we do come to our scripture text for this morning, which is Genesis chapter 26, the entire chapter. And it is, it's a lengthy one, but. This is simply the nature of preaching through one of the first books of the Bible, which has longer sections to it. And so let's hear the full breadth of what God has to say about the life of Isaac here in chapter 26. I invite you to stand out of respect of the reading of God's inspired word here on page 20 of your Pew Bibles. Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar, to Abimelech, king of the Philistines. And the Lord appeared to him and said, do not go down to Egypt. Dwell in the land of which I shall tell you. Sojourn in this land and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and to your offspring, I will give all these lands and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham, your father. I will multiply your offspring as the stars of 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. When the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, she's my sister. For he feared to say, my wife, thinking, lest the men of the 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 easily have 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. And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him, and the man became rich and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. He had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him. Now the Philistines had stopped and filled the earth with earth all the wells that his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father. And Abimelech said to Isaac, Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we. So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the valley of Gerar and settled there. And Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, which the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham. And he gave them the names that his father had given them. But when Isaac's servants dug in the valley and found there was a well of spring water, the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen, saying, the water is ours. So he called the name of the well Essek, because they contended with him. Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that also, and he called its name Sitna. And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it, so he called its name Rehoboth, saying, For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land. From there he went up to Beersheba. And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, I am the God of Abraham. Your father, fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham's sake. So he built an altar there and called upon the name of the Lord and pitched his tent there. And there Isaac's servants dug a well. When Abimelech went to him from Gerar with Ahuzeth his advisor, and Phechel the commander of his army, Isaac said to them, why have you come to me, saying that you hate me, and have sent me away from you? They said, we see plainly that the Lord has been with you. So we said, let there be sworn pact between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you, that you will do us no harm, just as we have not touched you, and have done to you nothing but good, and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord. So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank. In the morning they rose early and exchanged oaths. And Isaac sent them on their way, and they departed from him in peace. That same day Isaac's servants came and told him about the well that they had dug and said to him, we have found water. He called it Sheba. Therefore, the name of the city is Beersheba to this day. When Esau was 40 years old, he took Judith, the daughter of Biri, the Hittite, to be his wife. and Basimoth, the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God abides forever. Amen. You may be seated. Like father, like son. Some of you young men have been told many times how much you look like your dad as you grow up. Maybe you've heard, you know, he's just a spitting image of his father. Or maybe as you grow up, you start to do things or take up a trade or act in mannerisms that say, he's just like his dad. Just this past week, someone said to me, they mentioned someone as being a junior of their father. And it was really appropriate when I think of this person. Maybe you can think of someone like that too. As the saying goes, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And Isaac is just like his father Abraham. He's a real chip off the old block. Everything he does in chapter 26 is mirroring the actions of his father, things that Abraham has already done. He journeys to the same places. He receives the same suffering. He sins the same sins. And most importantly, he receives the same promises. This is Isaac, the image of his father, and the recipient of his father's blessings. This is good news for us, good news for you this morning, because the scriptures say that Abraham is our father too. You remember this? Galatians chapter three, verse seven says that it is those who are of faith who are the sons of Abraham. We are his spiritual descendants, heirs of his spiritual heritage, and as it were, the spitting image of our father in the faith, Abraham. There are things about our life that will resemble Abraham, just like Isaac's life was conformed to the image of his father. And this means that along with Isaac, we receive the same promises. We struggle with the same sins, but ultimately we inherit the same peace as Abraham, our forefather in the faith. This is a long chapter, but I don't want you to lose sight of the thread that weaves and ties it all together. It is that there is a sameness between Isaac and Abraham. That's the one thing that you just can't miss. There's a lot of other things that we could bring out that we're not going to this morning, but the one thing I want you to hear, the one thing that the Holy Spirit is drawing out in this magnificent thread in this chapter is like father, like son. Same promises, same problems, same peace. And look at the promises which Isaac receives, which are identical to his father Abraham. And it all starts when a famine strikes the land, and our text goes out of the way. It doesn't say, just like the one back in Abraham's day, but different. Isaac packs his bags to head down to Egypt, where there's water. But suddenly God appears to Isaac just as he did to his father Abraham. Stop, Isaac. Don't go. Stay here. 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. I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father. There it is again. To Abraham your father, like father, like son. The Lord would be God to Isaac just as he had been God to his father. Could it really be true? Would God's grace run from father to son? From generation to generation? From Abraham to Isaac? And then from Isaac to Jacob? Yes, and God swears an oath to Isaac as if he's raising his right hand, and he's done the same thing with Abraham. He's repeated these oaths. He's sworn by his own name, and he says, look at verse 24 of our passage. He says, 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. like father, like son. And it reminds me of when I was a little boy, used to go to a candy shop, and the man behind the counter gave me a look over and said, you're John Dietrich's grandson, aren't you? I can see it. I said, yes, sir. And he'd say, we go way back. We are friends as friends could be. You're not gonna pay for this candy this morning. Here's more. You have siblings? Put it in your pockets. Take it to your brothers and sisters. And tell your grandpa. Tell your grandpa I said hello. This in this small, tiny little way gives us this sense of this multi-generational commitment that God had to Abraham. I realize God isn't an old man in a candy store handing out treats. He's our sovereign Lord, he's our king, but isn't it true that God's deep and unfailing friendship with Abraham is one between friend to friend and it extends from generation to generation? It's as if God says to Isaac, any son, any son by faith of Abraham's is a friend of mine. Here's the graciousness of our God that we often take for granted. We ought to forget that his grace continues from generation to generation. His friendship with Abraham was so full and so free that it spilled over to all the sons of Abraham, everyone who bears his faithful likeness. He is the God of our fathers, and he pledges to be God to us and to our children for a thousand generations. He passes on a spiritual heritage. It's the reason why we will soon enjoy a baptism of a little one this morning. Seeing the same covenant promises, the same covenant principles, the same offers of grace, the same dedication of our God passed down from faithful father to son. And from faithful son to his son. What is that spiritual heritage that gets passed on? What is that spiritual heritage that runs through the generations? Well, God sums it up right here. It's the promise of God's presence. What does he say several times in this passage? I will be with you. I will be with you. It is God's personal abiding presence. His friendly fellowship, and a fellowship to care and to bless, to protect, to know. That is the heritage that runs to us and to our children. That's the heritage that's come from Abraham to Isaac, and that's the heritage that comes from Isaac to Jacob, and that's the heritage that goes from Jacob all the way down through history, through faith to us. And it's the same heritage that we place before our children. Abraham had a closeness with God that sustained him all his wandering days. You and I have inherited this promise of God's presence too, and we've inherited through faith in Jesus Christ. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 28, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. With you always. He is our greatest friend. with us to bless us, to keep us, to care for us, all our wandering earthly days, and then beyond us to all the wandering earthly days of our children, and to their children, and to their children, through faith in Christ all the way until Jesus returns. Promises weren't the only thing that passed from Abraham to Isaac. There's a dark side of this passage, and it's because Isaac also fell into his father's patterns of sin. Patterns of promises, and yes, right alongside them, or the dark side of this passage undergirding it all is, Isaac, you're just like your father, aren't you? And that's not always a good thing. Isaac's fear took over, just like it did with Abraham back in chapter 12, chapter 20, Isaac saw that his wife was very beautiful and he feared that the men of Gerar would take Rebekah and they would kill him first so that they could take her. And if you think this is a silly situation, you think he's just being overly dramatic, think about what David did with Uriah the Hittite in order to get Bathsheba. It's a legitimate fear. But he's just been told by the God of the universe not to fear, for God will be with him. And what does he do right away? He says, he doesn't go down to Egypt, but he stands there shaking, saying, what if they kill me? And so he lies, and he says, she's my sister. Where have we heard that one before? Twice already. Abraham did it twice. It's a sobering reminder that we're made of the same stuff as our parents. It's the cats and the cradle and the silver spoon. Have you ever noticed that the same patterns often pass down from parent to child? And you can see this on this big picture level, right? Romans speaks of it as the guilt and the sin that Adam inherited from his fall passes down. from father to son, from son to son, and on and on and on and on and on. Everyone by ordinary generation has been stained by this same pattern of sin. We all behave the same selfish and self-destructive way, just in different forms. And yet you can look at it in the same family and say, you know, whether I've seen it in someone else's family or in my own, there's a way in which a son or a daughter will say, there's no way I'm gonna repeat the same failures of dad, and yet what do they do? They often repeat the same failures as dad. The same temptations make their way into the family tree. The same struggles pop up and you say, I never thought I would be struggling with this because I hated it so much when I saw it with mom and dad and yet here it is and I guess I have to deal with it because I'm made of the same stuff. Here's the importance of teaching our own failures to our children. so that they don't follow our footsteps too closely, lest they slip where we've slipped, say, follow me, kids, but follow me only where I follow Jesus. Where you see me step away from him, you go a different direction. That's a good parent. It's convicting to me, as I think of myself as a parent. And this is a lesson for kids as well. You have good examples in your parents who are looking to Christ by faith. You have good things to emulate, and you should emulate them. You should not insist on going your own way and doing your own thing, but be careful. When you see your parents slip, learn from it. Learn from it. And one of the main ways in which we repeat the failures of our parents is in the particular ways we fear. We're afraid of what people can do to us. We're afraid of what people will think. And so we find ourselves people-pleasing, just like mom or dad did. Or we find ourselves shutting ourselves off from others, enclosing ourselves in fear, just like mom or dad did. And what we do is we don't learn from them, instead, We don't trust God to protect and provide. People become big in our eyes and God becomes small, just like they did for Isaac. He started to take matters into his own hand. And he was no blessing of the nations because of it. In fact, he was threatening to be a curse to the nations. until Abimelech comes and says, what is this you've done? I saw you laughing with Rebekah. And of course, we realize he didn't just see them laughing. He saw them being like husband and wife to one another and said, you've tricked me. But isn't it wonderful how God just turns all this around? Isaac is so full of fear, just like his father. He hasn't learned the lesson and yet God interrupts by his grace to bless. There's hope for us here as well. I just want to point to this, that if you're saying, boy, I want my kids to excel in the Lord beyond where I've excelled. Or if you're looking at the example of your parents and say, you know, I thank God for my mom or dad, but I want to excel in the Lord, even beyond where they excelled. There's hope here that God's interrupting grace can break even cycles of sin that come into families and can cut them short, and by his grace, he can transform a situation and give us what we don't deserve. And what he gives us, what he gives Isaac in this passage is blessings, just as he gave Abraham. And that's so often what happens to us. And so Isaac inherits this pattern of sin from his father, and yet God's grace interrupts the cycle. Reminds us that what we must do is trust God's promises. This is the antidote to fear. I am with you to bless you, God says to Isaac. Do we really believe this? Or do we think that it's true for our forefathers in the faith, but not for us? Same promises, same problems, same peace. Isaac inherits Abraham's promises, his problems, but we also see that just like his dad, by God's grace, Isaac ultimately finds peace in this world. He wanders throughout the promised land, full of blessings from God, but nowhere to put them to use, looking for a place to settle down. And he's frustrated because all the wells that his dad dug up have been filled in by earth by the Philistines. And he has this conflict with them as he starts digging up the wells again. They filled them, he digs them up, and then they come along and they say, hey, those are ours. It's annoying, isn't it? And it gives you some sort of a picture, first of all, of what Abraham dealt with, because he dealt with the exact same thing earlier as he dug up wells and had conflicts with the Philistines over this kind of thing. And it also gives you a picture of what it's like to be a Christian in this world, right? Closed door after closed door. Conflict after conflict. No room to spread out and grow as Christians. No room to see God's kingdom take root and fill this world. Always conflict with unbelievers. And it makes us feel a little bit like this. When am I gonna find a well that springs up with life? When am I gonna find a place where I can be free to grow and my family flourish as a Christian? Always so many obstacles. Always wells of water being filled by those who don't realize the foolishness of what they're doing. But then finally, Isaac finds a well of life-giving water that the Philistines don't fill. And he finds it in the same place where his father found it in chapter 21. Beersheba. There's a spiritual lesson for us here. This is the place where Isaac settles down. This is the place where he finds life for his family to flourish. This is the place where he puts down his roots. It's a well, a place where water flows abundantly. Water is life in this time. Abraham and Isaac's well points us forward to Jesus Christ and to the well where he met a woman at. And he said to her, whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. And he spoke of living water that wells up inside us and is like an eternal spring that grows us and develops us. And isn't this the picture, the spiritual picture, planted in Genesis 26, the peace that Isaac finds, and the peace that you and I could find too, is in Jesus Christ, in the fountain of living water, the well that never goes dry. Will we follow our fathers in the faith and place our faith in the living water? That's how we honor our fathers. It's also how we inherit the promises. Only Jesus will bring us peace through God's perfect presence. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, There are many futilities in this life. One of them is our own sin, Lord. The sin which we repeat and repeat, and we see it in our fathers, and we see it in their father, and it frustrates us, Lord, and we say, when will this end? Another frustration, oh Lord, is the seeming futility of living in this life where Right when we feel like we've tapped into something that matters, this world closes it off and seeks to fill it in, like filling in a spring of water with dry dirt. And yet, Lord, you point us to the fountain of hope in this life, a fountain that flows and that that sweeps away our sin and a fountain that flows and gives life to this world and flourishes our family. It is a fountain of living water in Jesus Christ. Would you so fill us with him and hope in him that we live out the same hope of our fathers in the faith all the way until we inherit the new heavens and new earth which you have promised in glory. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.