
well of water, the herdsman's of Gerard quarreled with Isaac's
herdsman, saying, The water is ours.
So he called the name of the well Isaac, because they
contended with him. Then they dug another well, and
they quarreled over that also. So he called it, it its name
Sitna. And he moved from there and dug
another well, and they did not quarrel over it.
So he called. So he called its name Rebel,
saying, From now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall
be fruitful in the land. From there he went up to
Beersheba, and the Lord appeared to him the same night and said,
I am the God of Abraham your father.
Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your
offspring for my servant Abraham's sake.
So he built an altar there, and called upon the name of the
Lord, and pitched his tent there.
And there Isaac's servants dug a whale, when Abimelech went went
to him from Gerar with his advisor and Fico, the commander
of his army. Isaac said to him, Why have you
come to me, saying that you hate me and have sent me away from
you? They said, We see plainly that
the Lord has been with you. So we said, Let there be a swarm
pack between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant
with you that you will do us no harm, just as we have not
touched you and have not done to you nothing but good, and have
sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the
Lord. So he made them a feast, and
they ate and drank. In the morning they rose early,
early, and exchanged oaths, and Isaac sent them on their way,
and they departed from him in peace.
That same day Isaac's servants came to him and told him about
the well that they had dug, and said to him, We have found
water. He called it Sheba, therefore
the name of the city of therefore the name of the city
is Beersheba to this day. When Esau was 40 years old, he
took Judith, the daughter of Birai the Hittite to be his
wife, and Basima the daughter of Elon the Hittite.
And they made life bitter and Isaac for Isaac and Rebecca.
And this is the word of the Lord.
Good morning. What's going on?
Port City family and friends. Good.
It's good to be with you all. My name is Tanner.
Y'all here at Port City we're trying to live with God as his
children, trying to be a church family and then live into the
mission of God together. We, we believe the scriptures
teach Jesus lived those three directions with God, with other
followers of the Lord and then towards people who don't know
him. And y'all, the reality is we got
one life that's it then it's over.
Only one life will soon be passed only was done with Christ
will last and we are trying to leave it on the field.
We are not perfect. I'm a huge Sinner.
The more you get to know me, the more sin you're going to see.
That's how it works with everybody.
But we have a great Savior. We've got a great opportunity to
live an awesome adventure with him together.
And that's what we trying to do for Norfolk's good, our joy and
God's glory. So if you're looking for a
church family, you want to have some fun and just leave it on
the field not not hold anything back.
This is a great place for you and we hope to have you with us.
So I do want to pray one more time.
We need God's help to understand and not just understand with our
minds, but the eyes of our heart.
What the Bible would say would be illuminated to understand
what God is revealing to us in his words.
So let's pray one more time. Almighty God our Father, we know
that you are here. We got we, we know that you're
near, we know that you are with us.
You see all, you know all that, you know our very thoughts of
our hearts right now. You know the anxieties,
everything. So God, we just pray there for
the next little bit. God you would unfold truth to
us. God, you would help us to see
you as you really are, and you would change us.
We love you. We pray in Jesus name, Amen,
y'all. Some days you just wake up and
the day has a buzz to it. You know what I mean?
Like maybe you're going to lunch with a friend or your boss is
buying lunch for everybody and you're just pumped.
You're just like you waking up like songs like I got to feel
it. You know?
It's just in you. Maybe a new show is coming out
that Friday night and you're just pumped, OK.
Other days are not like that. OK, It's raining, you overslept.
In 10 minutes, your kids are walking in the room, the day
feels away from you already, and you're just irritated.
You know? Here's what's amazing about
being a human being, though, is that you get to tell yourself a
story that makes the day matter, right?
Like you create purpose. So on the day it's raining, you
immediately console yourself with, let's just stop by
Starbucks on the way. Let's do it.
And you just made the day matter to yourself.
You gave yourself a story that made it matter, right?
To be a human being is to be a storyteller.
It is. You are telling yourself a story
all the time. You ask yourself questions, you
talk to yourself. That's how you were made.
So what I want to do today is give you 3 questions you can ask
yourself anytime, anywhere. You can ask it of any passage of
scripture, which we're going to do.
And I would encourage you to start your day on your knees
asking yourself these three questions.
OK, they're circular, not linear.
They feed off each other, but here they are.
Who is God? Who am I?
What am I going to do? Who is God?
Who am I? What do I do now you can start
your day on your knees recite the Lord's Prayer, Psalm 23 and
if you're praying those well, what those do is start with the
Lord is my shepherd. So it starts with God is my
that's who I am I'm his sheep. So I need to do what the
shepherds say OK, who is God who am I what do I do who's God, who
am I what do I do and that reorients you into a story helps
you recognize you did not create yourself, you are not self-made
you are God made all those things right and the order is
important. God starts the order and then
us, and then and you know what to do, because if you don't do
that, the e-mail from your boss or the needs of the day, the
demands of the day, or your body's urges to avoid pain and
seek pleasure at all costs just take you through the day, OK?
But you can reorient yourself to reality pretty simply that way.
And today we're going to do that with the story in Genesis
chapter 26. We're going to say, what does
this teach us about God? What does this teach us about
humanity? And what are we going to do?
All right, how's that sound? If you are ready, let me hear
you say I'm ready. Ready.
All right, question number one, what does this passage teach us
about God? There's like a million things,
but we're going to stick to three.
And we've preached on this story before a few weeks ago, just on
the presence of God. God's omnipresence is the fancy
word for that. OK, But we're revisiting it this
week to look at more of the Isaac Abimelech kind of dynamic.
All right, so let's read verses one through 5 one more time.
Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine
that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerard, to
Abimelech, king of the Philistines.
And the Lord appeared to him and said, Do not go down to Egypt,
dwell in the land of which I shall tell you.
Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you, and we'll bless
you. For to you and to your offspring
I will give all these lands, and I'll establish the oath that I
swore to Abraham, your father. I will multiply your offspring
as the stars of heaven, and will give to your offspring all of
these lands. And in your offspring all the
nations of the earth shall be blessed, because Abraham obeyed
my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and
my laws. OK, Have you ever you're
watching a movie or something, you're like maybe it's
animating. You're like, I know that voice.
Who is that? Like I've heard this voice.
Who is that guy? And then some of y'all had that
personality. Like you can't even watch the
movie no more until you figure out where you've seen him,
right? And then you try to prove it to
your spouse or your friend or whatever.
Like it was episode 2 season 6, OK, I knew it.
And the more new, like subtle the reference, the more you're
proud of yourself. OK?
Well, like to modern people, when a story feels similar in
the Bible or like you've heard it before, we get weirded out.
We're like, this seems like something I've seen before.
And I don't like that feeling. Y'all, the Bible is going out of
its way to say, you've seen this before.
OK, We preached on it last year, but almost this exact setting
happens in the life of Abraham, OK, happens in Genesis 12 and in
Genesis 20. In 12, he goes down to Egypt.
In 20, he deals with another king named Abimelech.
And to US modern people were like, was it the same person?
How many years? It's like could be the same
king, could be years later be another king named Abimelech,
could be in the family. OK, but to the original audience
and the the author of Genesis is more than likely Moses, so he's
writing these down for the first time during the Exodus
generation. Think about how comforting this
would be to them. They're hearing a story of God
protecting them in the midst of a foreign king during a famine
in a foreign land. And if you trust me, all will be
well. It looks like that king is in
control, but they're not. And soon you will leave with
more than you came with. Does that sound like a theme
you've heard before? It's called the Exodus theme,
which happens major once in the book of Exodus, but we see it a
lot in Genesis, both in Abraham and Isaac's life.
So just a quick recap of what chapter 26 is happening so we
can get our bearings. Basically, God says don't go
down there. I'm with you.
I'm going to be with you. You good?
Isaac doesn't exactly trust him at first.
OK? And Abimelech sees him hanging
out with his wife and he's like, yo, he didn't tell me that was
your wife. You lied to me.
OK, So Isaac was a liar from his fear.
And then God protects Rebecca. Then you see a bunch of these
exchanges between the herdsmen of the land and the wells.
And it was like digging a well. Then they would quarrel over it.
They would move on, dig over a well, quarrel, move on.
And it kept saying just like Abraham did, Isaac did blank.
OK, They finally move on. And finally God appears to Isaac
again and he bows down and worship, trust him.
And then Abimelech comes back to Isaac and says, yo, God has
clearly been with you. And Isaac no more is scared.
And he's like, OK, let's make a treaty.
End of chapter. Y'all understand what's
happening. OK, so here's what I teach about
God. First thing, God is consistent.
Y'all God is consistent. If any part of that audience was
thinking, does God play favorites?
Did he like Abraham more than Isaac?
Will he be different? Is God different now?
Is it a new like no, God is still God.
Who he was to Abraham, he's going to be to Isaac.
God is not Moody. Praise the Lord, yo.
Inconsistency creates insecurity, you know that,
right? I remember being a teacher when
on a Monday I have my coffee and I planned the lesson.
I had differentiation for different types of students and
learners and learning environments.
And then on Tuesday when my head was hurting and they irritated
me and the scores came back and I didn't like it was a worksheet
day. OK, because I'm Moody.
I'm finite. I'm irritable.
What you do to me impacts me and it makes me want to respond a
certain way. God is not like that.
God is who he is because he's God.
We don't make him something he's not.
We can't pull like God is God. God is an actor, not a reactor.
God is initiator. God is creator.
God is good. That's who he is, and he's being
that because he's him. God always is who he is.
It wasn't like I'm going to be this way to Abraham and I'm
going to be this way to Isaac. God is God, He is who he is.
Second thing we learn about God is that he is covenantal.
Covenantal. That means he is a covenant
maker, covenant keeper. It said in verse 3, sojourn in
this land and I'll be with you and bless you for to you and to
your offspring. I will give all these lands and
I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham, your father.
What that means y'all is that God didn't start a contract with
Abraham that if he breaks it, God breaks it.
He, he initiated a covenant. Covenant means I'm a do it.
And those of y'all that remember the covenant wasn't like 5050.
It was God will do this through you.
He chose you, Abraham and Isaac and the the whole family, right,
Which is a family of faith, not just physical lineage.
And so God is a covenant keeper, not a contract maker.
Yo, what that means is God did not set up this covenant because
he was like empty and needing praise and needing help.
And he could get it if Abraham would just do his part.
God is busting at the seams, overflowing with a bounding this
of who he is. He's a fountain that just is
popping. OK, He's not needy.
So it is such good news that God is still who he is because he's
God and Isaac isn't Isaac. Does that make sense?
Like it isn't contingent on Isaac being him, it's God
created a covenant that he's going to keep, which is so
comforting. God is giver, He is initiator,
He is creator, He is sustainer. He came to Abraham.
Why? Because He did.
Why is He being faithful to the covenant?
You start with Abraham because that's who He is.
Why does He love sinners like you and like me?
Because He does. We don't pull it out of him.
He just is it. Do you get that?
Like He loves you because He loves you.
And if there's any contingencies, now there's
conditions to His unconditionality.
Amen. Somebody God unconditionally
loves you through the person of Jesus Christ and allows you to
see Him as He is. And your response to that is to
repent and believe. That's how you receive all that
He is to you. But God is who he is.
That's such comforting news. And we see in this text that
he's in his covenantal consistency.
He wants to be close to Isaac, this fearful just kind of bum
who just keeps blowing it. He wants to come near to Isaac
and keeps revealing himself to him.
As we talked about a few weeks ago, God is always here and
sometimes he comes near. God is omnipresent.
The other day I told one of my kids, like they asked me, they
said Dad is God here right now? And I said Yep.
And they go see you on the roof. It was awesome because we've
been talking about God's omnipresence.
Let's say, yeah, God's always here.
And they immediately said on the roof, right?
It's like that's how our brains think of omnipresence.
God is always here, and sometimes he comes near and he
comes near to Isaac in this way. And for those of us who know God
through Christ, the Spirit indwells you.
OK. And notice that in his
consistent covenantal guiding. One thing I want you to notice.
Notice is he doesn't write down every step of everything that's
going to happen for Isaac. So our expectation should not be
the type of relationship just 'cause he's consistently himself
in covenantal. That doesn't take away your
agency. It doesn't take away who you are
and your freedom and in your response and how you trust him
or don't, OK, He didn't say in Isaac, here's how the next 25
minutes are going to go, but you're going to eat some
alphabet soup. Then you're going to have a
bullet. You know, like it doesn't work
like that. OK, so we're seeing what this
relationship with this guy looks like.
Third thing, God was and is aiming for the nations.
God was and is aiming for the nations.
And verse four I will multiply your offspring as the stars of
heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands and in
your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.
Y'all, the whole premise of the Abrahamic covenant of which
Christ is the fulfillment and the church stands in it.
We are in the family of Abraham by faith, OK, y'all, the whole
basis of it was I'm going to go through you to get to everybody
what I want to be to all. I will be to 1 and they will
know what it's like to have me as their God by looking at you.
I want to get to all, and I'm going to do it through the one.
And God chose Abraham, and the truer and greater Abraham would
eventually come. The truer and greater Isaac
would eventually come. But the goal was always the many
through the One. The goal is the nations.
And that's where it will end, is the wedding feast, the marriage
supper of the lamb. That's where we're headed.
Where there is a people of all peoples, all nations, races,
ethnicities, languages, people groups praising God.
That is what He wants. Is 1 people of all peoples
praising him OK? Those are a few of the things we
learn about God in this passage. What does this passage teach us
about humanity? There are really 3 characters in
the story right? You got God, you got Isaac, and
then you got Abimelech. OK and so we learn a lot from
from each of them. Let's start with with Abimelech.
OK? Through Abimelech we realize
that we suppress that we are made.
OK, so you noticed the whole exchange when it was read where
basically that Isaac's in the land.
He didn't go down to Egypt because God said don't go there.
So he stays in Gerar. So Abimelech runs Gerar and he
tells people this is my sister. And Isaac's logic is if people
know it's my wife, they'll kill me and take her, which is a lie,
which is the exact same thing that Abraham did back in chapter
20, which you can go look at. OK, Now Abimelech looks out the
window and sees this man hanging out with his wife.
It's kind of a play on words in the Hebrews says it sees him
laughing with his wife, which scholars would say means if you
notice the the name Isaac means son of laughter.
So it basically means Isaac was Isaac king.
Like Isaac was laughing, the laughter person was laughing.
He was being himself. He saw him being himself with
his wife. And he was like yo that ain't
your sister, that's your wife. And then look at what he says in
verses 10 and 11. Abimelech said what is this you
have done to US? One of the people might easily
have lame with your wife and you would have brought guilt upon
us. So Abimelech warned all the
people saying whoever touches this man or his wife shall
surely be put to death. Y'all this is a big statement.
This is a foreign king with no relationship to Yahweh.
No Bible saying that would have been wrong.
Wrong. He just created a category of
like that would have been guilt worthy of an action.
So we have a foreigner, not society imposing upon him
morality and guilt. Y'all do you, do you understand
kind of where I'm going? He is saying what Romans one
tells us, which is that everybody knows there's a God.
We all know it. You know what we all do with
that information? We suppress it.
We suppress the plain truth that what you do matters, that
somebody's watching, that guilt is a real thing, has not been
imposed upon you by by your parents or or by society trying
to keep everybody in order. It is baked into you that you
know there is a God to whom you are accountable.
But what we do with that information is we suppress it.
Somebody say suppress. We say that word a lot around
here because that's part of what sin is.
Sin is looking at the truth and going, it's throwing the
shoulders out. I want to give you all a
suppression story. This this is an unreal story.
OK? Me and my man Ron in a past life
were student pastors, OK? And this one time we ran an
event and there were students and adult volunteers and we
needed to have a meal. We were there a long time.
So like, let's get some Bojangles.
Let's bless the people one time, not get Little Caesars and we
spend the extra money, we get the Bojangles.
And you know, being the kind of leaders of the event, we had a
lot to do. And you know, we're eating a
piece of chicken every like 30 minutes.
The kids are smashed at running off, coming back, asking us
questions. We feel like we're in parent
mode. OK, well, finally we're down
there eating. There's some adults coming in
and out. My plate is sitting here.
I'm eating Ron's is there? Ron had eaten a couple pieces of
chicken. Couple fries have been nibbled
on, couple of biscuits. Y'all getting it?
It was clearly a plate that had been hey, a grown man walks in
the room in his 50s, walks in, sits down, looks at the plate,
shrugs his shoulders, picks up a piece of chicken and eats it.
Oh, do you understand what just happened?
He ate another man's chicken off his plate, and he knew exactly
what he was doing. How do I know that?
Because I watched him shrug his shoulders.
The shrug, it was crazy. I was like, did he really just
grab the chicken and ate it? I just, I will never forget it
as long as I live. OK.
That shoulder shrug is what every human being does.
And we can use Google. We can look up information that
makes us discredit the truth. We can look up, we can say that
we were hurt by somebody that followed in legitimate pain in
the church, legitimate stuff we should talk about legitimate
hard questions, reasons for doubt.
All that's good. But behind all that, if you keep
pulling that yarn ball, what's behind all of it?
Somewhere in that soul is this right here.
Don't care or don't want it, don't want it to be true.
Don't care that it's true. That is suppression.
This king bears witness to the fact that that would have been
wrong. That matters, y'all.
In our secular moment, our culture knows it's true.
We hear words like karma, the gods of X show like every show
you watch, like the survivor gods are doing X right now.
What? Like think about that statement
or karma or something like that, y'all, This is true.
OK, 2017, there is a natural disaster in our country through
the form of a hurricane. And a certain actress who felt
that our country had made some bad decisions recently vocalized
that the Hurricanes were to pay us back for our recent decisions
as a country. Mother Nature is what she said
was behind it. Think about how insane that
statement is. Mother Nature is paying us back.
Mother Nature doesn't exist, friend.
You know, like God exists, you know, and like, now let's talk
about, OK, is there a governing of the universe?
There's so many. What our country is or our
culture is trying to do is create a world where there's
energy without accountability, right?
Like, there's this flow and vibes.
And think about how many words are like energy words, Like,
where's that coming from? Like the word vibe, what does
that mean? Like is there a like frequency
somewhere? But what we want is the energy
without the accountability. Y'all even abimelech knows yo
that would have been wrong. And I'm accountable to somebody
for that wrong. So don't do it.
OK? Second thing we learned about
humanity in the story is that we can be blessed.
Somebody say blessed, we can be blessed.
So what happens? You probably noticed it a lot.
There was the the digging of wells that Abraham once dug.
Wells are important for water, OK?
We noticed he would dig them up and then they would have a
quarrel with the herdsmen of that area who tried to reclaim
that territory. And Isaac, to his credit, was
like, hey, you know, let me let me not let me not get all up in
arms. I'll go find a new spot, dig a
new whale. He was handling it well, not not
overreacting, OK. And then finally finds enough
space. The Lord reappears to him.
He worships. And then Abimelech, after all
this process between the fake wife sister thing and all the
whales comes to him and in verses 30 or 2829, check them
out with me, says this, he comes to him.
So the king approaches him. It says we see plainly that the
Lord has been with you. So we said, let there be a swarm
pact between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant
with you, that you will do us no harm.
Just we have not touched you and done anything to you, nothing
but good, and I've sent you away in peace.
You are now the blessed of the Lord.
Abimelech calls him blessed. You know, a lot of people think
of being blessed as a status. Your circumstances dictate
whether you're blessed, right? Like if I got stuff, if I got
money, if I. And depending on your story,
your history, maybe you think you'll be blessed if you get
enough stuff, if you retire early, if you got no boss, if,
if somebody wants you, you know, if you're happy, if you're
comfortable, whatever your your vision of the blessed life is.
But y'all, what's unique about why he says he's blessed?
He says the Lord is with you. Y'all blessing in the Bible is
relational. It's not that the circumstance
doesn't matter, but it's primarily relational.
And if there was any ambiguity about that, Jesus makes that
abundantly clear. The Son of Man has nowhere to
lay his head right. Like Jesus was a wanderer who
died with no, no 401K. OK.
If there was any question of like, to be blessed means you
got to build some kind of stuff you could put your hand on.
Jesus showed us that to be blessed is primarily relational.
It's to be in alignment with God and with people.
And we see that in Isaac. We see this king who has the
stuff, who has the power, who has the money, who can get
whatever he wants at any given time, coming to somebody else
and saying the Lord is with you. You've got something I don't
got. You got God, you are blessed, I
am not. And Isaac at the start of the
conversation is in fear, isn't he?
He's like, what do you guys want?
And then quickly he realizes this dude's afraid of me because
of God, you know, like this guy is catering to me.
So y'all, I just want to point out that to be blessed is to
know God. If you know God, you've got it
made. What else do you think you have
to have believer to be blessed y'all?
And I'm all for being honest and authentic about where there's
pain or where there's longings of good gifts.
We still want. I got good gifts I still want.
OK. But if you know God, you have it
made. You are blessed.
The blessing isn't coming. You already have it.
And if the blessing becomes contingent on that next thing,
the goal posts will move. You know this and I pray there
comes a time and everybody under the sound of my voice is life
where somebody approaches you and says you are blessed and
says tell me why comes to you and says there's just something
about your marriage. There's something about the way
you're raising your kids. There's something about the way
you're handling your singleness. There's something about the way
you're raising your family. There's something about you gave
up that opportunity that I couldn't have given up.
There's something about what you said back to the boss or the
fact that you let them think it was you and it wasn't you and
you took the L for that. There's something about you.
You got something I don't got. Will you tell me what it is?
And I pray on that day we have a better answer than even just,
I'm a Christian. They need to hear I know God
like, I genuinely know God. God just loves me, man.
Like, and when I tell you I know God, I, I don't want us on that
day to tell them how good we are at loving God.
I want us to be able to declare God loves me, man.
It's crazy, but he does. And hopefully that's what Isaac
shared with him that day. Third thing we learned about
humanity here is that we sway between fear and trust.
Those of us who are following the Lord, like Isaac in this
case, we see a negative example. He's fearful, he's afraid, he
lies about his wife, says it's my sister.
And then in a positive instance, he finally kind of is like, man,
I'm going to trust the Lord. He gets on his knees.
He he, he worships, he builds an altar, he calls upon the name of
the Lord. So we see this swaying back and
forth and we see that if you want to make it into a formula,
the way it works walking with God is you get His presence and
very limited info, and then you have to live a life of trust.
You're not like to walk with God.
You don't get some test with all the answers.
That's not how it works. You know God and then you walk
through life, you get His presence.
That's what Isaac gets. Isaac had his presence felt like
that wasn't enough, lied about his sister.
Then later in the story, God says I'm with you, man.
I come with you, tells him again, I'm with you.
And then finally I just like, I trust you.
Then Abimelech says come here and he's like, OK, it's not like
he knew how that interchange would go.
He didn't know he could have gotten beat down.
You know, like, hey, I'm tired of you messing with our wells
and our water and I'm a beat you down.
But Isaac stood his ground because he knew the Lord was
with him. So I just want some of y'all to
hear that risk is a part of life.
Like risk is it? But notice on both sides, it's
risk. Whether you trust him or you
live in fear, both are a risk. Are you with me?
So like, who did Isaac risk the first time?
By not trusting God, he risked his wife, right?
She was vulnerable because of his fear.
She was put in harm's way. So when we don't trust God, we
play the self preservation. What fear does is it makes you
survive. That's what it does.
Your brain is wired to avoid pain and seek pleasure.
Avoid the hard path, risk everything to keep yourself
safe. So you're still going to risk.
It's just all resources, time, energy, money will be leveraged
towards yourself. Preservation.
Once you know God is with you and you trust him and you have
limited information but you have his presence, the risk shifts
from self preservation to blessing others and now he puts
himself in harm's way instead of risking others welfare.
Y'all track it with me. So you're going to live a life
of risk either way. It's not like if you say I'm out
on the Lord or you just walk in fear.
I have to have everything spelled out for me or I'm out.
It's not like your life becomes super clear and simple all of a
sudden. It's still a highly risky life
you're living. You have no control of whether
you wake up tomorrow or not. Facts.
What the believer gets is the assurance of God's presence.
You get promises of God and you get to walk in risk and you get
a God who even when you're afraid and blow it.
Do you notice that he doesn't come to Isaac and say, how dare
you do that with your sister? He didn't come to him like that.
He didn't come to him like an employee who had blown it.
He just comes to him and says, hey man, I told you I'd be with
you. I'm with you.
He comes like a father to a son saying I'm with you.
He didn't even bring up his past failure.
Isn't it amazing that it's possible to know God and not
fear His presence? God comes to you and it's
comforting. God comes to you and it's all
love. God comes to you and it's all
good. Y'all.
It is possible for God's presence coming near, not to
send you away, but to comfort you in the path to God's
presence. Going from discomforting to
comforting is the person of Jesus.
You know what Jesus did thousands of years after?
Our story here today is in his life, Death, burial,
resurrection. He lived the life Isaac failed
to live. Yo, Isaac basically sold his
wife out like that's what he did.
That's what we do. We live in fear.
So we're not saying if you can trust God enough, God will love
you. We're talking about a God who
chooses people that are going to blow it and doesn't threaten
them to get them to live better, but comes to them in their fear
and dislodges their fear through his presence and his payment for
their failure. That's the gospel.
That's the cross is God's payment to come near to you in
love because he has done everything to take away all the
ways you've blown it. That's the gospel.
See, I'll trust isn't magical. It's it's a clumsy stumbling
like you don't there's no day coming where you know how it's
all going to go. I don't know if I'll be here
next week. I really I don't know that like
I don't know for sure what this week will bring.
I have no control. Neither do you.
Your life will be risky this week either way.
But when you trust God and know Him and know He's coming near to
you and joy like a Father, it takes us from just leveraging
every moment to minimize pain and preserve ourselves to man.
God says I'm more blessed when I give it all away and live for
the glory of God and the good of others.
Let's do it. You know I'll risk it in that
direction instead of self preservation.
OK, So what should we do in light of this passage?
Three quick things that I'm done #1 locate ourselves within God's
unfolding story. You got to locate yourself in
the story you're in. OK, so we live in an era
different than Isaac. OK, so in Isaac's case, the
nations of the earth came to him to say you are blessed.
We could tell you got it made, right?
Like you got it made. You are blessed yo.
Isaac lived in a more of a come and see era.
The Old Testament model was that God said you will be a light to
the nation. So the idea was always for the
nation's through the chosen people.
But the way it happened was through the temple.
It was through the tabernacles through them hearing about the
exodus story and knowing that the they are in this physical
location and that's where they go to worship.
And it was very location bound to come and see kind of model.
Zion lifted up. Read the Psalms like that's
that's why the the Psalms of ascent.
They're traveling to Jerusalem, right?
We live, y'all, in a go and tell era where God does not live.
Never did he. But now the clarity of what is
meant by God does not live in temples.
He does not live in things built by human hands.
We who trust in Christ are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
We live in a new era, y'all, where Jesus was the bridge
between heaven and earth. He tabernacled among us.
He was The Walking, breathing temple.
That's who He is and then in his death, burial, resurrection,
ascending and sending of the Spirit, we become the temple and
He sends us out not to tell people to come to us, we go to
them. Now we live in a go and tell
era. We go to people.
That's what we do. If you are in Christ, you are a
go and tell person where you live, work and play into the
ends of the earth for the glory of God and the good of people.
That's who you are. You are the temple, and what
that does is it secures your identity.
Like I live in a story where everything about me is settled
in the person of Jesus. I've got nothing to prove.
If you are in Christ, all of your sin is gone.
The Father sees you as a child of God.
You got nothing to prove. Your identity is secure.
If you die tomorrow, God is pleased with you not because of
what you did do or the bad things you didn't do, but
because of what Christ did. That's the gospel.
Your identity is totally secure. And then your purpose, the
reason you still exist and continue to get to glorify God,
is through the story of Jesus. So Jesus gives me my identity
and now his story is my purpose is to take this news, to take
God's presence with me everywhere I go and tell people
about it and show them that they can be blessed, that they can
know God. So to locate yourself in the
stories and say, who am I? You are in Christ.
There is no you apart from Him. You are more than a brand.
You are more than a number of followers.
You are more than your bank account.
You're more than if you own a home by 30 or if you're this by
this age or whatever it is that our world makes us feel behind
on. That's not who you are.
You are in Christ and your purpose is not to just build
those things and run that race. Your purpose is to live into
God's story for you in this go and tell era #2 live with
confidence before God and intimacy.
Y'all what intimacy God wants to give you in your life with Him.
He wants to come so near. Friends, when we preached on
this a few weeks ago, we were in Psalm 139 a lot.
Psalm 139 is one I encourage you to memorize of just is that your
normal experience of God's nearness in your life.
God is so near to you. He is nearer than on the roof.
Amen. Like he's here, He's here, man.
Like he is here and everything you do, He is here and he wants
to come near and He wants to know you the way you think We're
intimate with each other. Like just think about all the
things you long for in your life.
They're all intimate things, probably with another person.
Something like a spouse or a friend or a child.
All of those pale in comparison to how God the Father wants to
love on you and just show you His goodness.
He's abounding His steadfast love.
He wants to just give it all away to you.
The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear Him.
Good and upright is the Lord. He wants to show you the way.
He wants to show you how to live.
He wants you to come towards Him when you're afraid, not away
from Him. What intimacy does y'all is?
It moves you towards God when you blow it, not away from Him.
You won't be less sinful tomorrow, but you can be more
dependent. Does that make sense?
So tomorrow the goal, the goal every Sunday isn't that you're
more morally pure. Like I hope in some kind of way
that happens, but my calculation is I don't see myself getting
less sinful. I think what increases is your
awareness that God wants you to come near him even when you blow
it. That's what changes in life.
That's what God is after. He's not trying to guilt you
into more moral perfection. He's trying to invite you into
his presence day after day after day.
Move towards God, not away from him.
And for some of you, I just want you to hear God wants you to
come to him. You have not done that yet.
You've learned a lot of facts about God.
You have a story maybe involving church or Bible or something,
but you know you don't know God, like relationally, intimately
nearly. And God wants to know you
through the person of Christ. You need to repent and trust him
and run to the Father. Third, take gospel risks.
Somebody say risk, y'all risk is going to be your life one way or
the other. You don't know nothing.
Like you don't know anything
like in terms of like I heard it said that risk is a reality
because we have limited information.
You don't know like if you knew you would die in a year, you
would live your next year different than if you didn't
know that. But you don't know that, right?
So because you don't know, it's inherently like a life of risk
that you live the risk of potential loss, harm.
It's true. I'm not going to tell you that
walking with God is easy, but I am going to tell you there's a
cost of non risk for God too. Like your joy is on the line,
other people's good is on the line, right?
Our kids joy, our neighbors joy. There's a lot on the line one
way or the other. And what we creep towards is
just leveraging all risk to preserve self, to preserve
comfort, to preserve ease. And I just want us to think
about where that's happening and be like, are we OK with that?
Is that how we want to keep doing it?
Y'all take some risks. In Jesus you don't know what's
going to happen, but you know. In Jesus you don't know, but you
know. You don't know but you know some
of y'all like, what does he mean?
I mean, you don't know, but you know.
Here's what I mean. I mean that Jesus is going to
make all things new. Jesus coming back.
He loves you. If suffering happens to you,
it's not because he don't love you.
OK, hard things going to happen. Life is hard.
Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. I don't know what's going to
happen tomorrow, but I know God loves me.
You don't know, but you know. You know enough to know what you
don't know. And you know even though you
don't know. So I guess what I'm trying to
say is take some risks for what matters and for what lasts,
y'all. And it's going to, you're going
to, you're going to feel like you don't know what you're doing
when you take risks. Nobody knows what they're doing.
You think of some mature believer somewhere.
They don't know what they're doing.
I promise you they don't. And if they do, they might have
some system they know how to control, but they don't know
what they're doing. You know what I mean?
They they've learned how to trust God in certain ways.
They've seen God show up, right? But we don't know what we're
doing, y'all. I don't know how to lead nobody
to Christ. I know how to tell people I know
Jesus. Y'all just stumble through
something with somebody, share the gospel.
Like the scariest thing you could think of.
Give some money away, move somewhere with intentionality.
There are dreams in you for the Kingdom that God intends to come
alive. And usually while we don't is we
feel stupid, afraid or we don't know how.
And I just want to say it's OK to risk and find another person
maybe who will take that risk with you.
Y'all take the risk, Share the gospel, invite by somebody to
something, send them a song. If you think of a person when
you listen to a sermon, send it to him and say, hey, I want to
talk about this. I've been doing that with one
person I love recently. I think I'm wearing them out.
But you know what? It's a risk to not send it.
Do you get my point? It's a risk to send it.
It's a risk to not send it, OK? I love them and I want them to
know I love them and God loves them.
What am I going to do? You know?
And then you pray your face off. You with me, pray your face off.
Take a risk. There's your sermon.
OK y'all, we just finished up Survivor last night.
OK, I'm a Survivor guy. Some of y'all know that.
And here's the thing about Survivor, when you really like
somebody in the show, when it gets down to about it's a, it's
a voting off base game starts with 20 people and you vote
people off down to one, they win $1,000,000.
There you go. OK, when it gets down to like 7
people left, If you really like somebody and they don't have a
good resume, like resume means like if they're not going to win
the million and you know it, you're screaming at the TV, do
something, take a risk even if you get voted off because you're
risking it by not you think state of the three, you ain't
getting no votes. My God, no one do something and
you're just screaming it at the TV.
Are y'all tracking with me? The point is it's not a risk
just to do it and get voted off. It's a risk to not do it and sit
there and lose. Do you get what I'm saying?
It's a risk either way. Some of y'all, I just want to
hear man, this is that moment in your life where somebody
somewhere by the Spirit of God is screaming do something.
Does that make sense? And I listen not to make God
love you. God loves you.
That's why I'm screaming it at the TV.
Does that make sense? God's love for you is not on the
line, but your joy and the good of others is.
There's situations right in front of you where God wants to
do things bigger and more than you could ever imagine.
In the gap between that happening and not happening is
our risk and our joy. That's the crazy thing.
We get so much joy from the risk.
We could trust them. The Spirit of God is with you.
We all take risks. We do it all the time.
We risk money, we risk, we risk reputation.
I'm even risking this rhyme. The question isn't if, but to
what end. You will risk it all.
Will it be for our comfort to be wanted?
Control to avoid feeling small? My prayers that we will risk it
all for Christ, the lover of our soul.
He is good, He is God, He is King.
Let's give him total control. So whether you live another
week, another year, another 10, you say you will be able to say
you left it all on the field, not for yourself, but for him.
His love for you is not on the line, but your joy in him sure
is in risking trust. So we we learn that we are
loved. We learn that we are his.
Let's pray together. Almighty God, our Father, Lord,
thank you that Isaac just risk trust and just gave up control
and just laid it all on the line.
And Lord, he wasn't perfect, but your son was in our place.
And God, now we just get to be the beloved kids that get to
live in an adventure with you. And I just pray for my friends,
those who are not in Christ, that they would see that there's
a great opportunity before them to trust you to walk with you.
I pray for those of us who are in Christ.
God, would we, by your spirit would we, would we leave it all
in the field and just full joy live salvation without regret.
We pray in Christ's name, Amen.