The Presence of God
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We have been walking through the story of Genesis. We've been following the patriarchs the past few weeks and months. We've been Abraham, and then we followed Isaac.
We are now shifting more into Jacob being the patriarch. I want to recap a little bit of what we talked about last week in the story, because that bleeds into the story today. Last week we were in Genesis 27, and it is the moment that Isaac has come to give his blessing, the promise that he had been given from God, that he would bless one of his sons, and he chose his favorite, Esau. That was his plan. His plan was to give the blessing to Esau. While Esau goes on a hunting trip to prepare food for his dad, his wife catches wind of it.
Rebecca hears of this plan. Her favorite is Jacob. She wants him to be the son of promise. So they devise a plan where she cooks some food, where she dresses him up to smell like Isaac. Isaac at this point is old. He is blind.
He is nearing death. He is a little bit easier to deceive. So Jacob shows up in his brother's clothes to smell like him. He has goat skin wrapped around his hands and his neck to feel like Esau, because Esau is furry. And then he comes and he deceives his father. He dishonors his father.
He lies to him. He even blasphemes the name of the Lord, and he actually steals the promise. That through it all, God works through this mess of a situation, this mess of a family, to bring the promise because God chose Jacob to carry this promise. And when Esau finds out about this, he is very upset. He is distraught. And in his grief, it quickly turns to anger.
In verse 41 of chapter 27, it says, Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him. And Esau said to himself, The days of mourning for my father are approaching. Then I will kill my brother Jacob. Jacob. So he is angry.
And this is going to cause Jacob to go on the run and to leave this family. So we're going to be in Genesis 27, and we're going to finish up through Genesis 28, which is on page 13 of your blue Bibles. I encourage you to grab a Bible today. There's not going to be a lot of text on the screen. We're going to walk through this story as this family is divided, as Jacob goes out on his own. So go ahead and flip there.
There are moments in epic stories where a hero enters the scene and changes everything. Where someone arrives and it changes the momentum, it changes the swagger, it changes the confidence of the whole story. You can think back to the two towers and the Lord of the Rings. At the Battle of Helm's Deep, this big battle is happening. They are losing the battle. And then Gandalf enters the scene.
On the top of the hill, shining like white lightning, he is ready to bring his army in. It changes the whole momentum of the battle. It changes the swagger of the army. They end up winning the battle. You can look at the Chronicles of Narnia, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In the last part, in the last battle, Aslan enters the scene, and it changes everything.
You can do this with Star Wars. You can look at the multiple times that Luke Skywalker shows up, and it changes the scene. You can do this when Bobby Boucher enters in at halftime of the Bourbon Bowl, and he inspires a comeback. The Mud Dogs win the Bourbon Bowl and the Waterboy. You can do this with a lot of stories. When someone comes in and they change everything, they change the momentum, and they change the confidence, and it brings, and it changes the story completely.
And we see that today in this story. We're going to see Jacob out on his own, and God is going to teach him something about the importance of his presence. That God's presence matters. This is going to teach Jacob a profound lesson, but it's also going to teach the church as we read this. So let me pray, and then we're going to dive in to the story.
God, I thank you that you didn't stand in the heavens, that you came, and that changed everything. God, I pray that today, as we walk through this story, that you would help us see your good news in it. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so we're going to be in the end of 27 in verse 41.
Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him. And Esau said to himself, The days of mourning for my father are approaching. Then I will kill my brother Jacob. But the words of Esau, her older son, were told to Rebekah. Now there's two aspects of this that I found remarkable.
First, Esau. He's just foolish, and this is the last story we get of his foolishness. It just shows up again. I kind of feel like, you know, remember the guy in high school or middle school that always picks fights? And the whole day they'd be talking up the fight, like I'm going to jump this kid, I'm going to stop this kid. And they're talking loudly to themselves.
They're telling anybody who will listen. And then at the end of the day, the principal calls them into the office and says, Hey, I heard you're going to fight a kid. And he's shocked. Like how? How did that happen? It's like, bro, because you told everybody.
Everyone in the school knows. As I imagine a little bit of what Esau's doing. He's cleaning his deer. He's in the camp and he's just loud. He's like, When daddy's gone, I'm going to kill him. That's part of what I find remarkable.
Also, Rebekah. How stealthy is she? She picks up on everything. Nothing is lost on her. She caught wind that Isaac was going to give the blessing to Esau and she intervened. And somehow she's got ears everywhere and she picks up on this.
And she realizes this is not good for Jacob. And so she sent and called Jacob, her younger son, and said to him, Behold, your brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you. Now, therefore, my son, obey my voice. Arise. Flee to Laban, my brother, in Haran and stay with him for a while until your brother's fury turns away, until your brother's anger turns away from you and he forgets what you have done to him. Then I will send and bring you from there.
Why should I be bereft of both of you in one day? Then Rebekah said to Isaac, I loathe my life because of these Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women like these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me? So she tells Jacob, Son, you got to go. I love you, but you got to go. Your brother, Esau's like Katniss with the bow, but he's built like Sasquatch.
And Jacob, she's like, Jacob, you're real skilled with the knife. I've seen you cut potatoes in the tent, but that's not going to help you. Your brother will destroy you. You have got to go. And also, you got to leave here. You got to go to my family in the land of Haran.
You got to go to Laban and find a wife because you can't marry the women of this land. And she goes to Isaac and she's like, If he marries a Canaanite, if he marries a Hittite like his brother, I'm going to lose my mind. He has got to find a good woman, and it's not here. He needs to go. So Isaac hears this, and it says, Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and directed him.
You must not take a wife from the Canaanite women. Arise. Go to Badam-Aran, to the house of Bethuel, your mother's father, and take as your wife from there one of the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother. So he says, Don't, don't marry a Canaanite woman. Please, like, do not follow in the same footsteps of your brother. Marry someone.
Go to the land of Padam-Aran, which I know sounds like a planet in Star Wars. It's a real place, and it's 500 miles from where they are. So this is a big journey for Jacob, and Isaac knows this, and he gives him a blessing. And as we talked about last week, blessings hold weight in the Bible. He says, God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples. May he give the blessing of Abraham to you and to your offspring with you, that you may take possession of the land of your sojournings that God gave to Abraham.
Thus Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Padam-Aran, to Laban, the son of Bethuel, the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob and Esau's mother. So Isaac reiterates this promise that he had gotten, that his father Abraham had gotten. And I want to just refresh us on the importance of this promise. That he promises him a place. You will get this land. This place is yours.
And he promises him a people. That you have the blessing of a great nation being made through you. The blessing of place in people is significant. And we're going to see how that shows up a little bit later. But I also want to take note of something.
That his son dishonored him. His son lied to him. His son took advantage of him. He blasphemed the name of the Lord. He used God's name for dishonorable practices. But he ultimately trusts in the sovereignty of God in the situation.
He trusts that God chose Jacob. And he has faith. It's a little bit of a redemptive moment for Isaac. He trusts God. And he gives him a blessing. So he sends him out.
Jacob is on the road. And then Esau catches wind of all of this. In verse 6 it says, Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Padam Aram to take a wife from there. And that as he blessed him, he directed him, You must not take a wife from the Canaanite women. And that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and had gone to Padam Aram. So when Esau saw that the Canaanite women did not please Isaac, his father, Esau went to Ishmael and took as his wife, besides the wives he had, Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the sister of Nebaoth.
Now, we get kind of one last picture of Esau and his foolishness. He catches wind that it didn't please his parents to marry a Canaanite woman. So he thinks, have you ever been in a situation where you mess up in your family, like really mess up and your solution is, you know what I should do? I should marry my cousin on the estranged side of my family, like the one where his dad and my dad are not friends, like that's a good idea. That's kind of his plan here. He goes to, this is the Ishmael, alright, this is the Ishmael that his grandmother threw out of the family to die and to be on their own.
He thinks, that's a good idea. I'll marry his daughter and I will get in my parents' good graces again. And you kind of feel a little bit bad for Esau. He's just trying to please his dad, but he's foolish. He's not wise. And it's evident that God has chosen Jacob to carry this promise that Esau is a fool and that he is not going to inherit this promise and that his attempt to get back in his parents' good graces will not work.
So then the story really shifts completely to Jacob. And Jacob is on the run and it says, Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran, which is another place for this land of Padamuram. He went toward Haran and he came to a certain place and stayed there that night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and laid down in that place to sleep. So I want to take a moment to kind of feel where Jacob is at.
This is the first time that Jacob is on his own. And in this culture, you stay with your family. It was identity. It was future. It was value. It was the way you were provided for.
It was security. So Jacob is on his own and there's a lot of uncertainty here. Also, I feel like Jacob, he says he's a man of the tent, that he's not really used to being out on his own. I kind of feel like it's the picture of, you know, they used to take animals that were born in captivity and release them in the wild because they thought that was a good idea to lease them back to the wild and they put trackers on them and they go out in the wild and after like a week, they see the animal hadn't moved and they go out and they see that it didn't make it because it's just not wise to release someone who's something born in captivity into the wild.
I feel like Jacob is like this. He's a man of the tent. He's not used to being out on his own. There's all kinds of uncertainty all over this situation as he is journeying out. In the midst of his uncertainty, in the midst of all of it, he's very tired. We know he's tired because he takes a stone as a pillow to sleep and stones aren't comfortable.
So he is uncertain. There's all kinds of, probably some fear in the midst of all of this and he is tired and God comes to him in a dream. Verse 12, And he dreamed and behold, there was a ladder set up on earth and the top of it reached to heaven. Now, pause. This is common in the Bible. God speaks through dreams.
We are not going to talk about it a lot today. We're going to save that for when we get to Joseph because I know that some of you probably got really excited about talking about dreams and that you want to go to community group this week and you want to hijack the discussion and talk about how dreams are and how God speaks to us in dreams. I want you to save that for when we get to Joseph. God does speak through dreams. He communicates truth and he communicates promises. Also, sometimes a dream is just a dream.
If you dream about winning the lottery, it doesn't mean you go out and buy lottery tickets. Alright? We'll get more of that when we get to Joseph but right here, it's important to know he is communicating truth and promises to Jacob and he comes to him in a dream and Jacob sees a ladder. He sees a ladder. Now, it's debated in the Hebrew whether it's ladder or a staircase. You may see in some of your Bibles it'll say ladder and it'll have a footnote that says also it could be a staircase and there's a lot of debate that happens over this.
Honestly, I don't really care about the debate. I don't think that is as important as what the method is. The picture of what's happening here is that heaven and earth are connected. That a ladder connects heaven and we're going to stick with the language of ladder here because this is what our Bibles say. That heaven and earth are connected. This is a very big and grand picture.
It says, And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it on this ladder. And behold, the Lord stood above it all and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, your father and the God of Isaac. I want us to picture this and what this would look like. There's this grand ladder. I mean, sometimes we use ladders to change these lights up here. I don't.
I watch people that do it because it's very tall up there and if you fall, it's not good. And it's high. And this pales in comparison to what it actually would be like. This is a ladder that reaches the heavens. It is massive. It is grand.
It is big. This connection is happening and there are angels ascending and descending on it. Which I know, some of us have a hallmark version of what angels look like, that they're very cute. They are not cute. They are terrifying. If you read about them in the Bible, they bring some of the glory of God with them.
They are terrifying creatures. This picture is grand. It is big. And it's starting to get even more fearful because the Lord, the God Almighty, stands above the ladder. So this ladder is in the sky.
There's angels descending and ascending upon it. And the God of the universe, the God that created everything out of nothing, that holds the universe in the palm of his hand, he stands at the top of it. And this picture just got even more fearful because the last time that Jacob spoke of the Lord, it was not good. He blasphemed the name of the Lord. He also has not had this type of relationship with God, not like his father Isaac. So this is his first encounter with the God of the universe.
And any time that anyone encounters the glory of the Lord in the Bible, it is a fearful picture. And the last we see of him talking about him is a very blasphemous episode. It feels like a little bit, there are times going up when I would get in trouble and my stepdad, who's a bigger guy, would stand before me and I was tiny. And he looked huge. And when he spoke, he spoke deep and it sounded so much louder when I was in trouble. I know many of you have had this experience with parents.
Multiply that by a thousand. And this is the picture that we get here. It is fearful. And then the Lord speaks. What is he going to say? Based on what his last episode was with what happened with Jacob, what is he going to say to him?
And this is what the Lord declares. The land on which you lie, I will give to you and to your offspring. He's going to give a place. This land. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth. And then we see the promise of people.
You get a place and you get a people. And you shall spread across, spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south. And then you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. So the Lord starts out by reassuring him that you get this blessing. The blessing of Abraham, the blessing of Isaac, this is yours. And we see a glimpse of a common theme that we get throughout Genesis that this is God's grace.
Jacob deserves wrath. He blasphemes the name of the Lord. He deceives, dishonors his father. He deserves wrath. But God gives him a blessing.
He gives him grace. And this picture of grace is much bigger than just Jacob. It's going to bless all the families of the earth. So he gives this blessing and then he says, Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you. And it's at this point that we see what the imagery of the ladder is.
How this comes into full view. The picture of the ladder is a picture of God's presence with Jacob. The ladder connects heaven and earth and God doesn't just stand above it all managing from a distance. God is imminent. He is with Jacob. He's telling, I'm going to be with you.
My presence will be with you wherever you go. I am intimately involved. I have got your back. And that is a powerful picture for Jacob that wherever he goes, the presence of the Lord will be with him. He will not be alone. And he gets this dream, this powerful picture and then Jacob wakes up and he responds in verse 16.
Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it. And he was afraid and said, How awesome is this place? This is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven. So we see two things in this story. We see that Jacob gets this powerful dream and then we see his response. That he just encountered God.
God steps into his story. Everything is about to change. And it's the first thing we see about his responses is that he's fearful. Because it is a fearful picture anytime that someone is in, that we are in sin and anytime you see in the Bible that someone is sinful and they're in the presence of God, it's a fearful picture because God's glory is so great it causes us to shudder. It's a fearful picture for him. It's also a reminder that he's going to be with him so it's a little bit of a warning.
I'm with you wherever you go. I'm going to see everything. I see all of your sin. I see all of your hidden faults. We see this develop later in the Bible that God sees every aspect of our life even the inner hidden thoughts. That's part of what's being said here but here's the bigger picture of what's happening.
His presence to Jacob is a comfort. It is a comfort to know that the Lord is with you that his presence is with you. The idea of presence in the Hebrew is the idea literally before the face of God. That you would be in the presence of God that he would be with you that you would literally be before his face and that would be a comfort to know that God is with you. There are moments when my son he's been walking for about six months and sometimes he'll wander off a little bit and he'll get mixed up with some people that he doesn't quite recognize and when he can't find me and he can't find my wife he starts to get a little bit scared and he starts to breathe heavy his tears start to come down his face and in those moments I'll call out to him and he hears my voice and it's a comfort but what really comforts him is when he can see my face.
Generation Faith, Generational Sin
Transcript
Morning. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in Genesis 26. We are continuing our journey through Genesis following this storyline of this family. We are following Isaac still.
And we're in Genesis 26, which will be on page 12 in a blue Bible near you. If you don't have a Bible at home, please take that. We want you to have a Bible that you can read at home. I would encourage you. There's not going to be a lot of Scripture on the screen. We are going to be walking through this story.
So please do grab a Bible. We'll walk through this together. Growing up, my stepdad had some quirks. They were quite humorous. My brother and I used to watch movies in our living room. And we wanted to be kind of like a theater.
So we would turn off the lights, watch the movie. And my stepdad would get home and he would see that we're watching a movie in the dark. And the first thing that would come out of his mouth was losers sit in the dark. That's just what, every time he'd come through the door, losers sit in the dark. And he'd come on and he'd turn on one light. That was one of his quirks.
Because in our family, you just didn't watch movies in the dark. It was just a thing. Like you had to have at least one light on. And it drove me crazy that this is one of his quirks. Fast forward. Anna and I, we got married.
We got an apartment. She gets a movie. We're watching it. Getting ready to watch it. She starts turning out the lights. I started getting fidgety.
I'm like, baby, let's put one light on. And she's like, no, this is a completely normal thing. Like, turn off the lights. We're going to watch the movie. I said, no, just, I mean, I get it. Like all the lights, we can turn off at one.
We'll just keep one light on. And she was like, why? And it came out. Because losers sit in the dark. She looked at me. What did you just say?
And I had to explain the history. That in my family, we all have one light on when we watch movies. It's just a thing. And to this day, we do not watch movies in the dark. We always have one light on. It's just this quirk that I picked up from my stepdad.
This happens. Like we pick up things from our parents. We pick up behaviors. We inherit things from our parents. We inherit both things that like are the kind of inheritance of traits. Like there are things about our parents that we inherit that are in us.
And then we also inherit behaviors. Just being around, absorbing some of the behaviors, some of the patterns from our parents. And they just kind of become ours. And we're going to see that a little bit in this story today. That Isaac follows in the same footsteps of his father Abraham. Doing almost the exact same thing.
Because he, like us, inherits patterns that have been passed down to him. And we see this show up in three distinct ways. We see that Isaac inherits obedience. And we're going to see as we walk through this that he inherits sin. And then ultimately we're going to see that he inherits grace. And as we walk through the story and we see these three things that he inherits, I want us to do this a little bit reflectively.
Thinking about the things that we inherit from our parents. Some of the behaviors that show up in us. But also for those of us that have kids, what we pass down. Because it matters. So I'm going to pray.
And then we're going to jump in. And Father, thank you so much for your word. That it is accurate. That it is good. That it instructs us in righteousness. And shows us your gospel.
God, I pray this morning that you would open our hearts. That we would hear it and receive it. In Jesus' name, amen. Alright, so it starts off in verse 1. Now there was a famine in the land.
Besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham. Alright, so that phrase, now there was a famine in the land. And it's supposed to take you back to Genesis 12. This is supposed to help you clue in to the story of Abraham. Because Moses uses the exact same phrase in Genesis 12. So it's cluing you in.
This story is a little bit like Abraham. And then as we continue to read this, we're going to see even more so how this shows up. How this is a repeating of history from Isaac and Abraham. It says, 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. So now this is starting to sound even more like Abraham. It's starting to sound like Genesis 20. If you think back in the fall when we went through this story, Abraham took his family to the land of Gerar. God doesn't want them in Egypt. That's coming down the line at the end of Genesis.
But for now he wants them to settle in Gerar amongst the Philistines. And guess who the king is? Abimelech. Now, this could be the exact same Abimelech. There's a long gap between when Abraham was living amongst Abimelech in Genesis 20 and this time period. It's a huge gap.
So it's possible that Abimelech was very young at the time being a king. And now he's very, very old. It's also possible that this is the son of Abimelech who bears the same name. But regardless, they would have been very familiar with this family. This family has history in this land. And they would have remembered it when they came to settle amongst them.
So he says, verse 3, Sojourn in this land and I will be with you and will 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 your father Abraham. And then God continues. He says, I will multiply your offspring as the stars of the 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. So he tells Isaac, trust me. Obey me like your father Abraham did. Like he trusted me in settling where I told him to.
Trust me. Obey my commands. Obey my statutes like your father Abraham. And you'll get this promise. This promised land. This blessing of a great nation.
That is for you. Just trust me. And what's important here is it says, So Isaac settled in Gerar. That Isaac, he trusts God. He listens to his word. He trusts him.
And he settles in the land. And that is huge. Isaac inherits obedience from his father Abraham. And this happens with us. We pick up patterns of behavior. We pick up patterns of good patterns.
Obedience from our parents that shows up in our lives. I think to my parents, one of the values they instilled in me was generosity. It's just something that they taught me at a young age. I have vivid memories of my mom. And we would be at church on Sunday. And she would be writing a check.
And she's explaining to me, this is what we do. We give to the church. And I remember the moments, not just giving with the church, but also there were situations growing up where there's someone that either worked for my stepdad or was a family member or someone we knew that they would cut checks, they would cover bills, they would help pay for things. That generosity was a rhythm. It was a natural thing for our household. And it's something that's shown up in my own life that I've been able to practice in our own family.
And sometimes that stuff is taught. Like I remember specifically my mom teaching me some of this stuff. But oftentimes a lot of this is caught. You absorb it over time. It becomes some of your behavior. And we see this as an intense example with Abraham and Isaac.
Because if you go back to Genesis 22, you look at the story of Abraham taking Isaac to the Mount of Moriah to sacrifice his son. Isaac was front and center for that. He got to see how Abraham was obedient to what God had called him to, so much so that he was in the center of it. But that Abraham ultimately trusted that the blessing was going to come through Isaac, that God was going to make this blessing happen. He just had to trust God. And he got to see this, that he trusted God, and there was blessing that came out of it.
And he got to inherit this obedience, and it was passed down from Abraham. And ultimately this is passed down to the nation of Israel. This love for God, that the heart of the Old Testament law is love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, that you would be wholly devoted in love to God, and in your devotion and love to God, that might show up in your kids. That you might teach that to your children, that they also might love God wholeheartedly, with their whole self. Proverbs 22, 6 says, Train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it.
And that's the hope, is that you would train up a child, which sometimes is intentional teaching. Sometimes it's opening up the Bible, it's showing how to pray, it's intentional moments of training, but a lot of times, it's just stuff that is caught. It's them seeing your love for God, so much so, that it shows up in their own lives, that they might never depart from it. And this is something, that we have been trying to focus on as a church. That we've realized, we have a lot of families here, and as a gospel-centered family, we want to help families do this, and we've made some shifts. Like Kid City, I don't know if you have seen this, have gotten to see this, they've been crushing it lately.
We've made some shifts over the past year, and it's been awesome. My daughter came home a month ago, and she was learning about Romans 6, 23, and she was learning about, for the wages of sin is death, and she's explaining to me, the connections of sin and death, and I was blown away. I was so thankful. And we want to continue to press into that, but we also want to see this happen, outside of Kid City, because you, parents, have the most opportunity for impact, with your kids. You do. You have the most opportunity for influence.
My mentor, for over a decade now, he's a pastor in Houston. He used to be a youth pastor, and I interned under him. When he first showed up at the church, that I was interning at, this kid got busted, this high school kid got busted at a party. And his parents came to the church, and said, where were you? Well, my kid got busted at a party. You guys are failing.
And he said, okay. He realized, this is kind of the culture of this church. It's really the culture of down south. You take your kids to school, that's where they get their education. You take your kids to sports team, that's where they get their athletics. You take your kids to the church, that's where they get their spiritual growth.
That was kind of the mindset. So he got all the parents together, in one room. And he had one small jar, and one giant jar. And he had a bucket of ping pong balls. And he said, he took out a ball, and he said, this ball represents one hour of influence, that I get with your kids every week. Sometimes it's one, he put it in the small jar.
Sometimes it's two, he put another one. Sometimes it's three. For some of your kids, I might even get four hours, with your kids a week. And he took the bucket to the big jar, and he dumped it in. He said, this is the amount of time, that you get with your kids. 30, 40, 50, 60 plus hours a week.
And he said, tell me, who has the most opportunity for impact? Who has the most opportunity, for influence with your kids? It's you. And that is how God has designed this. That we might influence our kids, we might train them to love the Lord, with their whole self, that they might never depart from it. And some of that is intentional, it's going to be, in the future, we're going to be making shifts, to make sure that we're encouraging, time in the word at home, and time in prayer.
And we want to encourage, some of those intentional moments, but a lot of times, it's just going to be caught. It's going to be caught, and it's going to show up in your lives. We were talking about this, in our teaching team this week. And Bianca, who serves in music, and she also serves on our teaching team, and helping write sermons. And she said that she remembers, that her mom, not necessarily her teaching her, how to read the Bible, how to study the Bible. But what she does remember, is she would come home, or she would come downstairs, every morning, and she'd see her mom, with her Bible, reading.
And that has had a lasting impact, on her, to where she values, the word of God, like her mother does. I think of a friend, one of my friends from seminary, he had a daughter, and we didn't have kids yet, so I was just learning, and observing. And they had this culture, of forgiveness, and repentance, in their household. That when him and his wife, would mess up, and they would sin against their daughter, they would go to her, and say, will you forgive me? I'm so sorry. And they had this, this rhythm of repentance, and forgiveness, and love, that I hadn't seen before.
I was like, man, that is awesome, that one day, that's all she's going to know, is a culture, of repentance, and forgiveness, and love, and not one of pride. that she might never depart from that. This shows up, in the everyday moments, of crisis, and chaos. Your kids will remember, our children will remember, how we respond. Will we go to the things, of this world? Or will we go, to the Lord in prayer, seeking his wisdom, and his care, and his provision? Now some of you, may be thinking, that's great, for those of people, that grew up, in a Christian household.
That was not mine. We picked up, all kinds of different patterns, but not that. So how in the world, am I supposed to, if God gives me children, or if I have children, how in the world, am I supposed to, to teach them this kind of stuff? That sounds great. How? Well, you have a, gospel centered family, that you're surrounded with.
We are figuring this out together. Ask. Learn. Ask how some, we have older parents here. Ask how, they have done it. Because we are figuring this out together.
And you might be thinking, some of you are like, wow, this is really good. You've spent quite a bit of time, in the first six verses, talking about, how to raise kids. I don't have kids, and I don't think I'm ever going to have kids. How does this apply to me? You are a part, of a gospel centered family. We get to do this together.
We need you. You get to join in with us. You get to help raise our kids, that they might love the Lord, and never depart from it. That's a beautiful thing, that you get to be invited into, in community groups, not just in Kid City. That you get to help raise our kids. So ask, how you can help.
And parents, receive it. Ask how they can, how you can pitch in. How you can help. Maybe it's babysitting, where parents can go on a date night, at least once a month. Maybe it's, intentional, moments of conversation, that you get to share the gospel, with kids in your group. Be a third wheel parent.
We are asking you to join in, that we might partner together, that we might be a village, that raises gospel centered families, that kids might depart from, might not never depart, from the love of God. This is what we are moving towards, this is what we want to embody, as we obey the scriptures, and as we love our families. And we all have opportunities, to pass on this obedience, this love of Jesus. But at times, this gets difficult. And one of the reasons, this gets difficult, is because we, inherit sin. We inherit a sinful nature, and this shows up front and center, starting off in verse 6.
He says, So Isaac settled in Gerar. Alright, so they're settled. Verse 7. When the men of this place, asked him about his wife, he said, She is my sister. For he feared to say, my wife, thinking, lest the men of this place, should kill me because of Rebekah, because she was attractive in appearance. When he had been there a long time, Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked out of a window, and saw Isaac laughing, with Rebekah, 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 have easily lain 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.
Now, doesn't that sound familiar? This is Abraham Abimelech, the remix. I mean, this is happening in almost the exact same fashion. And Isaac doesn't have the weird kind of half-truth, this is my half-sister kind of thing. This is a straight-up lie. He fears man.
After God just gave him this promise again, he said, This is the promise. You are going to have this blessing. You are going to have these lands. You are going to have all these things. And he goes, Well, my wife is a stunner. She is good-looking.
They might kill me. He fears man. And out of that fear, he lies. And it wasn't a small lie. This thing carried on for a while. It says in verse 8, that a long time had passed before Abimelech started to figure this out.
So Abimelech, he sees them, and they are laughing. Now, this isn't just laughter. This is flirtatious laughter. That's what the Hebrew is getting at in this text. They're flirting. So he sees them, and they're all starry-eyed, and laughing, and cutting up, and they maybe got a little bit physical.
And Abimelech's like, Wait a second. Y'all, this is not brother-sister love. You guys are married, and I like to think that everything just clicked. That he just, that this is OG Abimelech from back in the day, or this is his son. Regardless, it just clicks. This is what this family does.
They show up. They pass their wives off as their sister. What have you done? Which, by the way, is such a weird thing to be known for. It's like, What? You could have gotten us all killed again.
He operates out of fear. He doesn't trust God. He fears man, and eventually this scheme gets exposed. And it's because we inherit sinful patterns. Not just by absorbing them through observing bad behavior. We inherit this.
There's a philosopher named John Locke. He's one of the most influential philosophers on America. He's a British philosopher from the 17th century, but he influenced much of the founding fathers in our Constitution. Stuff like property rights, taxation without representation. That's all him. And one of the things he also, one of his philosophies was something called blank slate theory.
Blank slate theory was the idea that every child is born morally neutral. So they come into this world with a blank slate. And it's up to us, as families or as society, to shape virtue in children. They come in morally neutral, and if you could raise them in a moral vacuum, they would never have any type of evil. We could educate them to be good citizens, to be good, virtuous people. And that's one of the reasons why academics put such a high value on education to fix morality.
You may have picked up on this, that the way you solve racism is education. The way that you solve systematic injustice is education, which has not worked in any society ever, because education is not the problem. Children do not come in with a blank slate. There is one fatal flaw in this theory. It's children. Have you ever seen a two-year-old?
Have you ever? My daughter is so sweet. She's also a little schemer. She's schemey. And she, like, at a very young age, would scheme and would lie. And I didn't teach her that.
I don't spend most of the time with her during the day. That's my wife. But my wife isn't schemey. It took everything she could to throw me a surprise birthday party last year. She's just, she's not. And I didn't teach her.
No one else has taught her. It's natural. It's something that she inherited from me, because when I was a kid, I was very schemey. She inherits this naturally from me. Isaac, he certainly probably picked up some fear of man patterns from Abraham. But he wasn't even alive when Abraham and Abimelech were doing this dance in Genesis 20.
He never got to see this front and center. We inherit generational sin. Romans 5 teaches, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all sinned. That's the formation for the basis of original sin. That from Adam, sin spreads to all of humanity. That we inherit this sinful nature, it is passed down all the way back to Adam.
In 1 Peter 1.18 it says, Knowing that you are ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers. That we naturally inherit sinful patterns from our forefathers. Sinful, futile ways. The Old Testament law teaches that we inherit sin from the second, third, and fourth generation. It's passed down. Now psychologists look at this, formation of behavior, and they kind of fall in between two camps.
On the one side you've got nature, and the far end of nature versus nurture, you have, basically when conception happens, genetics are formed, and therefore it's all decided from there. That's the far end of the nature side of the bait. Once your genetics form, that's who you are. On the other end of the extreme, is nurture. The idea that education, that how you are raised, is what forms you and shapes behavior. This is where clean slate theory has some of its merits in this argument.
That it would be education that would form you. That you would, through experiences, through upbringing, this is kind of what forms you. Most people fall between the two of these and see that both of them have value. That what you, there's something about you, inherit to you, that helps form your behavior. Also, there are things that shape you, and mold you. And as Christians, we look at this and go, yep, that makes sense.
You inherit a sinful nature, that matters. You also inherit, patterns of obedience and disobedience, that form and shape you. Let me give you a few examples. Take alcoholism or addiction. People look and they say, how is it that a father, or a son, and his father, and his grandfather, and his great grandfather, that all of them, are alcoholics? That all of them struggle, with addiction.
How is that? On the nature side, there are people who will say, well, it's genetics. That has to be what shapes you. And they've done a ton of studies. They haven't isolated the one gene, that causes this. They may have found some factors, into this.
But we as Christians, can look at this and go, yeah, that makes sense, that you would inherit, the sinful nature, that sin causes physical changes. The reason we know that, is because sin causes death. That yes, on this level, down to your very traits, you would be corrupt. It also makes sense, that the only way, you ever saw your father, deal with stress, or with burdens, is with a bottle. If the only time, you watched your parents celebrate, was them, stumbling through the door, killed over a toilet. If you saw, if this is who, you come from, and this is what you see, it makes sense, that's generational sin.
This happens in, in anger. People look at families, and go, there tends to be, a pattern between, all the people in this family, that are angry, especially some of the men, cousins, dads, brothers, they're all angry, and violent. It's like they have, an extra Y chromosome. There's something going on here, that they're just, angry, and violent. Every time, they face, opposition, they use their fists. Yes, you inherit a sinful nature.
Also, if the only time, you ever see your family, deal with opposition, is with their fists, are getting violent, or getting verbally abusive, those are the only patterns, you would ever know. This happens with any, I'll give you one more, this happens with anxiety. People look at families, and go, how is it, that anxiety, plagues this family so bad, that mothers, and sisters, that even brothers, uncles, there's just, it's so stressful, in this house. And it was the same, for their parents. There's all these, burdens and stress, and it was just so tense. Well, there's something going on there.
There's a fallenness, that is inherited, that shows up. Also, if you never actually, get to see, families that go to the Lord, in prayer, that fight, that trust, fight to trust the promises of God, to make through. Both of those matter. When you have inherited sin, and you have observable, bad patterns, of response, of behavior, and you put them together, that is generational sin. This is what we inherit. We inherit, we inherit generational sin.
And when you think about that, when you think about all of the fallenness, all of the brokenness, that you have inherited, is all the way down, to the core of who you are, that feels a little bit depressing. But when you also think, that you, this is what you are passing on, to your kids, that feels even more depressing. But the good news of the gospel, is that's not the only thing, that we get to inherit. That we also get to inherit, grace. And that shows up, in the rest of the story. Verse 12.
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 the Philistines envied him. So just off the heels, of him running this lie, running this scheme, God blesses Isaac.
He gives him a harvest, that's a hundredfold, which in an arid culture, is an absurd amount of crops. He gives him animals, he builds this family, they get blessing, upon blessing, upon blessing, and the Philistines, start to get envious. And it continues. Now the Philistines had 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 the hospitality starts to end.
They're like, you guys have gotten way too big, y'all need to get out of Gerard, go to the valley, and then from this point forward, the rest of the story, which we don't have time to watch, walk through, they just start filling up wells with dirt. Which you might think, oh that's petty. That's like you kicking down your neighbor's mailbox. I guess, it's more than petty. That's almost an act of war. Because in an arid culture, where water is life, it's how you feed your animals, it's how you feed your family, water sustains you, you start filling up wells, you start ending opportunities to live, to prosper, to grow.
And they go, the rest of the story, from place, to place, to place, to place, digging wells, taking care of the wells that Abraham dug. And they get filled up, and filled up, and filled up. And Isaac is starting to feel this, as they have to go from place to place, not ever having peace. And there had to be some part of them that wondered, oh, is this blessing going to end? What's happening here? And then God comes to him in verse 23, and makes it clear.
From there he went 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 well. That in the midst of this uncertainty, God makes it abundantly clear. This blessing is yours. This blessing is yours.
You are going to be taken care of. You are still inheriting the promise. You still are going to have a nation that is as numerous as the stars in the sky. I am going to take care of you. It doesn't matter how he acted before Bimelech. It doesn't matter the schemes and the lives that he lived in.
He gets grace. Continued grace. And the story ends with, we don't have time to look at this, but in your community group this week, you can look at it. The story ends with Bimelech and his posse showing up, and it's like, is this going to be a war? Are they going to fight? And they end up striking a deal.
In the most politically schemey fashion, you can look at Bimelech and laugh at how he just lashed through his teeth. They strike a deal. And peace is made. And Isaac's family is sustained. They are sustained. They are preserved with this promise.
And because Isaac was preserved, the bloodline eventually gets to Jesus. And therefore, we get grace. Grace is unmerited favor, unearned favor, which I like. That lacks a little spice and flavor. It seems a little bit overly technical. They say it like that.
Someone came up with an acronym, I don't know who, for grace. It's God's riches at Christ's expense, which I love. That in Christ, not by any good works of our own, we get the riches of God. That in Christ, we get brought into the same blessing that Isaac had. We get brought into the same fellowship that he had with God. That, y'all, we get access to the God who created everything.
We can come to him in prayer. We get fellowship in part in this life, more fully realized in the next. We get fellowship with God. We get the perfect love of Christ. That's one of the most amazing God's riches of God, that we get the eternal love of Jesus. That no matter what, for those of us who are in Christ, God's love captures us, it seals us, it never lets us go.
We get to experience his goodness, and his joy, and his hope, and his love. That one day, one of the riches we get, is we get to dwell with God, in the city of God, which Psalm 50 calls, the perfection of beauty. The perfection of beauty. We get to dwell in a land like that with God. We get excited about shiplap, and some farm tables. We don't even know beauty.
That we get to dwell with God, in the new Jerusalem. That he will be in the center. That we get to gaze upon his goodness, and his glory fully. We get riches upon riches. We get the perfect record of Christ, that stands for us. We don't have our own sin, it's replaced by the righteousness of Jesus.
You could go on, and on, and on, and fill your days, with writing out, the blessings of God. We wouldn't even come close, to scratching the surface, because those are just the ones, that we have written down in the scriptures. And they're not the ones, that through faith in Jesus, that we will get to fully realize, one day, we get God's riches, at Christ's expense. That the God of the universe, stepped into our timeline, humbling himself. He went to the cross, having his blood poured out, suffering for our sin, and having the full cup of wrath, poured out on him, so that he can make a way, for us to have life, and experience those riches.
That is the kind of grace, that we inherit, through faith in Jesus. We are just like Isaac, in one minute, scheming and lying, and the next minute, experiencing the goodness, and the glory of God, not by our own merit, but by God's. So for those of us, who are in Christ, for those of you, that grew up, in a Christian family, that got to hear this, I want you to think, through this for a moment. That you got to observe, the gospel. You got to be in a house, that filled the house, with the word of God, with prayer. You got to see this, over and over again.
And you know what, that didn't turn into? That didn't turn into legalism. That didn't turn into, false belief. By grace, you believed. You inherited grace. For those of you, that didn't grow up, in a Christian household, you inherited grace.
Because somebody, shared the gospel with you, and you believed. And someone shared the gospel, with that person, and before that person, before that person, you inherited grace. We all, through Christ, believing in Him, get to inherit this blessing, get to inherit grace. So parents, as we parent, may your homes, may our homes, be so infused, with the grace of our God, that in our obedience, that we hope to pass down, we can ultimately point that back, to the goodness of our God, working through us. That it's not, anything of ourselves, it is the goodness of the God, goodness of our God, and the gospel, working through us, that they might see, the Lord of grace.
That in your sin, and in our sin, and our fallenness, our kids may see repentance, they may see forgiveness, they may see us point back, to the gospel. May we be so, saturated with grace, that we would display this, the next generation of this church, might never depart from it.