Genesis chapter 26 this afternoon. Genesis 26. We're going to read the first six verses, and then we will jump down to verse number 15. So we'll read 1 through 6, and then we'll go 15 to 25, is what we'll do to start off here for our text this afternoon. Genesis chapter 26, 1 And there was a famine in the land beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. 2 And Isaac went unto Abimelech king of the Philistines unto Gerar. 3 And the LORD appeared unto him, and said, Go not down into Egypt, dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of, sojourn in that land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee. For unto thee and unto thy seed I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I swear unto Abraham thy father. And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries. And in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed, because that Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. And Isaac dwelt in Negarar. And then if you jump down to verse number 15, it says, for all the wells, which his father's servants had digged in the days of Abraham, his father, the Philistines had stopped them and filled them with earth. And Abimelech said unto Isaac, go from us. for how much mightier than we. And Isaac departed thence, and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. And Isaac digged again the wells of water which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father, for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham. And he called their names after the names by which his father had called them. And Isaac's servants digged in the valley, and found there a well of springing water. And the herdmen of Gerar did strive with Isaac's herdmen, saying, The water is ours. And he called the name of the well Essek, because they strove with him. And they digged another well, and strove for that also. And he called the name of it Sitna. And he removed from thence, and digged another well. And for that they strove not. And he called the name of it Rehoboth. And he said, for now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land. And he went up from thence to Beersheba, and the Lord appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father. Fear not, for I am with thee, and I will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham's sake. And he builded an altar there, and called upon the name of the Lord, and pitched his tent there. And there Isaac's servants digged well. Let's pray. Dear Lord, we thank you for this day. Thank you again for just a good morning we had in church, a good time of fellowship. Thank you. Thank you for this time to meet again here this afternoon and look at your word together with these brothers and sisters in Christ. I pray you just meet with us here and fill me once again with your spirit and power and that you'd speak to hearts this afternoon. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. So we see here a story. And if you read through the story, the history of the patriarchs, you know about the wells that Abraham digged, the wells that God told them to dig, the wells that they needed to dig. And we come here. to Isaac, and God renews or reminds Isaac of the covenant that he had made with Isaac. But as we come to this passage, we remember that Abraham and the Philistines were at odds with each other. All through that history, Abraham and the Philistines were always at odds with each other. They always were against each other, or the Philistines were against him. There was always conflict, as Abraham would dig a well, and the Philistines would try to take it from him. Abraham would have to continually move to new locations to dig another well. As he would settle down, they'd set up their tent, set up their compound. Even if you'd call it that, they'd have to have a well in the middle to supply water there in the desert and in the wilderness. But now we come here to chapter 26 of Genesis, and Abraham is now dead. And the promised son, Isaac, has taken his place. Now we see here in the passage that Isaac is given a command by God to dig some wells. He's commanded to say, hey, don't go to Egypt. He said, sojourn in this lane. He said, I want you to stay here. This is where he says, and I will bless thee. This is where I'm going to bless you. This is for unto thee and thy seed. He said, I'll give you all these countries, and I'll perform the oath, which I swear in Abraham thy father. He's like, Isaac, remember that oath, that covenant that I made with your father, that promise I made that I would bless him, I would make him fruitful, His children as the sand of the seas, the stars in the heaven, and the promise that I made that, hey, the promised land will be yours. I will give you all the countries. I'll defeat all your enemies. He said, hey, you remember that covenant? He said, hey, sojourn in this land. He said, I will be with thee and will bless thee. He said, I will give all these countries, and I will perform that same promise, that same covenant, that oath, which I swear unto Abraham their father. He said, I will do that. I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven. And so on. It reminds him, he said, hey, he had a command by God to stay here. and to dig wells. Now we have wells to be dug in our lives. Some are wells that need to be re-dug, that we need to re-dig, and some are wells that we've maybe never dug before. And all of them are wells that we need to keep digging and keep those wells dug out. If we look, Isaac starts off here re-digging the wells that Abraham, his father, had dug. As he goes, we see that in verse number 15 where we find out that the wells which his father's servants had digged in the days of Abraham, his father, the Philistines had stopped them and filled them with earth. So the first thing that Isaac does, and we see that in verses 17 and on, we see that Isaac re-digs those wells that the Philistines had filled up. They had stopped those wells, they had filled them with dirt. And so Isaac goes, he pitches his tent in the valley of Gerar, right where God told him to go. And we see that in verse 6 as well, that Isaac dwelt in Gerar. But he was right where God wanted him to be, and then God had told him, hey, I want you to dig the wells. And he's digged again, verse 18, the wells of water which they had digged in the days of Abraham as father. If we were to go back and look at these wells that Isaac re-dug, It says in verse 18 at the end, he called their names after the names which his father had called them. Well, some of the wells, well-known wells that Abraham dug, we know some of the names. There's one that he called Beelaheroy, which means the God who lives and sees what we do. We're reminded of that in the scripture, that God's eyes walk to and fro throughout the earth, beholding the good and the evil. We're told right in the beginning of the Bible, very close to the beginning, that to be sure our sin will find us out. Here, Abraham digs this well, calls it Beer le Heroi. which means the God who lives and sees what we do. What this reminds us is that we need to exalt preaching that is hard on sin. There are too many Christians, and we talked a little bit about that this morning already, that are backslidden because they grow soft and they end up living in the sin that maybe at one point they were once against. Another well that I believe would have been re-dug, they called it Beersheba, which means a promise of God. The Bible is the only answer we need for any question. in our lives. We must love God's Word, we must read God's Word, and we must keep God's Word. This is where we find that promise of God, and we ought to, as we sing, stand on the promises. The Bible is that book of those promises that we stand on. We must love it, read it, and keep it. Another word we see is Rehoboth, which means fruitfulness. As Christians, we are to be fruitful. The Great Commission is given to us to spread the Gospel to everyone around us and to disciple them. Jesus is still in the saving business. But he's waiting and needs us to go out to the fields and labor in the harvest. You think of that passage in Matthew chapter 9. He looked and had compassion on the multitudes. He looked at the fields and saw that they're white in the harvest. But you know what? He also felt he was saddened because, hey, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. These are some wells that we need to dig in our lives. These are some wells that Isaac re-dug. The well of the God who lives and sees what we do. The well of the promise of God. The well of fruitfulness. What are some other wells that we are to take and think in our lives that we need to re-dig? Possibly, or maybe some of these are going to be wells that maybe we've never dug before. But there's the well of, I believe, of spiritual vision. We find in Proverbs 29, verse 18, it tells us where there is no vision, the people perish. Now we ask the question, have we lost our vision? We need to have a vision for the things of God, a vision to continue doing the work of the Lord. As we're here, again, the eighth anniversary of the church, we ought to have a vision for the future of the church, to see Northern Lakes Baptist Church continue for another eight years, another 18 years, 28 years, and so on, as long as the Lord tarries. We ought to look and have that vision, a vision to continue undoing the work of the Lord. We need to have a vision for what God can and will do in our lives. And we need to have a vision for how God can answer our prayers. We've talked about this, where there is no vision, the people perish. We all ought to have a vision. And when we have a vision, we ought to have a vision for these things, for our church, but we ought to have a vision for our own lives, what God can and will do in our lives, how He can and will answer our prayers. And when we have that vision, we ought to pray. with faith in that vision. We ought to have a dream that goes with that vision. You know, when we serve a big God, we ought to have a big vision. We ought to have a big dream. But with that vision, and we looked at those wells, the well of fruitfulness, we need to go out and do the work. That well needs to be dug. That well of spiritual vision, that's got to be dug. When we think of digging wells, especially in this time, You know, now to dig a well, what do we do? We bring out a big truck with a big drill, and it does all the work for them. Yeah, there's some physical work. It can be hard for those guys as they drill those wells, but it's nothing like when they would have dug these wells, especially in a sandy environment, building the structure to keep the sand from coming back in. And you think even in America, in the history of America, you'd build that big well and build the stone wall around it to keep it from caving in, and you'd dig. You just keep digging down and down until you got to that pocket of water. That takes some work. All of these wells that we can look at all take work. It takes some work. We got to have spiritual vision. We got to keep that spiritual vision. And we need to back that spiritual vision up with prayer, praying for that vision, in that vision, and with faith. In that vision, that leads to the next well. There's the wells of faith that need to be dug. Has your faith grown weak? Sometimes, and maybe even more than sometimes, oftentimes, the cares of this world will trouble our heart. The things that we see that go around us, this world is exceedingly wicked. And it seems like every year we get worse and worse. We thought 2020 was bad. People still talk about 2020 being bad. We thought eight years of Obama was terrible. Well, look at the transition that we made just from COVID in 2020 through four years of Sleepy Joe. And look at where our country is today. Well, we don't know if we're male or female, and we wish we could just keep it at that. But now we don't know if we're human or animals. There's people out there that identify as cats, want to be treated as cats and dogs and everything else. Neil and I already told that story of those two ladies that identified as trans gay men. So they're ladies, and they said they're biological ladies that identify as men, but as gay men, so they like men. There are ladies that like men. It makes no sense at all. But that's the world we're in. Those things can weigh heavy as we see those things that happen around us. But you know what? Just the normal cares of this world in our life. Maybe we go through conflicts in our life, trials in our life, hard times in our life. Then our faith, can start to grow weak. Maybe even doubts and fears will start to grip our lives. And that's natural for human beings. Hey, we can't see into tomorrow. That's why God says, hey, don't take thought for tomorrow. Don't worry about tomorrow. He says, be careful for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication. But you know what? It's natural for us, for us human beings, to fear for tomorrow. Maybe you get into a hard financial state. We fear for the bills that we know are coming. And looking at our bank account, and looking at the paycheck, and going, man, that's going to be tough. I've been there. I may have told the story, but there was a time while we lived out in Idaho. We had some bills that were coming up. And I looked. I was like, well, we have the money to pay those bills. But if I pay those bills, we're going to have absolutely nothing left for anything else. You know what, and I spent the morning on the way to work and prayed and prayed and prayed and that afternoon I checked the mail and there was a check in there for almost the exact amount that we needed to make it through that time from someone who was giving us a gift, a love gift. We go through that and sometimes we fear that. Our faith can begin to grow weak and maybe that well starts collapsing, that well of faith. What are we going to do? We've got to re-dig that well. We've got to keep that well secure. Keep it strong. You know, Luke 17 and verse number 5, the disciples, in that story there, Luke 17, the disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith, which we know that Jesus talked to the disciples about their faith on several different occasions. And they asked Him, hey, increase our faith. We want to have faith like you, or faith like this. And then we find in that chapter that Jesus tells them what just a little tiny bit of faith can do. And we know, we're familiar with it, the faith the size of the grain of a mustard seed. That's small. If you've ever seen a mustard seed, that's a tiny little bit of faith. And he says, hey, if you had that much faith, this is what could happen. These are the prayers that God could answer. Now James chapter 1 and verse 3, James tells us that the trine of our faith worketh patience. Sometimes we grow as those trials come, it grows our faith. We get through that and we get through the other side and we find that hey, It worketh patience, it builds us, it strengthens us. Yeah, we have that fear, but God says, hey, just like He told Isaac here, a fearful time, there's a famine. He says, but no, hey, stay here. Sojourn in this land. He says, this is where I'll bless you. We've got to dig, re-dig the wells of faith. There's also, we see in this story even with Isaac, there's the wells of obedience. You know, things we need to obey in. You know, the wells of obedience for our life, our Christian life is going to be found right here in God's Word. full of reminders of the things he expects of us, the things he wants of us, the commandments that he wants us to keep. An unquestionable mark of true discipleship or followership of Christ is obedience. We can't be a follower of Christ, we can't be a disciple of Christ unless we obey him. You find in God's Word that The Lord demands, even demands obedience. He even goes as far as saying in John 14, 15, he says, if we love him, he said, hey, if you love me, keep my commandments. Hey, if you love me and you want to follow me, you want to be my disciple, if you want to be a true Christian, a follower of me, he said, hey, obey me. Keep my commandments. And the list could go on of wells that either need to be dug or wells that need to be re-dug. But there's some other kinds of wells that need to be dug. And we find in verse 26, 1 through 6, he's got to go. And God, 1 through 6, God renews that covenant with them. We see there in verses 15 there and on that there are some wells that needed to be dug. I think the first kind of wells that we see that Isaac dug are the wells of conflict. Hard times will come in all of our lives. We can't avoid it. It's a part of life. Sometimes those hard times are brought on by ourselves. You know, failures, mistakes, sin, things that we fail in, things that we fall in, things that we just aren't where we need to be in, where God wants us to be. Other times, hard times come, because again, going back to that well of faith, sometimes God just wants to strengthen our faith. You know, it's like when you pray for patients. God never just gives you patience. My dad would always say he wasn't a very patient man, but he would always pray for patience. He just didn't wake up one morning and go, hey, I'm super patient now. God answered my prayer. No, God puts you in situations that build your patience. Just like James said there, the trying of our faith worketh patience. Those hard times are going to come. just like with Isaac here. You need to listen to God's leading and trust and obey Him just as Isaac did. There was a famine in the land and it would have been easy for Isaac to give up. It's like, oh man, Egypt, everything's good down there. We can find some water. We can find some food. Everything will be great. And God says, no, don't go to Egypt. Go not down into Egypt. Dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of, and sojourn in this land. Stay here. Dig the wells. But he listened to God and obeyed God. And God blessed him immensely. When those hard times come, we need to just dig. We see in verses Verse 15, that he dug the wells. We see that as we go down 15, 16 and on. You need to just keep on going and dig a well. and dig a well, and dig another well, and dig another well, as we see Isaac here did. We see as he went through these wells of conflict. Then we see that wells of confrontation. We see that verses 19 through 21, we see some wells of confrontation. Isaac tried to dig these wells, and you know what happened? He dug the wells. God told him to dig the wells. He'd think, hey, everything's going to be great. Everything's going to be fine. He digs the wells. You know what happened? They came and strove with him. The Philistines came, and they fought with him. They strove with him. They didn't want him to dig these wells back up. They didn't want him to re-dig Abraham's wells. They didn't want Isaac to dig any new wells. There was some confrontation. There was some opposition. There were some more hard times that came. Things will happen to you that will make you want to stop. But you got to keep going. You got to dig the well. Does it say here that Isaac dug the well and strove with them and then gave up and said, well, hey, that was hard. I don't want to do it anymore. I'm done digging these wells. I'm just going to dig another well, and there's going to be more conflict. There's going to be more confrontation. It's going to be filled up again. No, that's not what it says. It says that he finished the well and then dug another well, and he strove again for that well. And he dug another well. There will be times when it seems like everybody and everything is against you. And all of those things are trying to stop your work, trying to keep you from digging that well that God wants you to dig in your life. And you know what? And sometimes a well, you know, Isaac got some, there was some confrontation. You know what he did? He moved on and he dug another well. He said, no, I'm going to keep going. God told me to dwell in this land that he told me of. He told me to sojourn here. He said, this is where they're going to bless me. I don't care if the opposition comes. I don't care if the conflict comes, if the confrontation comes. I'm going to keep digging the wells in my life, the wells that God wants me to dig. You know what happens as Isaac dug those wells? As Isaac dug a well and strove for it, he dug another well and strove for it. Well, you know what the well that he was able to come to was the well of completion. We find that in verse number 22. And he removed from this and digged another well. And for that they strove not. And they called the name of it Rehoboth. And he said, for now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land. There's wells of completion. Sometimes conflict and confrontation can lead you to a place where God can bless you. The place where the well will spring forth. Just like with Isaac here in this passage, maybe we are just like the children of Israel in Numbers 13 when they sent the 12 spies into Canaan. You know, 10 could only see the band. 10 just wanted to give up on trying to claim the land that the Lord had promised them. They forgot all the promises from God. They forgot the promises that God would remind them of often and used men like Moses and used men like Joshua to remind them. He said, told those people, just like He told Isaac here in this passage, hey, this is where I'll bless you. If you just will follow Me, if you walk with Me, if you obey Me, keep My commandments, if you keep this Word in your heart, as He used Joshua to tell him, be strong and courageous. He said, meditate on it day and night. He says, then you'll find that your way will be prosperous. Then you'll find success in your life and blessing in your life. The two spies we know saw the good and saw what the Lord could do and how the Lord was going to bless them. I said, hey, it's going to be hard. There might be some hard times as we go. And yeah, yeah, they're right. The other 10 guys, they're right. There are giants there. We are as grasshoppers in their eyes. Yeah, it looks scary over there. Look, you've got the city of Jericho. You've got all these other strong armies. And look, we're just. We're just shepherds. We're just herdsmen. We're just farmers traveling through the wilderness. We don't stand a chance. Yeah. But you know what? He said, hey, it's going to take some work to dig this well. He said, but this is where God will bless. We need to pray sometimes for God to open our eyes and have the proper vision and see what God can do when we dig, when we simply just dig the wells that God wants us to dig where He wants us to dig them. We see in these wells of completion, we see a finishing time. After striving and fighting for the other wells, Isaac yet again dug another well. And because he was just faithful, and kept going, and kept digging those wells, God blessed, and that last well, he didn't have to strive for it. He had a blessed time. when you keep going and you finish the well. you'll have blessing from God. It's when we dig that well, and when we finish that well, and we reach that point of completion, hey, this is what God wants me to do, and we do it, and that's when God blesses, and we see as he talks about it, it's a fruitful time as well, where he says, he called it Rehoboth, for now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful, in the land. There will be a fruitful time. When you stay faithful, you keep going and you finish. God will bless and there will be fruit from your labor. Isaac didn't have to strive for that last while because God saw that he kept going. Isaac had made it through the trial, the conflict, the confrontation, the hard time, the trials. that were working patience in his life, that were building his faith and strengthening him. But there's one well, one kind of well in our life though, we're talking about this well of completion, this well of blessing that comes when we just stay faithful and we keep going and we keep going and we dig a well and we dig a well and we dig another well and we keep going until we get to that point where God truly blesses, where God can work and we can say, hey, it's Rehoboth. For now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land." Now God will bless us because we've stayed faithful. Way in the beginning of the chapter, God says, hey, don't go down to Egypt. Stay right here in Gerar. He says, dwell here, sojourn here, dig these wells. And Isaac did just that. But there's a well that Isaac was able to avoid that we often, or sometimes, and many people are not able to avoid this well. And I believe all of us at some point in our life will have this well that gets dug, or that you could say we fall into. That is the well of failure. You know, a well-known verse in the book of Proverbs, it says, for a just man falleth seven times and rises up. You know, there's going to be times in our life, and we mentioned that, the wells that we dig, you know, sometimes hard times come. Sometimes God brings them in to strengthen us and to grow our faith. But other times, there's wells, or there's hard times, there's confrontation and conflict that's brought into our life by our own failures and our own mistakes. We can't avoid it. We're humans, we're flawed. By God's grace, we can avoid many of the mistakes and many of the We have failures in our lives. Through God's grace, we have the strength to avoid those things, to avoid sin, to avoid failure, to avoid mistake. But you know what? Sometimes it happens. It says there in Proverbs 24, 17, For a just man falleth seven times. and rises up again. But you know what's true about that just man, or you call him that righteous man, as Proverbs talks about often, the just man, the righteous man, the upright, the wise, hey, he's going to fall sometime. Hey, there's going to be some times where you may fall. There's going to be some failures. There's going to be some mistakes. There's going to be some times in your life where you could have and should have done differently or done better. But you know what? It says, and rise us up again, but you know what? You don't rise in your own strength. It's the Spirit of God within us that raises us up. It's that same Spirit that raised Jesus from the grave. That same Spirit raises us up. If this Spirit lives in you, then there is nothing that has the power to keep you down because of God's grace. There's no failure in your life that's too big that can have the power in your life to keep you down when you fall, when that just man falls seven times. If that same Spirit that raised Jesus from the grave dwells in you, lives in you, then there's nothing, no mistake, no failure, no sin, no downfall, nothing. There's nothing that has the power to keep you down in your life. That same Spirit that conquered the grave and defeated death, where it says, Hail death, where is thy sting? That same Spirit that defeated death and sin dwells within us. We have to remember that we don't rise alone. We rise covered and redeemed. The blood of Christ speaks louder than our failures and our mistakes and our downfalls. When others would look at us and call us, or maybe sometimes we look at ourselves and we call, along with other people, we call ourselves maybe a failure, or we're called broken. We have to remember that God calls you born again and whole. What we need to do is get up and wipe the shame from your face, because you belong to God. You've been given the power to be called the Son of God. You don't rise alone. Get up and wipe that shame off your face. Wipe that failure off your face, that mistake, that downfall. Say, hey, you're here for a reason. God's given you that spirit and His grace to rise back up from a failure, from falling, from a mistake for a reason. So we need to get up and get going and dig the wells. Galatians chapter 6 and verse number 9, it says, And let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not. That's when we reap the blessing of God, when we faint. Not. So let us not be weary. Hey, don't get weary. Hey, that well, that well may seem hard. Hey, that failure may seem like it's going to keep you down. That mistake may seem like, hey, I can never move on from this. Again, you don't rise alone. We rise covered and redeemed with the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ speaks louder than any failure, mistake, or downfall in your life. He says, hey, don't be weary in well-doing. Don't be weary while you dig that well. He says, for in due season, when you finish that well, when you get to that well of completion, the blessing will come. You will reap. If you faint not. Philippians 4.13 says, For I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. Hey, there's some wells that are going to be hard to dig. There's going to be some wells that we need some strength to dig. By that Spirit that raised Jesus from the grave, we can dig that well. What wells do you need to re-dig in your life? Are there some things that you let up on? Or some areas that you have grown weak or stagnant in your Christian life? Are you thinking about giving up or have you already given up? Digging those wells that God, even the wells that God tells us to dig and expects us to dig, they can get tiresome and hard. But God promises that if we stay faithful to Him, we stay faithful to His Word, we stay faithful to what He wants for our life, as He did with Isaac. He said, hey, Isaac, don't go to Egypt. Stay in Gerar. Sojourn here. Dig these wells. Hey, there are going to be hard wells. There's going to be conflict. There's going to be confrontation. There's going to be some hard times. He says, But God promises that if we stay faithful to His Word and what He wants for our life, He will bless us at the completion of that well. We will reap if we faint not. And one day we will have that well that Isaac had, that well of completion, that finished time, that blessed time, that fruitful time where he said, hey, I'm going to call this well Rehoboth. For now, the Lord hath made room for us. Now the Lord has blessed us, and we shall be fruitful in the land. There are some wells that we need to dig in our lives. There are some wells that I believe God is asking or telling us to dig. Are you going to determine today to dig that well. Are you going to determine today, just as Proverbs 24, 17 says, a just man falleth seven times, but rises up again. Are you determined to, hey, I'm going to rise up. I'm going to do what the Lord has told me to do, and I'm going to dig those wells.