COME AS A CHILD LESSON 72 REPEATING THE PAST

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

When loving godly families fill the land, God's love is spread across the earth.  Isaac and Rebekah had a godly family, but they struggled with the influences that the surrounding cultures had on their children.

So Isaac and Rebekah, still very much in love with one another are continuing their lives in the midst of a constant struggle between their two very different sons.  

Isaac had not yet been told that Esau traded his birthright to Jacob, but they found themselves constantly experiencing many disappointments around how Esau was living as he matured into a grown man.  He did not seem to relate to God.  He cared little for their family worship.  He did not seem to want to be a part of their family culture.  He was always living "outside the camp."   

Esau wanted to blend into the culture that surrounded them; one that was very different from the godly culture that Abraham and Sarah had developed for their children and their family life.  The people surrounding the family in this land were very pagan and ungodly.  There was a whole different world outside of the household of Isaac and Rebekah.  Esau found that world too tempting, exciting and adventurous.  Isaac, more than anyone else, held on to the hope that Esau would change and mature as he grew older, but there was no evidence of that so far.    

Much like in the time of Abraham, a famine struck the land where Isaac was living with Rebekah and Jacob and Esau.  Isaac considered taking the family to Egypt to find food, but the Lord gave him a dream and told him not to leave the land of his birth.  

God led Isaac in a different direction than he would have normally chosen in a famine.  

Remember how Abraham had told Eliezer not to let Isaac leave the land where he was born?

  Abraham had expressed this to Isaac also.  He must stay in the land that God had promised. 

In Isaac’s dream God basically repeated what he had promised to Abraham.  God now told Isaac that his descendants would be as many as the stars in the heavens, and God said He would give these descendants the land of Canaan.  God repeated that he would bless the descendants of Abraham through Isaac because Abraham had been faithful to do the things that God had commanded of him. 

God passed on the promises he had made to Abraham to Isaac.  It was the first time Isaac had heard them directly from God.

Isaac had heard these promises from his earthly father many, many times while he was growing up.  His whole life had been a preparation to seek these very blessings, and he had even willing laid down his life for God; but this was the first time that Isaac actually heard of the blessings himself, directly from God!  It must have been exciting for him to actually hear from God directly and not by way of another person.  In all that Isaac had been through, God had finally spoken to him! 

Many of us live in this place like Isaac where we are doing all we can and seeking God’s will in our lives and trusting Him with all our heart, yet; we are not hearing God speak directly to us.  We begin to wonder if we should make our own decisions because of God’s silence.  We do not always realize that God has put us in a time of waiting on Him.  Sometimes God wants us to wait on His timing.  He wants us to have faith and to trust Him in all circumstances, even the hardest of times, even when He is silent.  Even Isaac had to wait on God until God chose to give him directions.  When the time is right, God will intervene and speak.  It is our part to keep listening and trusting.  The results of hearing from God after a long trusting wait are always joyful!

Sometimes there is nothing to do until we hear from God.  We must learn to wait on Him.

After receiving this word from God Isaac built an altar and worshiped God in the place where he had heard His voice. 

It must have been very sobering too to realize that God was doing all of this simply because Abraham had kept God’s commandments and honored the covenant.  It was nothing that Isaac had done, even though he had previously been willing to lay down his life for God.  It was because of God’s covenant with Abraham.   Isaac understood this and he decided against going to Egypt.  Isaac was obedient in staying in the land where God had promised to bless him.  He was full of joy when God answered him and he worshiped! 

A word of caution here.  When you reach a place of deciding to obey God with all your heart and it brings you to the place of doing something different in your life because God has spoken to you; do not let down your guard.  There may be more than one test ahead and the devil loves to catch us off guard.  It is the desire of the devil to trick every child of God into making a wrong turn.  Never bask in the fact that you obeyed God once.  Keep the eyes and ears of your spirit open to God’s will even when things seem to be perfectly clear. 

Life as a child of God is one long continuous act of submission to God’s will.  Don’t let down your guard after a hard test is over and you have obtained a momentary answer or victory.   The Christian life is an on-going battle between following God’s way and giving in to our humanity.  This was the trap that Isaac had set before him by Satan, who would love to see Isaac fail before God.  The devil is a careful deceiver.  If you are not paying attention and listening to God every minute he will make you think you do not need to seek God’s face again the next time.  You will mistake over-confidence for over-coming.   There is always a NEXT TIME.  There is one for all of us, just as there was one for Isaac.

 There was still this problem of the famine in the land.  So; Isaac went to Abimelech, who was still the reigning King of the Philistines in Gerar.  Remember that Abimelech was a family name or a “title” for kings, so this could have been either the Abimelech that Abraham had encountered or even possibly his son or grandson after him. 

The men of Gerar though Rebekah was extremely beautiful.

The experience of Isaac and Rebekah in Gerar was very much like the one that Abraham and Sarah had twice experienced in their days before the birth of Isaac; once in Egypt with Pharaoh, and once with King Abimelech in Gerar.  This is no reason to think that the story didn’t happen exactly like the scriptures read. The same situation was repeated.  Some like to think that a writer got confused and wrote the same story twice.  How silly!  How many times have you seen a son repeat the same mistakes that his father made?  This is just a prime example of how real life is lived out.  Usually one generation is given the same set of problems and temptations as the next.  Some sons learn from their fathers and some sons tend to repeat the process of relearning. 

It is the exception, not the rule, when a son doesn’t repeat his father’s sins.  This passage simply shows us the fate of humanity when we do not let God guide our every step.  Isaac was human.  He made the same mistake that Abraham did.

The men of Gerar thought Rebekah was extremely beautiful and they asked Isaac about her.  Isaac lied and told them she was his sister, just as Abraham had done with Sarah in the same circumstances many years prior. 

The scriptures plainly say this time that Isaac was afraid they might kill him and take Rebekah for themselves if they knew he was her husband.  But; one day King Abimelech saw Isaac caressing his wife, not in the way that one would treat his sister, and he realized Rebekah was actually Isaac’s wife.  The king asked Isaac why he had lied to him about Rebekah being his sister.  Isaac admitted that he had been afraid for his life.  This made Abimelech angry with Isaac and he asked him, “What if one of my men had taken Rebekah for himself as a wife?  We all would have been guilty of doing wrong!” 

Even through Abimelech was angry, he gave orders to his men not to harm Rebekah or Isaac, and they were then safe to live in that area until the famine was over.  This is yet another situation where humanity did everything wrong and God’s mercy prevailed. 

Isaac, like Abraham before him committed two sins.  First, he lied.  Second, and worse than the first sin, he did not trust God to take care of them.  Isaac, like his father before him in such circumstances, caved to the culture he found around him.  When it came down to it, Esau's father was (this time) as guilty as Esau, it just wasn’t as obvious.  He feared mankind instead of trusting God.  God had promised both Abraham and Isaac that He would be with them and protect them, but they still feared men in spite of this. 

I suppose there are a million people living in the same circumstances today.  So often we let the ungodly people from the cultures living around us make our decisions for us instead of following God's ways and trusting God to see us through.  Why should we ever fear our enemy when we know for a fact that our God is bigger and full of might?  We usually default to our humanity instead of trusting in our divine God.  Isaac just repeated the sad story that is common to all other human beings.  Both Abraham and Isaac failed this same test.  So do most other men.  If a man can rise above his circumstances following God through all situations, he is truly a righteous man indeed.

We should never remove our focus from God.  We should not let the dangers around us control us and make us forget what our God has promised us. This is a very important fact to remember as we live through the last days of this earth.   We must keep trusting God to guide us, and we must keep striving to do the right thing and rise above the cesspool of humanity we find ourselves living in on planet earth.  Did God not say that two nations would come from Rebekah’s womb?  Had God not told them He had great plans for them?  Keep remembering the promises!  “I will never leave you or forsake you!” 

Now we have seen that God had spoken directly to Isaac and even in a time when Isaac temporarily forgot to trust in God’s sovereignty.  God does not forsake His children, even when they make terrible mistakes.  He is patient, merciful and loving and He will wait until our hearts are right again and bring us to the purposes that He has designed for our lives from the beginning of time.  Isaac’s purpose was to be the father of great nations!  God did not forsake him or turn His back on him.  We ALL have a purpose.  Every soul that enters this earth has a purpose designed by The Creator, even if they cannot yet see it.  Have faith, God will show you in time.

 This is a very strong lesson that should apply to the heart of every Christian person living today.  Even great godly men like Abraham and Isaac failed this test and had to rely on God’s great mercy and forgiveness.  Our God is not controlled by the pitiful, sinful, circumstances of humanity.  He will look after His people when they trust in Him and obey Him. 

God always keeps His promises.  We must always believe this.  Unbelief looks at the difficulty but faith looks at God’s promises.  Isaac should have had more faith in this situation.  He should have told the truth.  So many of us do the same thing; we have strong faith for some life and death situations, but we slip in the day-to-day decisions of being truthful and honest.  We forget to consider God’s will for EVERY moment we are living through.  If it isn’t BIG, we forget and default to our own decisions.   

God protected both Sarah and Rebekah when their husbands forgot to call on Him and trust Him for deliverance. This should give many women of today hope.  You might find yourself living in hard circumstances with a husband who has forgotten to call on God.  Do not forget to call on Him yourself.  He is there waiting, ready to deliver you from your misery and oppression.  He is ever faithful!   It is up to each person, individually, to call on God.  No one else can do it for you, not your husband, not your children, not your earthly mother and father.  God wants to hear from YOU.  

God had mercy on Rebekah and Isaac and brought them to safety in spite of their lack of faith and sinful lies.  They did not starve, and they were kept safe through the famine in the land.  Isaac did not have to leave the land where he was born, and that was very important in keeping the covenant of God and the promises that Isaac had made to Abraham.  If we wait on God in all of our hard circumstances He will make a way to bring His will about in our lives.  We must trust God to do this, always.

Once again we learn of a time when God took a very bad situation and worked it out for good.  God always keeps His promises!