Sermon Archive

“Like Father, Like Son”

Genesis 26:1-33
Bob DeGray
September 16, 2007

Key Sentence

Even if you have the same struggles as those who have gone before, a faithful God does not tire of rescuing and blessing.

Outline

I. We have the same weaknesses as our fathers. (Genesis 26:1-11)
II. We have the same unsettledness as our fathers. (Genesis 26:12-22)
III. We have the same provision as our fathers. (Genesis 26:23-33)

Message

We have a saying, or proverb, in our culture: like father, like son. At times I’m disturbingly like my father. For one thing I have the same knobby knees he did. Neither one of us should probably have ever worn shorts. I’m the same height. I sit the same way as he did; I say some of the same thing in the same way. But it goes beyond simple resemblance. In many ways we tend to inherit or imitate both the strengths and weaknesses of our parents. An old ballad by Harry Chapin captures this ‘like father like son’ truth better than I can say it. Let’s listen:

A child arrived just the other day, He came to the world in the usual way.
But there were planes to catch, and bills to pay. He learned to walk while I was away.
And he was talking 'fore I knew it, and as he grew,
He'd say, "I'm gonna be like you, dad. You know I'm gonna be like you."

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon, Little boy blue and the man in the moon.
"When you coming home, dad?" "I don't know when,
But we'll get together then. You know we'll have a good time then."

My son turned ten just the other day.
He said, "Thanks for the ball, dad, come on let's play.
Can you teach me to throw?" I said, "Not today, I got a lot to do." He said, "That's ok."
And he walked away, but his smile never dimmed,
Said, "I'm gonna be like him, yeah. You know I'm gonna be like him."

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon, Little boy blue and the man in the moon.
"When you coming home, dad?" "I don't know when,
But we'll get together then. You know we'll have a good time then."

Well, he came from college just the other day, So much like a man I just had to say,
"Son, I'm proud of you. Can you sit for a while?"
He shook his head, and he said with a smile,
"What I'd really like, dad, is to borrow the car keys.
See you later. Can I have them please?"

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon, Little boy blue and the man in the moon.
"When you coming home, son?" "I don't know when,
But we'll get together then, dad. You know we'll have a good time then."

I've long since retired and my son's moved away. I called him up just the other day.
I said, "I'd like to see you if you don't mind."
He said, "I'd love to, dad, if I could find the time.
You see, my new job's a hassle, and the kid's got the flu,
But it's sure nice talking to you, dad. It's been sure nice talking to you."
And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me,
He'd grown up just like me. My boy was just like me.

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon, Little boy blue and the man in the moon.
"When you coming home, son?" "I don't know when,
But we'll get together then, dad. You know we'll have a good time then."

We tend to have the same struggles as those who’ve gone before us. And if you’re anything like me, you really hate that. You hate repeating the same mistakes, falling into the same sins. You hate being stuck in the same places and facing the same tests over and over. You may start to think, as I do, ‘God’s going to get awful tired of this. If I was God I’d just give up on me. If I was God I’d wipe out this whole thing and start over, because the way things are right now I’ve got to rescue these folks every minute.’

But is that what God thinks? Is that how God acts? Does God get tired of rescuing? Stop caring? Get tired of blessing? That’s the question we’re going to explore today in Genesis: Does God get tired of rescuing his people from the same problems and blessing them in unchanging challenges?

We’ll see in Genesis 26 that Isaac has the same struggles and weaknesses and faces the same challenges as his father Abraham. Genesis 26:1-11 Now there was a famine in the land--besides the earlier famine of Abraham's time--and Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines in Gerar. ²The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, "Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. ³Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham. ⁴I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, ⁵because Abraham obeyed me and kept my requirements, my commands, my decrees and my laws." ⁶So Isaac stayed in Gerar.

⁷When the men of that place asked him about his wife, he said, "She is my sister," because he was afraid to say, "She is my wife." He thought, "The men of this place might kill me on account of Rebekah, because she is beautiful." ⁸When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelech king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah. ⁹So Abimelech summoned Isaac and said, "She is really your wife! Why did you say, 'She is my sister'?" Isaac answered him, "Because I thought I might lose my life on account of her." ¹⁰Then Abimelech said, "What is this you have done to us? One of the men might well have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us." ¹¹So Abimelech gave orders to all the people: "Anyone who molests this man or his wife shall be put to death."

The first thing you need to know is that these events probably take place before the end of the text we studied last week. Genesis 25:11 was a key verse:“After Abraham's death, God blessed his son Isaac, who then lived near Beer Lahai Roi.” This chapter is almost certainly an expansion on that thought, showing how God blessed Isaac, long before the conflicts with Esau and Jacob got started.

Notice also that the author of Genesis is very aware he’s about to tell the same story on Isaac he told on Abraham. He says ‘there was a famine in the land, just as there was in Abraham’s time.’ Some critics say only one of these stories can be true, that the repetition of such unlikely events 80 or more years apart is an impossible coincidence. But God doesn’t deal in coincidence, he deals in sovereign providence. And because Isaac has some like-father, like-son lessons to learn, he is put in a life situation similar to his father’s, an area of weakness for both of them.

Verse 1 “Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines in Gerar.” Abraham had made the same journey to Abimelech in Gerar in Genesis 20, after the destruction of Sodom, before the birth of Isaac. You might wonder how Abimelech could still be king 80 years later. It’s very likely that Abimelech was not a name, but a title, just as Pharaoh can be used as a name but is really a title for many successive rulers. This Abimelech is likely the son or grandson of the Abimelech in Genesis 20.

It appears that Isaac was on his way to Egypt when he stopped in Gerar. Abraham had gone all the way to Egypt in Genesis 12, but Isaac does a little better, because the Lord intervenes and warns him:"Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. ³Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham. ⁴I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed.”

This is the first indication that God does not tire of rescuing. Isaac is about to make the same mistake as his father, going to Egypt in time of crisis, but instead God tells him to stay in the promised land, and then God confirms the same promises he had made to Abraham.

You’d expect that a direct word from God like this would put Isaac right for a long time. And, on the one hand, he did obey. He didn’t go to Egypt. On the other hand, the same fear and lack of faith that caused Abraham, both in Egypt and in Gerar to lie about his marriage to Sarah now causes Isaac to lie about his marriage to Rebekah. Verse 7: “When the men of that place asked him about his wife, he said, "She is my sister," because he was afraid to say, "She is my wife." He thought, "The men of this place might kill me on account of Rebekah, because she is beautiful."” Like father, like son. Isaac wasn’t even alive when Abraham made this mistake, but he sounds just like his dad. Genesis 20:11, Abraham says “I said to myself, 'There is surely no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.”

This fear and lack of faith is a characteristic weakness, inherited by Isaac from Abraham. And does God tire of this repetition? Verse 8: When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelech king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah. ⁹So Abimelech summoned Isaac and said, "She is really your wife! Why did you say, 'She is my sister'?" Isaac answered him, "Because I thought I might lose my life on account of her." ¹⁰Then Abimelech said, "What is this you have done to us? One of the men might well have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us." ¹¹So Abimelech gave orders to all the people: "Anyone who molests this man or his wife shall surely be put to death."

These episodes are amazing because in both cases with Abraham and in this case with Isaac, God miraculously prevents harm to the patriarch and even more miraculously causes the ruler, the heathen, to act with absolute integrity. It’s Isaac who is fearful here - ‘I thought you might kill me’ - and Abimilech who is faithful: “We don’t want this God to bring judgment on us; no-one do anything bad to this man or his wife.” God doesn’t tire of showing his care: he rescued Abraham from his foolishness, fear and faithlessness. Now he does the same for Isaac.

But we need to shine this truth on our own lives. We can see ‘like father like son’ or ‘like mother, like daughter’ in our own lives. We mimic our parents’ positive qualities and echo their limitations and faults. Let me be personalize this: I have a tendency when life gets hard to deny and flee problems. My impulse is to curl up and hide, put up emotional walls, avoiding conflict, criticism or even communication. And I think I got that from my father. who had the same reactions to stresses when I was a child. It’s ‘like father, like son’. I imitate without even realizing it.

And I’ll bet the same is true of you. On a simple level, if your dad played golf, you played golf. If your dad biked, you biked, if your dad worked on cars, you did too. And you may still do these things. Ladies, you probably have some of the same interests as your mom. If she sews, you sew; if she bakes, you bake, if she sings, you sing. You are probably also mirror her emotionally: you not only cook the same things your mom cooked, but you cry at the same times your mom cried, and if she was a yeller, your impulse is to yell at the same times she yelled.

This extends to the most grievous behaviors of our parents. If your dad or mom was an alcoholic, you might struggle with the same sin, or the sinful behaviors it spawns. If you had an abusive parent, you struggle with anger. If they were self centered and pleasure seeking, that influences you. If they were workaholic and never home, you probably struggle against the same tendency, like Harry Chapin’s son in the ballad.

But no matter how many times you repeat the same old mistakes, God does not give up. He disciplines his children, but he does not desert them: the promise of the blessing of his presence is cover to cover in Scripture; it’s already been made to Isaac, “I will be with you” and it is unconditional to all he saves by faith.

I hope you will cling to this promise of his presence at two specific moments: when you are just like your mom at her worst; just like your dad in the ways you swore you would never be, recognize that God has not given up on you and he won’t stop caring for you.

Second, more broadly, when you fall into any characteristic sin, even one you don’t recognize as from your parents, cling to God’s faithfulness and forgiveness and hold on to hope that even these most persistent sins are no match for the inexorable power of the Holy Spirit in your life. He may be slow at times, but he is sure.

Andrew Peterson has a song about people caught in characteristic sin in which he compares God’s work to mountains hidden beneath the waves but slowly rising up from the ocean floor. Change is happening; it’s slow and may not be apparent, but you can cling to God’s faithfulness, cling to his Spirit and cling with everything you have to the clear path of obedience he has laid before you.

God is faithful to rescue when we fall into the weaknesses of our fathers. But he is also faithful to be with us when we have the same unsettledness as our fathers. What do I mean by that? Last fall we saw Abraham as a stranger in a strange land, a pilgrim in this world, longing to be free of the pressures and stresses of that wandering life and to settle down in the land God had promised. In the same way Isaac is now a pilgrim and a wanderer. And as he moves around he experiences what I’m calling ‘unsettledness’. He has no place to call his home, and wherever he stops he faces pressure and inconvenience from the people and the circumstances around him.

The same is true of us. As believers in Jesus Christ we are not comfortable in this world. We’re pilgrims here, aliens and strangers with no abiding city. We face pressure from this enemy world system every day. We face the pressure of juggling time and finances and priorities and relationships. We face the pressure of living in a fallen world, where sin and tragedy dominate the landscape and Christian living is thought freakish. We’re constantly pushed on by temptations, trade-offs and entropy: everything is breaking down, going backwards, yet we have to go forward in faith

The question we’re asking is ‘does God grow weary of blessing his people in the midst of this unsettledness?’ Let’s look at Isaacs life. Verses 12 to 22: Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold, because the Lord blessed him. ¹³The man became rich, and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy. ¹⁴He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him. ¹⁵So all the wells that his father's servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up, filling them with earth. ¹⁶Then Abimelech said to Isaac, "Move away from us; you have become too powerful for us."

¹⁷So Isaac moved away from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar and settled there. ¹⁸Isaac 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.

¹⁹Isaac's servants dug in the valley and discovered a well of fresh water there. ²⁰But 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. ²¹Then they dug another well, but they quarreled over that also; so he named it Sitnah. ²²He 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."

These verses especially amplify the blessing mentioned in the previous chapter. Certainly not all blessing is physical - we saw that last week. We’ve already noted that the key promise God repeats here is of his presence. But Isaac was physically blessed, like his father. He had great wealth in flocks and herds and servants. He was even successful at agriculture, which is not ever said of Abraham or the other patriarchs. Isaac planted seeds and harvested a hundred fold as God gave him blessing.

But with blessing came unsettledness for this one who had as yet no possession of the land. The people of Gerar saw his prosperity and envied him. So they filled in all the wells that had been dug in the time of Abraham. In that kind of dry climate, wells were vitally important to raising animals or crops. You had to have a water supply. Filling in someone’s wells is an act of economic violence. Then Abimelech, who’d been very cordial to Isaac, told him he had to move away.

This is what happens when you’re an alien and stranger - just when thing seem to be settled, someone changes the rules. This happens to Christians in every age. For example, if you listen to missionaries or native believers in countries where Christianity is not accepted, you’ll hear how the rules keep changing. You have to constantly adjust everything, from how you get your visa to how you arrange for a meeting place.

In a larger sense the world is constantly trying to fill in your wells. Call it entropy or hostility or the peril of a fallen universe, but you can’t count on anything; jobs change, positions are eliminated, prices go up, things break down, people move, relationships change. It’s an uncertain world; any day can bring testing or trial. As a result, for all of us, every day is the day to cry out to God for his provision, because God does not tire of caring.

Isaiah 40 puts it so beautifully: “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.”

This is Isaac’s experience. He packs up and moves up-valley from Gerar. He digs more wells in places his father’s servants had dug during the many years of Abraham’s wandering. He gives them back their old names. Yet the unsettledness of having no permanent possession is still there. The first well they dug was disputed by the men of Gerar, so Isaac renamed it ‘dispute’. His servants moved on. The second was the same; he called that one ‘opposition’. Finally he dug a well no one quarreled about, and he named it Rehoboth, room, and said ‘finally the Lord has given us room.’

God is providing. It’s clear in the last verses, 23- 33 From there he went up to Beersheba. ²⁴That 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." ²⁵Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord. There he pitched his tent, and there his servants dug a well.

²⁶Meanwhile, Abimelech had come to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath his personal adviser and Phicol the commander of his forces. ²⁷Isaac asked them, "Why have you come to me, since you were hostile to me and sent me away?" ²⁸They 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 ²⁹that 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."

³⁰Isaac then made a feast for them, and they ate and drank. ³¹Early the next morning the men swore an oath to each other. Then Isaac sent them on their way, and they left him in peace. ³²That day Isaac's servants came and told him about the well they had dug. They said, "We've found water!" ³³He called it Shibah, and to this day the name of the town has been Beersheba

Isaac moves again. Maybe there wasn’t enough room near the well called ‘room’ for his flocks and herds. So he moves to the region his father called Beersheba. He wanders like his father, faces the same uncertainties, receives the same assurance: “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."

Though you have no settled home or permanent possession, don’t be afraid. Why? Because I am going to be with you. The foundational, unchanging promise of a holy God to sinful men is the promise of his presence. In response to it, Isaac worships, just as his father Abraham had. Not all we get from our fathers is negative. Isaac clings to the faith of his father in the God of his father.

So Isaac moves on and his servants re-dig the well called Sheb, which Abraham had dug. The name means oath, and the town was called Beersheba, the well of the oath. Both Abraham and Isaac swore oaths in this place. For the first time in this text God made provision for a partial permanence for Isaac. Abimelech and a couple of his advisors came to Isaac and said “we can see that the Lord is with you and is blessing you, and we want you to remember that we never did anything bad to you in Gerar. We sent you away peacefully; we’d like to have peace with you now.” Isaac agrees and an oath is taken. Once in a while the Lord allows the people around us to see his hand at work so clearly that they back off.

So what have we seen? That Isaac has the same struggles in life as his father Abraham, but God continues to rescue and bless. Therefore even though you will have the same struggles as those who have gone before, a faithful God will not tire of rescuing and blessing you, especially with his presence.

This has certainly been true in my own life, as I struggle with my own characteristic sins, and as I feel the pressure of not being at home in this world, of living in a world where everything seems to break down, from cars to health to relationships. In these times, over the last 38 years, God’s presence has been an almost constant source of comfort and relief. There have been times I’ve taken my eyes off him and missed these things, but I can say for sure that he has never taken his eyes off me, or grown tired even when I’ve persisted in childish attitudes and behaviors.

And the same is true of the families sitting around you this morning. I say that partially because I’m aware of situations in which it has been true, but I’m not at liberty to share the details, because I owe people their privacy. But there are situations I’ve talked about in the past, where the world was testing people’s patience and faith, and God has provided rescue or blessing or presence or all three. I think of the Beasleys. Craig alluded last week at Joshua’s baby dedication to the episode with CPS. It was a great test of faith, and God showed himself great. I’ve mention Nathan Hughes, and how God opened the doors to a job as police dispatcher. And Nathan has done so well that he has now been promoted to a supervisor. Or think of the account a few years back of the Reeds adoption of Josh and Olivia. They went through great unsettledness before God allowed that to come to pass. And God didn’t get tired in any of these circumstance, nor grow weary from the pressures. Even in a like-father, like-son world, where we have the same struggles as those who have gone before, a faithful God does not tire of rescuing and blessing.