Like Father Like Son

[0:00] I want to invite you all to open up in your Bibles to the book of Genesis.

[0:18] ! We've been in Genesis for a while now, and we are continuing on in Genesis in chapter! 26 of this book. We will read this morning most of Genesis chapter 26, everything except! for the last couple of verses, but we're going to take it in pieces. We're going to break it up because it's a longer passage, and so we're going to begin with the first paragraph this morning where it describes God's passing on of the blessing of Abraham, the covenant that He made with Abraham to Abraham's son, Isaac. And so we're going to pick up in chapter 26, verse 1. For those of you who are using the Bibles that we've provided for you, that's just on page 20. You don't have to work hard to find it, it's just page 20.

[0:55] But we're going to begin. I want to ask you all to stand in honor of God's Word as we read these first five verses. Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham.

[1:09] 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 bless you. For to you and to your offspring, I will give these lands.

[1:28] And I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham, your father. I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands. And in your offspring, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. Because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. Father, as we walk through this chapter, help us to see ourselves almost mirrored forth in the life of Isaac. And help us to see how we might pursue by faith a life lived for your honor and for your glory.

[2:10] We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. You guys can take a seat. I would venture to guess that most of us here, if not all of us who are here, are on the whole, pretty, normal, ordinary people. Probably, probably there are none of us that are going to be famous anytime soon or ever at all. Probably there are none of us who are going to to come into a great amount of wealth and be known as rich and wealthy people with a lot of possessions.

[2:44] For the most part, we're normal people, sort of living in the suburbs and living our lives and working and some of us raising kids and doing all the things that normal people do. Sometimes we try to convince ourselves or we actually do fool ourselves into thinking that we're not like everybody else, that we're different and we're normal and everything around us often pushes us to see things that way. We're often told, you're very special. You're not ordinary. You should stand out from the crowd. But if most of us were honest, we would have to say, for the most part, I don't stand out from the crowd all that much. And for the most part, I'm pretty normal. Now, that was hammered home to me, all right? Very recently, Nate and I went to, I took Nate to a concert on Friday night.

[3:35] And for those of you who know who NF is, then you know what kind of a concert I was at. Not the kind of music that I typically play in the car when I'm driving down the road. But I don't typically play any music when I'm driving down the road. That's one of the ways in which I'm just boring, right?

[3:47] But we went to this concert and I was, we'll say that I was on the older spectrum of the people at the concert. I was certainly, I couldn't have been the oldest. There must have been someone there who owned the facilities. But I wasn't, but I, you know, I certainly didn't fit in with that particular crowd.

[4:03] I did actually stand out from that crowd. I was one of the few people who actually brought earplugs. And so there I am standing in the very back of the room. It's standing only. So everybody's standing and squeezing in as close to the stage as they can possibly get. And there I am standing at the back, literally standing next to one of the ushers the entire time. And I'm standing at the back, leaning against the back wall, earplugs in my ears, reading my Bible on my phone throughout the entire. I mean, I'm a boring pastor. I mean, that was driven home very clearly. And I thought that that at least made me stand out until about halfway through the concert, I glanced over and I saw this guy, probably early forties, right? Earplugs in his ears, leaned against the back wall. Apparently, we were both just typical dads trying to stay out of the fray in the mess. And at one point, I said, I decided, you know what, I'm just going to go sit out on a bench for a little while.

[5:00] So I walk out into the hallway and even there, there's the guy, early forties, earplugs in his ears, sitting on the bench, drinking a bottle of water. And I looked down at my hand and there was my bottle of water that I just bought. Nothing special about me in that moment. I'm not the cool dad who's in the crowd going crazy and doing all those sorts of things, just plain and ordinary. And I was okay with it because I had spent this entire week looking at the life of a man who was plain and ordinary. When we look at the life of Isaac, there's nothing about him that really stands out above any of the other characters of the Bible and certainly not in the context of the book of Genesis.

[5:43] He's not, he doesn't do anything spectacular. He's not, he's not quite, he's not quite as fantastic as his father, Abraham, who has all these, he has these adventures, who fights in battles, who does incredible things, who's called to go out from a land where he was comfortable to a land that he didn't know. Isaac, that's not, that's not Isaac. Nor is he as exciting as, as Jacob, his son, who also has to flee from his brother and leaves his homeland and goes somewhere for a while and comes back and, and he has these adventures. There is Isaac sort of in the middle.

[6:19] He lives longer than both Abraham and Jacob. His life lasts longer and yet during his entire 180 years, there are very few things that happen that he does that are spectacular. In fact, the most exciting events that surround Isaac are events in which he's, he's just there. He's almost a bystander.

[6:37] He's not the main person in the story. So even when we, when we read of Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac on the altar, there's no comment made about Isaac's participation, about how he felt about it, about what he was thinking. He's just there. In the next chapter, when Jacob deceives Isaac, when Isaac is an old man, when he deceives him and, and steals the blessing that belonged to Esau, Isaac is, he's in the story and he's a, he's a major figure in the story, but, but he doesn't do anything spectacular. In fact, he's fooled and he's, he's duped by his own son. There's nothing that he does in the course of the story about his life that really stands out to us. In fact, I was reading one commentator described Isaac and said, he's the ordinary son of an extraordinary father and he's the ordinary father of an extraordinary son. Just wedged in the middle, nothing spectacular happens in his life. But that, I think, is good news for us because it means that we can, we can relate to him perhaps more than we can relate to Abraham or more than we can relate to Jacob or maybe some of the other more heroic figures in the Bible. We can relate to him because he's, he's sort of a normal character. In fact, the only thing that really stands out about Isaac is that he is called by God and blessed by God and chosen by God for the promise to pass through him. That's what these opening verses, in fact, tell us. They tell us that God came to Isaac and he spoke to him and he reiterated the promises that he'd given to Abraham and he told him in verse four, I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven. I will give to your offspring all these lands and in your offspring, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. The most significant thing about Isaac is the fact that God gives

[8:32] Isaac promises. Isaac does nothing to stand out from the crowd himself. And even in the giving of these promises to Isaac, it's highlighted how extraordinary, how special his father Abraham actually was.

[8:49] Notice what it says in verse five. He says he's going to give these promises to Isaac because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes and my laws. So his father was in many ways extraordinary. Now, sometimes we read that and we go, I don't know, we just finished Abraham's life, right? And that seems a little sketchy. I mean, he did some foolish things. What is what is what is meant by this phrase? He obeyed my commandments. He kept my charge. What what commandments did Abraham specifically keep? Because the law of Moses has not yet been written.

[9:25] There are no ten commandments for Abraham to read. What in what way did Abraham keep God's charge? What in what way did he keep his commandments? Well, as you read through the story of Abraham, Abraham, though Abraham does some foolish things, every time that God gives a direct command to Abraham, we see immediate obedience in the life of Abraham. Go to another land. Abraham goes to another land. When Abraham is told to sacrifice his son, Isaac, Abraham is willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac. When Abraham is told to circumcise his children and to pass that right on to his children and their children after him, he immediately circumcises Ishmael and all the other males in his household. Every time that Abraham is given a direct command from God, Abraham immediately obeys those commandments. It's not to say that Abraham was perfect. He could act in some very foolish and faithless ways at times. But each time that God gives to him a commandment, Abraham obeys God's word.

[10:25] And God says, because Abraham obeyed my word, I'm passing down the promises I gave to him. I'm passing them on to you. But it's almost a reminder to Isaac of how extraordinary his own father was. But as this chapter unfolds, we not only see that Isaac is fairly ordinary, but we see that Isaac's life does not set up its own pattern and its own template. In other words, Isaac doesn't strike out on his own and do something different. Probably the most amazing thing about Isaac's life is how how Isaac's life, minus the extraordinary acts of bravery that Abraham does occasionally, Isaac's life in many ways is sort of just a following in the footsteps of his father, Abraham, both the good and the bad. First, there is the reception of the of the promises themselves. Isaac has no say in that. It's not as if Isaac came to God and said, will you pass the promises on to me? God simply chooses to pass the promises on to Isaac.

[11:27] But Isaac's story begins much the same way that Abraham's story does. God comes to him and gives him promises. That's exactly how Abraham's story began in chapter 12. And Isaac's story continues in much the way that Abraham's story continues. Abraham, immediately after being given the promises in Genesis chapter 12, Abraham is faced with the reality of a famine in the land to which he has journeyed. And what we are told about Abraham is that he leaves the promised land and he goes down to Egypt where there's that infamous event in which Abraham says that his wife is merely his sister and puts her life in great jeopardy.

[12:04] It looks as if Isaac is going to take that route as well until God intervenes. Notice verse one, there was a famine in the land. Now, besides the one in Abraham's time, not the same, make that clear.

[12:17] 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. In other words, stop right here. He's on his way. Gerar is on the way to Egypt from where Isaac had been previously. So he's on his way to Egypt just as Abraham had been. And God comes to him and says, stop, do not go down to Egypt. Stay in this land. This is the land I'm going to give to you. So he remains in Gerar. But that doesn't break the pattern because Abraham repeated the same foolishness and the same sin that he committed in Egypt in saying that his wife was merely his sister.

[12:54] He repeated that in the land of Gerar to the king of the Philistines, whose name happened to also be Abimelech. So Isaac's life, he's is not taking its own unique course. He's not doing anything to stand out. He's following in the footsteps of his father, Abraham. Abraham at one time found himself in Gerar.

[13:19] Abraham, while in Gerar, encountered a king named Abimelech. Abraham, while in Gerar, said that his wife was his sister. Now pick up in verse nine and we'll see the details of Isaac's time in Gerar.

[13:32] So Isaac, we're told in verse six, settled in Gerar. When the man of the place asked him about his wife, he said, she is my sister. For he feared to say my wife, thinking lest the man of the place should kill me because of Rebecca, because she was attractive in appearance. When he'd been there a long time, Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked out of a window and saw Isaac laughing with Rebecca, his wife.

[13:56] So Abimelech called Isaac and said, behold, she is your wife. How then could you say she is my sister? Isaac sat down 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 would have become 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. As strange as this story is, it's the third time that we've seen this. We've seen it twice in the life of Abraham and now we see it again in the life of Isaac.

[14:33] Abraham was afraid initially because of the beauty of his wife that the people of the land of Egypt would want to take her and because they wanted to take her, they would kill him. Later on in the land of Gerar, Abraham had a very similar fear, although at that time we're not told it was because of her beauty because many, many decades have passed. But nevertheless, he's still afraid. He's still afraid that the men of this place will want his wife and kill him for her. So he says, she's my wife.

[15:00] And that's exactly what Isaac does here. Isaac, in the face of fear, reverts back to the pattern of his father, Abraham. Because it seems to be a principle at work that no matter how much we may fight against it, no matter how much we may wish that things are differently, for the most part, for the most part, we follow in the footsteps of our parents who've gone before us. And for the most part, our children follow in our own footsteps. And that can be good and it can be bad. It's good in that the blessings of Abraham are passed on to Isaac. But here we see Abraham's foolish behavior repeated in the life of his son. No doubt, Isaac had probably seen Abraham lie about Sarah. Because we're told that this was Abraham's normal course of life. Both of those events that are recorded for us in the life of Abraham take place before the birth of Isaac. He wasn't there for those events. But we're also told Abraham says that he told Sarah, wherever we go, whenever we're in a foreign land, whenever we're sojourners and aliens, this is what I want you to say. So in all likelihood, Isaac was well aware of the way that his father operated when they were in strange lands. He knew how things worked. And so he finds himself in a similar situation where he's in a strange land and he's afraid. And so he tells the same kind of lie. She is my sister. Our children will often imitate us in ways that we might never expect them to imitate us. And that's just a reality. And if we're honest and we take a good look at ourselves, we will find that some of the negative characteristics that we wish and would hope that would never come out in us from our parents, they are oftentimes the ones that are easiest to see in us. I can remember not long ago, the kids were, I don't know, they were just irritated with each other. So it could have been any given day of the week on any given week, right? But they were kind of irritated with each other and going back and forth at each other. And one of them yelled at another one of them, just yelled at them. And my response was, hey, we don't yell in this house!

[17:18] To which they kind of looked at me like, are you kidding me? Like, I'm yelling at them about the fact that we don't yell in our house. And when I pause to think, why are they yelling? Well, probably because their dad yells at them when he gets irritated and upset. So when they get irritated and upset, they yell at each other. It's just normal and natural. These sorts of things tend to pass on. This is exactly what's happening in the life of Isaac. The sins of his father are manifesting themselves in his own life. And I think the same thing happens routinely for us. What is unique about Isaac is not that he avoids his father's sins or that he pursues his father's accomplishments.

[18:10] What is unique about Isaac is that apart from unlike Abraham, unlike Jacob, he doesn't strike out on his own. There's Abraham's sins become his sins. Abraham's blessings become his blessings.

[18:27] So his uniqueness is in not being unique at all for most people in the world. But it continues on. You can see that it continues on because in the next section of this chapter, starting in verse 12 all the way down to verse 25, you see God's blessing continue to fall upon Isaac despite his foolish behavior. That's exactly what happened to Abraham. In both instances in which Abraham lied about Sarah, in both instances in which he told foreigners that she was just his sister, in both of those instances, God, despite Abraham's foolishness, brought blessing out of that for Abraham. And God brings blessing in the midst of Isaac's foolishness to Isaac. In fact, God's determination to bless Isaac, God's determination to do good to Isaac and cause Isaac to prosper even continues in the midst of strife between Isaac and the Philistines, which is exactly what happened with Abraham. In chapter 20, you have the second occurrence where Abraham says that Sarah is just his sister. In chapter 21, though, Abraham's relationship with the Philistines continues and Abraham has an argument. He has an issue with them over a well of water, which we think, what's the big deal? Why does that matter? Except that in the ancient world and particularly this part of the world, to be able to actually dig a well and successfully find water, meant that you were going to be able to survive. It meant that you would be able to provide for your family. And Abraham enters into a dispute with the Philistines over a well.

[20:08] And now here in this chapter, Isaac enters into a dispute with the Philistines over a well. And even in the midst of that, we find Isaac wanting to return to the various wells that his father Abraham had dug, again following in his footsteps. But he finds that difficult because the Philistines have filled all of those wells up with dirt to spite Abraham and to spite Isaac because they don't like having this successful foreigner in their midst.

[20:35] Notice how the story continues. Pick up in verse 12. First, we see God's blessing despite his foolishness. And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold.

[20:45] The Lord blessed him and the man became rich and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. Now, pause for a moment there because you might think to yourself, became wealthy.

[21:01] Isn't he already wealthy? I mean, after all, doesn't he have the inheritance of Abraham? Doesn't he have all of Abraham's goods? Yes, he does. But God compounds that. God adds to the wealth that he had.

[21:17] Verse 14, he had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants. And here's where the problem comes in. So that the Philistines envied him. Told him, verse 15, 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.

[21:32] And Abimelech said to Isaac, go away from us, for you are much mightier than we. So there's strife there. Even the king steps in and says, go away.

[21:44] And this mirrors almost perfectly the events in the life of Abraham. Abimelech at one time told Abraham, go away from us. The people, the Philistines, the people in the land of Gerar fought with Abraham over wells.

[22:00] Verse 17, 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.

[22:11] Again, he's just repeating the things that his father did. 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.

[22:22] And he gave them the names that his father had given them. See, nothing, nothing stands out. He's just repeating what Abraham did. But when Isaac's servants dug in the valley and found there a well of the spring of water, the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen, saying, the water's ours.

[22:38] 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. So he called its name Sitna. And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it.

[22:50] So he called its name Rehoboth, saying, For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land. All along, Isaac is facing strife with the Philistines, just as Abraham faced strife with the Philistines.

[23:04] And the source of that strife is water, just as it was in the life of Abraham. Verse 23, from there he went up to Beersheba.

[23:15] This is not a new location. This is a place where Abraham had settled for a while. And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, I am the God of Abraham, your father.

[23:27] 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.

[23:38] And there Isaac's servants dug a well. Once again, God comes after having blessed Isaac despite his foolishness. After Isaac has had to contend and strive with the people who are in the land of Gerar.

[23:50] Once again, now God comes to Isaac to give to him the blessing to bless Isaac and ensure Isaac that despite all these things, he's going to be with him and protect him.

[24:01] But once again, in the midst of that blessing, Isaac is reminded of just how extraordinary his father Abraham was. I am the God of Abraham, your father.

[24:13] That's who I am. What if God identified himself by saying, I am the God of Chris. I am the God of Sean.

[24:24] I am the God of Kip. What if God, by our own names, identified himself? Here he identifies himself as the God of Abraham to Isaac, reminding Isaac, my covenant was with Abraham.

[24:37] I chose your father. I marked him out. But just as I was with him, so now I will be with you.

[24:48] So that the spiritual blessings of Abraham are passed on in a more full, in a more complete way to his son Isaac. Because while it is true that we will imitate in many times the sins and the foolishness of our fathers, and our children will imitate the sins and foolishness that they've seen in us, it is also oftentimes true that God calls and blesses the children of believers.

[25:16] Which is not to say that there's any sort of guarantee that if you are a follower of Christ, and if you do your best to raise your children up in the Word and teach them the Word, there's no guarantee that your children will be believers and will be faithful followers of Christ.

[25:33] There's no guarantee of any such thing in all of the Scriptures. And yet there is this general pattern that we find, that God oftentimes calls the children of Christians and brings them to faith in Himself.

[25:47] Because the normal, ordinary means that God uses to call people to Himself is the ordinary, regular teaching of the Word and the Gospel through ordinary people like Mom and Dad.

[26:01] That's how God normally works. Yes, He will oftentimes call someone out of a life of despair and sin and sickness and darkness, people who have never heard of Christ.

[26:12] God does that. But have you noticed that most of the Christians that you know come from Christian families? And sociologists and psychologists will dismiss that as, well, that's just normal.

[26:26] That's just, they just take on the beliefs of their parents. But if we are observing in the children of believers genuine faith, and we know that that faith has been put there by God Himself as a sovereign gift, and so we know that God is there at work, it's not just the natural outworking of things.

[26:44] God oftentimes chooses to pass on His spiritual blessings through families. He does that. There's a good example of that, in fact, in the New Testament.

[26:56] You hold your place in Genesis. I want you to listen to this. It's always stood out to me as a fascinating example of God faithfully calling people to Himself through the ordinary, normal teaching of the Bible by parents and grandparents.

[27:10] In 2 Timothy chapter 1, we get kind of an inside look very briefly at the life of Timothy, Paul's protege. 2 Timothy chapter 1, verse 5, Paul says to Timothy, I am reminded of your sincere faith.

[27:25] In other words, your faith is real and authentic and genuine. A faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois, and your mother Eunice, and now I am sure dwells in you as well.

[27:41] The faith of his mother, the faith of his grandmother, now passed on to him. How did that happen? Well, he tells us in chapter 3, verse 14, he says, As for you, Timothy, continuing what you've learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you've learned it, and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

[28:06] You see, Timothy's mother and grandfather, from the time that he was a small child, made him acquainted with the Scriptures. And the Scriptures are able, they are powerful enough to make him wise unto salvation.

[28:22] It is not a guarantee that he would be saved, but the means that God uses to save his people is his word. And that word is more often than not passed on from one generation to the next within a family, which is an encouragement to us.

[28:42] Yes, the stories of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob are unique historical events. Yes, they are there primarily to teach us about who God is and what God is like.

[28:53] But one of the things that we can see here, spelled out more clearly for us throughout the story of Scripture, is that God often passes down spiritual blessings from father to son or daughter and on down through the generations.

[29:08] He doesn't bind himself to do that, but in his goodness and his kindness, this is how he frequently works. So that you will see in your children, yes, your own foolishness and your own sin, the flaws in your own character and your personality will come out in them, yes.

[29:31] But faithful and fervent teaching of the word and prayer over them will enable you perhaps to also see your children embrace the same God and Savior that you yourself have spent your life serving.

[29:47] This is the normal, ordinary way in which God oftentimes works and causes the power of His word to go forth.

[29:59] It doesn't require a degree in theology. It doesn't require you to be anyone special. It doesn't require you to stand out any more than anyone else.

[30:09] You don't need special skills for this. You just need to be able to sit or walk and talk to your children about the word and tell them about the good news of Jesus Christ.

[30:22] There is no doubt that Isaac was well aware of the promises of God before God ever came to him and spoke to him. He was aware of them and he knew them and he had been taught these promises and now God in His goodness sovereignly comes and reveals Himself to Isaac and our prayer ought to be, God, come and show yourself to my children.

[30:45] Come and reveal yourself to them. I will do all that I can to faithfully pass on the promises and I will trust in you to come and change their hearts of stone into a heart of flesh so that they might serve you better than I have served you.

[31:00] Well, the similarities don't stop with the passing on of Abraham's sinfulness and the passing on of the promises and spiritual blessings. They continue in verse 26. When Abimelech went to him from Gerar with Ahuza his advisor and Phicol the commander of his army, again mirroring exactly what happened with Abraham in chapter 21, Isaac said to them, Why have you come to me seeing that you hate me and have sent me away from you?

[31:27] Now notice what they say. We see plainly that the Lord has been with you. Is that not what God told him? I will be with you.

[31:38] Isaac is not special. Isaac does not stand out, but God's presence with Isaac stands out. We see plainly that the Lord is with you.

[31:50] So we said, Let there be a sworn pact between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you, just as they had with Abraham, his father. Now the Philistine king wants to make a covenant with Isaac.

[32:02] Verse 29, You are now the blessed of the Lord.

[32:12] They recognize and they see God's hand of blessing in his life. Verse 30, So he made a feast, and they ate and drank. And in the morning they rose early and exchanged oaths, and Isaac sent them on their way, and they departed from him in peace.

[32:28] That same day Isaac's servants came and told them about the well that they had dug, and said to him, We have found water, the continuance of the blessing. He called it Sheba. Therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day.

[32:40] He's in the very same place where his father was when his father swore an oath and made a covenant with Abimelech, the king of Gerar. Now he stands in that same place and he makes an oath and he makes a covenant with Abimelech, the king of Gerar.

[32:53] And Abraham, his father, looked at that location and named it Beersheba, the well of oaths. And now here Isaac stands and he gives to it the same name, Beersheba, the place of oaths.

[33:06] Because Isaac is recognizing and Isaac sees the great blessing of God passed on from Abraham to him. He sees God's hand at work.

[33:18] This is why Isaac is so desperate in the next chapter to be in control of where the blessing goes. He knows what it is to receive the blessing that God had originally given to Abraham.

[33:31] He knows that God can take an ordinary life and he can place his hand of blessing upon it and all sorts of rewards are reaped from that. He understands, he gets it, and he knows.

[33:44] He is the heir of Abraham's foolishness, but he is also the heir of Abraham's blessing. And now here at the very end of the only chapter we get that highlights the life of Isaac, what is highlighted most for us is that not only Isaac, but those around him can see and understand that God is with him and God has blessed him.

[34:07] He knows it and he sees it. When you turn to Hebrews chapter 11, that great chapter of the hall of faith where the men of the Old Testament and women of the Old Testament are mentioned and we are told about what they did in faith or by faith, and they are praised for what they did, the only thing about Isaac that's mentioned is that he passed on the blessing.

[34:35] That's it. You get two paragraphs on Abraham and all that Abraham did. Even Jacob gets a couple of sentences. Isaac's mom gets more time and more credit for her acts of faith than he gets.

[34:53] What Isaac is credited for is being the one through whom the promises and the blessing passed to the next generation. But for me, what stands out as most significant in all that chapter as pertains to Isaac is that Isaac is lumped together with Abraham, his extraordinary father, and Jacob, his extraordinary son.

[35:14] And God says about these three men, these patriarchs, He says that he was not ashamed to be called their God. And I think at the end of the day, if you live an ordinary life and you do nothing that leaves a large imprint behind for the world to see and know, and the only people's lives that you ever affect are your children's lives and your grandchildren's lives, and if no one beyond them remembers you in a hundred years, I think that would be okay.

[35:47] If God might say that He is not ashamed to be called your God. I think that I would be okay with passing from the scene of history and never being remembered and no one recalling my name, never having a paper or a book published and put in a library somewhere, never being known by people as a great preacher, never having a podcast listened to by thousands or millions, I think it's okay.

[36:12] I could pass from the scene and it would be okay so long as I'm faithful enough to Christ that God would say that He's not ashamed to be called my God.

[36:23] God calls us to live by faith in Christ who gave Himself up for us, who laid down His own life in our place so that in Him we might receive the blessing and the inheritance that is rightfully His.

[36:41] He calls us to repent and believe in Him so that that great blessing might be ours and He gives to us the charge to go out and make disciples and pass on the word of that blessing to those around us.

[36:55] And so long as we trust in Christ and so long as we pass on His word to those around us, it doesn't matter if the world knows about us.

[37:08] It doesn't matter if your neighbors or your relatives ever recognize the way that Isaac was recognized as having the blessing of God upon him. It only matters if at the end of it because of faith in Jesus God says I'm not ashamed to be called your God.

[37:25] Let's pray. Thank you.