This Bible story that I am about to read is, is one that I don't
think gets enough attention. It's one of my favorite stories
and, and I, I, I have to confess if if that I I first heard about
this story not from a careful study of the Scripture.
It goes. It's an easy story to miss when
you're just reading through the Bible, but I heard about this
story through a country and western song from the gentleman
by the name of Paul Overstreet, who was one of my favorite
musical artists. I'm not sure if he's written any
stuff recently or not, but if you're a fan of country from the
80s and 90s, you have you've heard a number of his songs that
either he performed or he wrote for others.
We'll get to that song in a minute because I think it's a
great interpretation of this passage, but I love this
passage. I, I think it is such a
wonderful one for Thanksgiving weekend, but also for any, any
week in any day of our lives. Let's jump into it here, Genesis
chapter 6. Going to just read verses 12
through 22 now and then we'll talk about some other verses a
little bit later here. Isaac planted crops in that
land, and the same year reaped A hundredfold because the Lord
blessed him. The man became rich, and his
wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy.
He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the
Philistines envied him. So all the wells that his
father's servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the
Philistines stopped up, filling them with earth.
Then Abimelech said to Isaac, Move away from us.
You have become too powerful for us.
So Isaac moved away from there and encamped in the valley of
Girar, where he settled. Isaac reopened the wells that
had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the
Philistines had stopped up after Abraham had died, and he gave
them the same names that father had given them.
Isaac's servants dug in the valley and discovered a well of
fresh water there. But the herders of Girar
quarrelled with those of Isaac and said, This water is ours.
So he named the well Esic, because they disputed with him.
Then they dug another well, but they quarrelled over that one
also. So he named it Sitna.
He moved on from there and dug another well, and no one
quarrelled over it. He named it Rehaboth, saying,
Now the Lord has given us room, and we will flourish in the
land. May the Lord add His blessing to
the reading and the hearing of His word.
Dig another well. That I think is maybe the
simplest way to summarize these verses.
Dig another well. Isaac, there were a lot of
wells. Wells.
His father's had dug well. His father's servants had dug,
and they got filled up. And Isaac dug some more wells.
And then those wells were taken and Isaac dug some more well,
and he dug another well, and he dug another well.
So what does this have to do with Thanksgiving?
What does this have to do with with our lives here today?
This these water disputes that that Isaac had to go through
during his lifetime thousands of years ago?
Well, let's see this story in context, because the context
here is important to to, to see just how powerful Isaac's
actions were spiritually powerful in this setting.
So Isaac, let's remember Isaac's both of his parents have died
now Abraham and Sarah both have died.
Isaac is now the patriarch of the clan.
His entire household depends on him.
He's responsible for providing them with food, with shelter,
with water, with everything that they need to have a meaningful
good life. It's on Isaac's shoulders to
provide that. And yet Isaac, like his father,
is a stranger in a strange land. He's a foreigner.
He's an alien in this land that that has been promised to him
and to his descendants, but he's still just a visitor, a guest
depending upon the hospitality and the goodwill of others.
The only real estate his family owns is a small graveyard where
his mom and dad are buried. And that's it.
That's it. Everywhere else he lives, he's a
stranger, He's an alien, he's a foreigner.
He's the out of towner. He's the newcomer.
And to make matters worse, there's a famine in the land
now. Famines are bad now for farmers.
Everybody knows that Famines are bad now.
Famines were worse back then because, you know, tougher
pipes, no pipes. You know, irrigation.
Very, very difficult, very, very challenging.
Not even sure that they had irrigation in any meaningful way
in this part of the world at that time.
What's even worse is if you're in the midst of a famine and you
don't have a well, because if there's a famine, if there's
drought, if there's no food, that's, you know, no way to grow
them. If you don't have a well, all of
your crops are going to die. All of your animals are going to
die, and your family is in trouble, in danger of dying as
well. And here's Isaac, a stranger in
a strange land, a foreigner, an alien not owning a square foot
of real estate. And now his neighbors are
filling up his wells with dirt because they don't want him
there. And Isaac has to decide what is
he going to do? That's the context that we're
in. How do you respond in that kind
of situation when the very thing this is not, this is not a
message in internally for certain.
My brain keeps wanting to make this a message about wants
versus needs because but this is not about wants versus needs.
You need water to live. You need what if you're, if
you're, if your life, livelihood is, is agriculture, you have to
have water. It's not a want, it's an
absolute need. And he's a stranger in a strange
land. He doesn't own any land.
He doesn't own any water rights. And the wells that he has dug
and his father's dug, his enemies are now filling with
dirt or stealing from him. So what's he going to do?
What do we do when the thing that we need the most is being
taken away from us? Now, I am a public speaker.
I am a preacher. I am not a poet.
If you want short sermons, hire a poet to preach to you.
They can, they can compress ideas very succinctly.
Paul Overstreet, I think is a wonderful lyricist, a great
poet. And, and he's written a song, I
don't know, decades ago now that I'm going to play.
Now I put a made a cheesy little video to go behind it and put
the lyrics on the screen. So if that'll help you follow
the words, we're going to listen to it.
And, and he tells in 3 minutes what it's going to take me
another 20 minutes to finish saying.
So like I say, if you want short sermons, hire a poet.
I am not a poet, but let's listen to Paul Overstreet here.
Well I had a blessing from the Lord up above.
He gave him a beautiful woman to love, a place to live and some
land farm. 2 good legs and two good arms.
Well the devil came sneaking around one night decided he
would do a little evil do I figured he would hit a life
where it hurts. So we filled up all of ox whales
with dirt. Then I went out for his morning
drink. He got a dipper full of dirt and
his heart didn't sink, but he knew it was a devil.
So he said with a grin, God bless me once and he can do it
again. He bless me once and he can do
it again. So when the rays don't fall and
the crops all fail, and the cows ain't putting any milk in the
pail, don't sit around waiting for a check in the mail.
Just pick up the shovel and dig another well.
Pick up the shovel and dig another well.
Now me and old I got a lot in common.
Lord bless me with a beautiful woman.
He gave me a job, He gave me a home, He gave me a well to call
my own. When I go out for my morning
drink and get a dipper full of dirt.
And my heart does same, but I think of old.
I can, I have to grin because God bless me once and he can do
it again. He bless me once and he can do
it again. So when the rays don't fall and
the crops all fail, the cows ain't putting any milk in the
pail. Don't sit around waiting for a
check in the mail. Just pick up the show, dig
another well, pick up the shovel, dig another well.
Well, the good book says I finally won.
Pick up the shovel and dig another well.
The devil got tired and he left him alone.
Pick up the shovel and I know someday I'm going to win too.
Pick up the shovel. The good book tells me what to
do. Pick up the shovel and take
another well. Pick up the shovel and take
another well. Pick up the shovel.
I, I think that's as as good a sermon on, on that passage as
there is. So mine will be at best second
best to, to pullover streets here, probably a lot further
down the list than that. But what do you do in this
situation? Pick up the shovel and dig
another well, It's not as easy as it sounds sometimes, many
times, maybe most of the times. We're going to talk through this
a little bit more. And the first question I want to
ask is what is your well for Isaac?
His well was a literal well of water.
They needed water to survive. They were in a famine.
They needed water to survive. And his enemies were filling up
his wells with dirt or stealing his wells from them.
But what's your will? What's your will?
Is it a job? Is it a relationship?
Is it a talent OR an ability? A dream or a plan or something
else? What is it that you need to
survive? What is that thing or those
things where you think, you know what?
I can lose everything else, but I can't lose that.
I can have everything else taken away from me.
But don't take, don't take my job.
Don't don't take my dreams. Don't take this relationship.
Don't don't take my plans for the future.
Don't take this talent OR ability that or, or something
else. God, I need this.
I need this. Not a question of wants versus
needs here. There's not a question of you
know, you know, what do you really, really, really want?
But what do you need? What do you need?
What's your well, that if that's gone, you're saying myself, it's
over. There's nothing else I can do
here. I'm, I'm, I'm done, I'm done.
I need that. Whatever that is in your life,
what can you do if that well gets filled with dirt, if that
thing is taken away from you? We have a lot of options when
that happens, and Isaac had a lot of options when it happens.
One of the things we can do is just quit.
I'm done. Quit and run away.
I'm done. I'm out of here.
Isaac could have done that. The beginning of this passage,
God is telling Isaac, stay in the land.
There's a famine coming. Stay in the land.
Don't run away to Egypt. Egypt would have been the
natural place to go during a famine.
If there's a famine in that region, Egypt with the Nile
River Valley, there is ample water.
The flooding that happens there means that there's always going
to be good fertile soil and ample water.
Going to Egypt would have been the thing that made the most
sense. God said to Isaac, do not leave
during this famine. Isaac could have quit.
So God, this is great. It's very nice of you to say
that you're a spirit and and I'll worship you in spirit and
truth. But me and my family, my
animals, we need water to drink for my crops to grow.
We need water to to water them. I'm done with this.
I'm going to Egypt. Let me know when the famine's
over, then we'll come back. He could have quit.
He could have run away. He could play the blame game,
complaining and blaming. I my confession is this, this is
my favorite one. I love to complain.
I really, really, it's just it's it's one of my favorite pastimes
is complaining. I've been doing it since I was a
little and I'm good at it. So, and it's so easy to blame
other folks or other situations near or far.
It's those politicians, it's those you know, rich people,
it's those you know, those people are that it's always easy
to find someone to blame, complain and blame when things
go wrong. It's all their fault.
Woe is me, woe is me fight. This is another thing Isaac
could have fought. Abraham went to war at least
once when his nephew Lott and Lott's family were taken as
political prisoners. Abraham raised his own private
army, went to war, defeated an alliance of 5 kings, and brought
his people back. When Abimelech came to Isaac, he
said hey, you guys are too powerful of for us, go away, go
away. Isaac could have just said no,
make us. I'm going to fill up my wells
with dirt, I'll come and kill your people.
He could have gone to war with Abimelech, with the other
Philistines in the area, to claim his rights for that land
and for that water. He could have said enough of
this waiting. We're taking it now.
This is ours and we will fight for it.
We will fight for it. We can fight.
Isaac didn't do any of those things.
He didn't quit, didn't run away, didn't complain or blame, and he
didn't fight. What did Isaac do?
He dug another well. He dug another well.
What an extraordinary act of faith it was for Isaac to do
that. And I want to be careful here
because any good thing in Scripture can get twisted.
And, and one of the ways to twist this business of digging
another well is to turn this into some sort of bootstrap
theology that that Isaac saved himself.
He just went out and he dug another well.
He pulled himself up by his own bootstraps.
He did what he needed to do. He took care of business all by
himself. Or, or another way to get this
twisted up is, is to see it as sort of a suck it up and walk it
off kind of theology. I know life's hard.
Just grin and bear it. You got to work through the
pain. Suck it up, walk it off and move
on with life. It's not that either.
This is an extraordinary act of faith, and in one sense it's an
extraordinary act of generosity. After Abraham died and Isaac
became the patriarch, and God said there's a famine coming,
but don't go to Egypt. Stay right here in this land,
and I will provide for you. And he renewed his promise.
Your descendants will become a great nation.
All nations of the world will be blessed through you.
All of this land will one day belong to your descendants.
Stay here. Stay here.
And Isaac reopens his father's wells, digs new wells of his
own. They get filled up or stolen
from him. And Isaac's response is, you
know what? There's plenty of water here.
God has promised to take care of me and my family.
There's a famine going on. You all keep that well.
I'll go dig another one. I'll go dig another one.
God will take care of me. God will take care of my.
God has promised to provide everything we need.
God made Isaac wealthy during a fan.
He was a farmer and there was a famine going on and God blessed
him and made him so wealthy that the locals became envious of him
and he didn't own an acre of real estate.
And Isaac's there's plenty. Let him keep the water.
Let him keep that well. We'll, we'll, we'll go dig
another one. It'll all be good.
God's got us covered. A tremendous act of faith, a
tremendous act of generosity to say to his enemies, you can keep
that. We'll, we'll, we'll be all
right. God's got us.
God's got our back. That's the attitude.
It's not pulling himself up by his bootstraps.
He's not grinning and bearing it.
He's not working through the pain.
He's just trusting that God will do what God said he was going to
do. And so we dug another.
Well, I think one of the ways that we can do that is and to
live with that same kind of faith that Isaac had is, is to
make the interpretive leap that Paul Overstreet made.
Now, I'd already confessed once that I first heard this story
through listening to the song. And then I, I thought, and I
heard I was like, that sounds like I bet that's Isaac.
I wonder if that's your because I've been with, I'd heard a lot
of Paul Overstreet before. I was like, I wonder if he's if
he's gotten that from the Bible. So I went and I found the story
in the Bible and I read through it.
It's like, well, that sounds right.
But there's no devil in this story.
You know, the song says the devil did all of this.
The Bible says the Philistines did all of this.
And one simplistic twist would be to say, well, it's, you know,
the Philistines are the devil. The Philistines are the devil.
Let's think about what Paul said.
Anytime we're in a conflict, anytime people are coming at us,
Paul said. Remember this, our battle is not
against flesh and blood. It's against the principalities
and powers that are ever present in this Dark World.
Our enemy is a spiritual enemy, not flesh and blood.
And Isaac was able to look at the Philistines, these flesh and
blood folks facing famine and potential starvation themselves,
and see them not as an enemy, even though they were stealing
what he needed to live and what his family needed to live.
They were stealing it, but he was able to see them not as an
enemy. But it's a group of people in
need of God's blessing. And so we let them have the
wells. He let him have the wells.
So where's the devil in this story?
The devil is there. We can see it, his presence in
one little word. He, that is Isaac, had so many
flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him.
So all the wells that his father's servant to Doug in the
time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up, filling
them with dirt. The devil was in the envy.
Envy is one of the most pernicious spiritual forces out
there. It's a spiritual cancer.
It's so tempting to look up the ladder and see the folks that
have more. More of what?
Whatever it is more. More fame, more top money, more
talent, more opportunity, more, more education, more land, more
what? More this, more that, whatever.
They've got more. And it's not fair.
That ought to be mine. I should have that.
Why should they have that much and I have so little?
Why it's not? I want it.
I'm entitled to it. In fact, I think I'll just take
it. Envy is such a pernicious thing.
Envy. Envy is death to gratitude.
It is impossible to be both envious and grateful at the same
time. You can't hold both of those
things spiritually at the same time.
The flip side of that is gratitude is the death of envy
when we can be Isaac. Isaac, he could have joined in
the envy. It's not fair.
These Philistines, these dirty, rotten folks that don't even
follow the one true God. It's not fair.
They've got all of this land and we don't have any land.
All we want, we've already moved as far away from them as we can
get. All we want is enough water to
feed the crop, you know, to water the crops and feed the and
water our animals and water ourselves.
And they keep coming and taking that too.
God's promised this land is ours.
It's not fair that they have it. It's not right that they have
it. We'll take it, We'll fight.
We'll fight. He could have played the envy
game and instead of being a blessing to his neighbors, have
brought death and destruction upon his neighbors.
Because that's what envy does. Envy tears communities apart.
It tears relationships apart. It tears people apart.
It tears us apart from the inside out and wrecks
relationships and hope and joy and opportunity.
When we're envious, we cannot be grateful.
But when we're grateful and we're grateful, we cannot be
envious. Isaac chose gratitude.
God has blessed me. God has made me wealthy.
God has provided for the needs of my family.
We're going to be grateful for that and just dig another well.
We can dig another well. We can do that.
Yeah. One way.
Say, well, you know, we, we can, we can trust that the God who
brought us water, this thing that we needed in this place
will give us that same thing in another place.
Because what's God going to do? God has promised this all is
that this is all going to be ours, that, that I mean, my
descendants are going to be a great nation.
Is God really going to let us die of thirst here?
He told us to stay here. God's not going to abandon us
now. God's going to take care of us.
He dug another well. He dug another well.
In the end, Isaac understood what we can understand that the
devil's attacks always bow to God's sovereignty.
When the devil whispers envy in someone else's ear and they come
at us or jealousy and they come at us or or hatred or or greed
or lust, whatever it is, and they're, they're coming at us
because because the demons got and I'm not.
You got to understand, I believe in the devil.
I believe in demons. I believe all of those things
are real. I'm not also not convinced
there's a devil hiding behind every Bush, but I am convinced
that our battle is not against people.
Then when people are coming at us and attacking us because we
are faithfully following God, and if we're faithfully
following God, we will be attacked.
That you know, happen to Jesus, happen to Paul, happen to Peter,
you know it's going to happen to us.
When we're faithfully following God, we'll be attacked that the
people aren't our enemies, that the devil is stirring them up.
And we can remember that. And we can also remember that
the devil has already been defeated and that the devil's
attacks always have to bow to God's sovereignty.
The devil was trying to drive Isaac out of the promised land,
to rob Isaac of the blessing that God had promised him to get
Isaac to quit, to get Isaac to leave, to get Isaac to choose to
be a curse rather than a blessing to his neighbors.
The devil was driving it all of that.
And Isaac said, no, God has promised.
God has promised. I do not need to fear the
attacks of the devil because God has promised.
And for us, we know even more than Isaac knew because we not
only have Abraham's story and Isaac's story, but all of the
other stories, including Jesus story, that even if they kill
us, that still can't for God's sovereignty, God will just give
us our life back. The devil's plans, the devil's
attacks always have to bow to God's sovereignty.
God promised Isaac at the beginning of the chapter, right
after Abraham has died. God promised Isaac, I'm going to
bless you in the same way I blessed Abraham.
He was faithful to me, did everything I commanded him to
do. He was faithful to me and I
blessed him. I'm going to bless you the same
way your descendants will be a great nation.
All the nations of the world will be blessed through you.
Isaac did all of these things. He was there.
He needed the water. The wells were filled up with
dirt. He dug new wells.
They got filled up with dirt. He dug new wells.
They got stolen, and he dug new wells.
They got stolen and he dug new wells.
And at the end of all of that, God came back to him and
reminded him of the promise. He reminded of them a promise.
That night, that very night, after Isaac had dug that well
over which there was no quarreling, God came to him and
said, I am the God of your father, Abraham.
Do not be afraid, for I am with you.
I will bless you and will increase the number of your
descendants for the sake of my servant, Abraham.
He reminded, this is it. You're getting it, Isaac.
This is it. You don't have to be afraid of
the Philistines. You don't have to be afraid of
dying of starvation. You don't have to be afraid of
dying of thirst. I have you.
I've got you covered. I will come fill my I will
fulfill my promises. God's sovereignty always wins
over the devil's attacks. And what did Isaac do?
The final act. I love the way I love the way
the story closes. Isaac built an altar.
Isaac worshiped in response to God's faithfulness.
Isaac worshiped God, He gave thanks to God, He gave honor to
God, he gave glory to God. He bowed him down, mild himself
down, and resubmitted himself to God.
I am yours, God. I will follow you.
I will be faithful to you. And then he dug another well.
I think you probably can't have too many wells sometimes.
I don't know. Isaac built an altar there, and
he called on the name of the Lord, and there he pitched his
tent. And there his servants dug a
well. They dug a well.
There's work for us to do. The water didn't fall from the
sky. There wasn't a great miracle
that was clearly miraculous in the sense of, you know, water
from Iraq. Like when the Israelites were in
the wilderness following Moses, there was work they had to do.
They had to dig. They dug another well.
And God provided. God provided Isaac worshipped
Isaac worshipped the Lord and he dug another well in in in our
time. One of the folks that that this
brings to my mind is is gentleman by the name of Dave
Durvecki. Anyone remember that name?
Remember Dave Durvecki, Rick, baseball player back in the 80s,
nineties, somewhere in there? Yeah, Yeah, he was pitcher.
Started with the Padres, I believe, and then later moved to
the Giants. I might be flipping that, but I
think he started with the Padres and later moved to the Giants.
Good pitcher, not the best of all time, but a good pitcher.
Pitched a lot of innings, had a lot of success, made it to the
All Star game one year. Very, very good pitcher.
And then at one point late in his career, he got cancer in his
throwing arm and the doctors told him we got it.
It's going to take surgery to get that out.
You will, based on what we have to remove and where that tumor
is, you will almost certainly never pitch again, certainly not
at Major League level. And Dave said, I'm not having
any of that. He went through the surgery,
went through rehab, he trained and he came back.
He came back, you know, he dug another well.
That well got filled. He dug.
He dug another well. I'm coming back.
You're saying I can't, you know, this, this cancer is taken away.
Took him out. I can.
I don't remember how long he was out.
It was at least one year, maybe maybe 2 before he got back.
But he came back and in his first game back, this is almost
unheard of these days. He pitched 8 innings, gave up
one run and got the win. And his second game back he was
in the 6th inning and he rare bags of lefty, he reared back to
throw a pitch and that torque on his arm and his arm snapped
right there in the game. Right there on national
television if you can probably I haven't.
I remember seeing, I didn't, I wasn't watching the game, but I
remember seeing the replays on the news and his arm snapped and
the doctor said it's back and it's worse and they had to take
off his whole arm. Dave could have quit.
He could have run away. He could have blamed and
complained. He could have fought, got angry
and mad and vicious toward the people around him.
But he didn't do any of those things.
He dug another well and he shared his experience and his
faith. He was deeply, I think, I'm not
sure if he's still alive or not, but he was a man of deep faith
and he used his experience to share faith and hope with
others. He dug another well.
I want to read to you a couple of things.
He said he's he's written a few books, but these are just some
excerpts, short excerpts from some interviews he did.
Trebeki said this I used and this was after his arm was
taken. I used to depend on myself.
Now I depend more on more on God.
Through my own suffering I have become more aware of His and I
love him more as a result. I realized my life wasn't in my
hands anymore. My life was in God's hands.
It was in His hands all along. Our life is in God's hands and
when our well is filled up, when what we need is taken away from
us, we can complain, we can fight, we can blame, we can
quit, we can run away, or we can do what Isaac did.
We can do what Dave did. We can dig another well, we can
worship God and dig another well.
In Jesus name. Amen.