Four Wells (Part 2)

Four Wells
(Part 2)

When Isaac dug the third well they didn’t contend with Isaac for it. This was called Rehoboth or ‘the wide places or streets’. Isaac said, “Now the LORD has given us room and we will flourish in the land.” There are times of peace and stability within our Christian walk, but the Holy Spirit is a dynamic force and if we are walking in the Spirit then we won’t remain idle for long. We will continue to move and grow in one dimension or another. The well as Rehoboth is like the well of salvation that has been placed in the wide place of humanity. It is open to all who believe and wish to partake of it. It is a well of peace for it excludes no one who wishes to drink of its waters.
Finally we see Isaac moving up to Beersheeba. At Beersheba God speaks to Isaac and he builds altar there to God. This is a place where we dig a well beyond our salvation experience. This is a place of personal revelation and purpose in God. It is a well dug in a place of worship and encounter with the Lord. It is a place where people will recognize and acknowledge the blessing and the anointing of Christ in your life and they will come to you. You are the representative of God to them and they will desire to make peace and covenant with God. You are in Christ and He is in you to the point that others will acknowledge His presence. Where they were hostile before now they come in peace to make peace with God.
We see Abimelech coming to Isaac and we see represented with him the whole man. There is Abimelech the spirit, Ahuzzath the adviser as the soul and Phicol the commander of the forces like the body. Isaac stands now in the place of priesthood to bring those without the covenant, into covenant and peace with God. This covenant is for the whole man, spirit, soul and body. It is interesting that immediately after the covenant was made they found water that same day. The Spirit will produce the life if we will dig the well and the well will become a source of life to sustain and keep us.
Beersheba means, ‘well of the sevenfold oath’. There is no doubt a great deal more truth that this well holds than what we are sharing here. Perhaps what we are seeing as Isaac moves from well to well is a progression and growth in spirit. Gerar, the land in which Isaac had been dwelling, means just that, ‘dwelling place’. God had sent Isaac there during a time of famine rather than allowing him to go back to Egypt. In times of need God doesn’t want us to go back to the world, but He places us in a dwelling place where we can grow in our faith and in our relationship with Him. What we see in Isaac is that He was producing life wherever he was. He was always redigging the wells of His Father. That is what God wants in us, to be well diggers, searching out His truth and becoming that source of truth for others. There will be those who strive and contend with us over it. That’s okay, just move on to dig the next well. Keep uncovering the truths of God’s word. They have been there all of the time, but they have been covered over. God has wells He wants you to dig in your life.

Blessings,
#kent

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Four Wells (Part 1)

Four Wells
(Part 1)
Genesis 26:16-32
Then Abimelech said to Isaac, “Move away from us; you have become too powerful for us.”
17 So Isaac moved away from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar and settled there. 18 Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died, and he gave them the same names his father had given them.
19 Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and discovered a well of fresh water there. 20 But the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen and said, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Esek, because they disputed with him. 21 Then they dug another well, but they quarreled over that one also; so he named it Sitnah. 22 He moved on from there and dug another well, and no one quarreled over it. He named it Rehoboth, saying, “Now the LORD has given us room and we will flourish in the land.”
23 From there he went up to Beersheba. 24 That night the LORD appeared to him and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bless you and will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham.”
25 Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the LORD. There he pitched his tent, and there his servants dug a well.
26 Meanwhile, Abimelech had come to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath his personal adviser and Phicol the commander of his forces. 27 Isaac asked them, “Why have you come to me, since you were hostile to me and sent me away?”
28 They answered, “We saw clearly that the LORD was with you; so we said, ‘There ought to be a sworn agreement between us’-between us and you. Let us make a treaty with you 29 that you will do us no harm, just as we did not molest you but always treated you well and sent you away in peace. And now you are blessed by the LORD.”
30 Isaac then made a feast for them, and they ate and drank. 31 Early the next morning the men swore an oath to each other. Then Isaac sent them on their way, and they left him in peace.
32 That day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug. They said, “We’ve found water!” 33 He called it Shibah, and to this day the name of the town has been Beersheba.

The Bible takes the time to relate to us this story about Isaac and Abimelech the King of Gerar along with the accounts of how Isaac dug wells where his Father Abraham had done the same in the past. It is interesting that we find that these wells had been filled in and covered up by the people of the land. We know that water is the commodity that is absolutely necessary to sustain people and livestock. In the Word of God we find the symbolism of water being like the Spirit of God. In our spiritual lives, without God’s Spirit we would perish. Jesus used the water in John 4 when speaking with the Samaritan woman to relate to her the truth of living water. Jesus related Himself as being that source of living water. What we see here is that where God’s people are there is blessing and there is water. Abraham had dug wells and found water, but after Abraham died, what happened, the people of the land covered them up or they became filled back in. Truth and life ceased to flow.
What we could see here is that when people are walking with God in obedience and relationship they bring life wherever they dwell. Blessing and the favor of God will rest upon them. People around us often want the blessing of God upon their life, but without the walk of obedience and relationship so the wells become polluted and covered with the earth and sin of humanity. They become filled in because sin makes a separation. It takes an Isaac or in our case Christ to redig those wells and bring us back into relationship with the water of life
In this account of Isaac we read of Him being asked to leave the land because He has become so influential, powerful and rich that he actually is greater than the people in land in which he dwells. As he honors the request of Abimelech and starts to travel away from there, he obviously has what might the equivalent of a small city moving with him, along with a great amount of livestock. He needs water, so he redigs these wells that were once dug by his father. What we see is that the people of the land are jealous and envious of Isaac, because He carries with him the same blessing as his father. These people of the land then figure that this well is on their land so the water belongs to them and not Isaac even though Isaac did all of the labor and uncovered them. We find the inhabitants of the land coming and contending for the water. This happens twice and we see Isaac naming these wells Strife and Contention.
Have you ever labored and through the blessing of the Lord developed something, just to turn around and have someone come in and want to take it away from you. You could fight for it and maybe even win. After all, you have a force more powerful than those do who are in the land. What was the principal Jesus gave? “If they take your cloak give them you coat also”. So Isaac didn’t go to war with them. He moved on and dug another well. Just as the herdsmen of Lot and Abraham strove, Abraham did not exercise his rights and authority, he gave the choice to Lot and he took what was left. What appears good to the eye of the flesh is not always the blessing, in fact, it can turn out to be the curse as it was for Lot. God the Father is the blessing, if we possess Him and He possesses us, then no matter where we go the blessing will follow.
Perhaps we could even think of this passage in context of the Father establishing the principles of the law and life in the old testament being like Abraham first digging these wells in faith. Then what happened? It wasn’t the wells that were bad; it was man through self-efforts of trying to keep the law that filled back in these wells. It was the law made weak by sinful flesh that caused the wells to fail. It is that old principle that man working outside of faith will never produce righteousness and spiritual life will dry up or become covered up by the efforts of the flesh. That is what had happened to these wells. Isaac was a type of Christ coming back through and redigging the wells His Father had already dug. Yet we see the people of Christ’s day receiving the living water and the blessing of Christ like they received Isaac. Many of them were jealous, envious and resentful of Him. He was perceived as a threat to what they felt belonged to them, but what they could obviously not produce in the law and religious works. Thus we can see the symbolism of Strife and Contention, between Jesus and the religious leaders of his day.

Blessings,
#kent