As leaders and parents, those who follow us absorb more from our example than either they, or we, realise.

Teenagers may go through a phase where they see little other than their parents’ faults, real or imagined: “I will never be like my father/mother,” some might even say.
But despite themselves, they absorb many of their parents’ values and unwittingly end up repeating many of the same mistakes.
Later, as they mature in wisdom, hopefully they will learn to appreciate their parents were like anyone else: a mixture of good and not-so-good – and then seek  to learn from the good while rejecting the not-so-good.

I was reminded of this, reading Genesis 26 in our devotions recently.
The chapter is about Isaac – the only chapter in the Bible given over entirely to him.
In the Bible narrative, Isaac is almost a parenthesis: a bridge between the previous 14 chapters about Abraham, and the following chapters, 9 devoted to Jacob and 14 to Joseph. As Philip Eveson comments, “Most of what is recorded of Isaac finds him in the shadow of either his father or his sons.”

Abraham is “the father of all those who believe” (Rom 4:11).
But he was also “a man with a nature like ours” . The best of men are still men at best; and Abraham was such a man.

Abraham was also the physical father of Isaac. He did what “seemed best to him”, and Isaac “paid him respect” for it (Heb 12:9-10).
But, along with the good went the bad, and even the ugly. In due course Isaac absorbed the values of his father, the good along with the not-so-good, more than he realised.
In Genesis 26 “Isaac is constantly being compared to his father, or reminders of Abraham are being brought to our attention.” (Eveson)

The aim of this blog is to guard against becoming “conformed to this world” and its values, but rather to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom 12:2). So I thought it would be worthwhile unpacking what we can learn from the way Isaac conformed, or was transformed, due to the influence of his father’s good, or bad and (sometimes) ugly, example.

Be Discerning: Distinguish the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

While appreciating what is good in those who have gone before, we must be discerning as to what is not.

The Good

God pointed Isaac to his father’s good example. He even promised to bless Isaac “because Abraham obeyed My voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.” (v 5)

God’s blessing Abraham – and Isaac, for that matter – was all of grace. How then was it possible for God’s blessing to be based on Abraham’s obedience?
Philip Eveson answers: “God fulfils his purposes whether human beings are obedient or not.” But “if we are to enjoy God’s benefits we must live in obedience to his Word.”
Tim Chester puts it succinctly: “We’re saved by grace alone through faith in Christ. Our status as God’s children is a gift. But how much we enjoy that communion depends on what we do.” (emph. mine)

Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

The Bad

God’s reminder to Isaac to “trust and obey” was timely for “there was a famine in the land, besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham.” (v 1)
The “famine in the days of Abraham” (12:10) reminded Isaac of how his father forsook the land God had promised him, and took himself and his family down to Egypt. Abraham was not “trusting” the Lord to provide, even if it is not explicitly stated he was not “obeying”. This was a bad move.

God does not want Isaac to follow his father’s example. “Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land of which I shall tell you. Dwell in this land, and I will be with you and bless you.” (vv 2-3)

The Ugly

A dire consequence of Abraham’s ill-conceived trip to Egypt was that he feared the Egyptians would kill him to take his wife. This confirms that he was not trusting the Lord at this point.
His solution was as cowardly as it was ugly: “Please say you are my sister,” he tells his wife, “that it may be well with me for your sake, and that I may live because of you.” (12:13)

Years later he gave in to the same fear again, and repeats the half truth (Sarah was his half-sister) when he had returned to Canaan, and lived among the Philistines in Gerar, under Abimelech the king. But half truth or not, it was a gross lie to deny that Sarah was his wife in order to sacrifice her to save his own skin.

Isaac could not have failed to have known of his father’s ignominy those many years before.
Now, (Abraham is dead, Sarah is dead) Isaac is back at Gerar, in the land of the Philistines; another Abimelech is king.
When he first heard of his father’s failure, all those years before, did he think: “I will never be like my father.”
But despite himself, he had absorbed his father’s example: “The men of the place asked about his wife. And he said, ‘She is my sister’; for he was afraid to say, ‘She is my wife,’ because he thought, ‘lest the men of the place kill me for Rebekah, because she is beautiful to behold.’” (v 7)

We need to critically examine how much we have been influenced for good or ill by those who have gone before – yes, even those that we rightly look up to.
But the best of men are still men at best.
“Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” (1 Cor 10:12)

Be Deliberate: Learn from those who have gone before

A pastor or leader fears most those who set him on a pedestal and can see no fault in him. Experience has taught me that it is those like this who will one day see enough of my faults so that from then on they can see no good.

Abraham, despite his faults, is rightly looked up to as “the father of all those who believe”. His is an example of faith to follow.
So too are all those men and women of faith, recorded for us in Hebrews 11, despite their otherwise obvious failings.
We are to learn from their good example.

Dig where your fathers dug

Isaac found water by following his father’s example.
“Isaac dug again the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father… He called them by the names which his father had called them.” (v 18)
If the Lord had provided wells of water for his father when he dug there, it made sense to dig in the same place.

It is a temptation for each new generation to waste time and resources in seeking to reinvent the wheel. We reject the wisdom of those who have gone before, dismissing them as being out of touch with present day realities.
Isaac could have ignored the proven wisdom of his father and decided, instead, to “do it my way.”

Back in 1959, Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached a series of six sermons on this text to commemorate the centenary of the world-wide 1859 revivals:

His point was that, when Isaac arrived in Gerar, “he was confronted by an urgent and very desperate need – and that was the need of water.”
He was not looking for “some beauty spot where he might pitch his tent; he was not looking for entertainment or luxuries.”
No, “he was looking for something that is an absolute essential, and without which life cannot be maintained at all.”

Lloyd-Jones compared this to the Church today, whose “primary need, her urgent need at the moment, is the need of life itself. The problem confronting us is not a problem of methods, or of organisation, or of making a slight  adjustment here and there, or of  improving things a little bit, or keeping them up-to-date, or anything like that.”
But “the problem confronting us is… the need of life, the need of power, the need of the Spirit Himself.”

What are we to do? What did Isaac do?
What did he not do? He did not “send for the water diviners, or for men who are experts in seeking and discovering fresh supplies of water.” No, he learned from his father and dug where he had dug.
But for so many today, “instead of doing what Isaac did, we are calling for the prospectors, the water diviners, trying to see if we can discover a source or supply of water somewhere that will enable us to  continue”

Lloyd-Jones exhorted us to go back and learn from church history.
Where did the great revivals of the past begin? How did our fathers discover fresh water?
They went back to a focus on the cardinal truths of Scripture; they were not ashamed of these, they did not try to water them down to be more acceptable to current ways of thinking.
They focused on the holiness of God in worship, and proclaiming the riches of His grace in Christ.
And, they prayed! Oh, how they prayed. “Christian people delighted in prayer. You did not have to whip them up to prayer meetings, you could not keep them away.”

Let us dig again the wells where our fathers dug.

Learn to live in the world, but not of it

Isaac lived among that first wave of Philistines. Soon, though, the prosperity the Lord blessed him with aroused their envy and led to strife.
They stopped up the wells that Isaac dug as fast as he re-dug them. “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we,” they cried in hate (vv 16,27).
Each time, Isaac responded peaceably and left.

We live in a world which is often hostile to us and to our faith, and will openly express its hatred.
How to respond? “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men.” (Rom 12:18)

Eventually the world around him recognised that it was not in their own interests to perpetuate enmity: “We have certainly seen that the Lord is with you. Let us make a covenant with you, since we have done nothing to you but good and have sent you away in peace.” (vv 28-29)
Isaac remembered the example of his father, who entered into a covenant with this people under the previous Abimelech (21:22-24). Now, Isaac follows suit (26:30-31).

Where it is possible to enter into a covenant of peace with the world, without compromising our faith, we should do so.
The operative word is “without compromise”. We are not to enter into a covenant that approves the world’s values: “Do not love the world or the things in the world.” (1 John 2:15).
We live “in the world”, but are not “of the world”.

By way of contrast, Isaac’s son, Esau, was not only “in the world”, but “of the world”. He went and married outside God’s covenant, marrying not one, but two, Hittite women.
He “loved the world and the things in the world.”

Prioritise the worship of God

As soon as Abraham arrived in the promised land he worshipped God.
While his contemporaries were building cities to themselves (see here), Abraham built altars to the Lord (see 12:7, 12:8, 13:4, 13:18).
His priority was to worship God, not to glorify himself.

Isaac followed his example. He made a priority of worshipping God.
When, eventually, he found peace among the hostile Philistines, he acknowledged the Lord’s hand: “Now the Lord has made room for us.” (v 22)
Then, when the Lord appeared to him (as He had to his father), “he built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord” (v 25).

Our chief end is to  glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
Our priority is to worship God – to worship a holy God.
As Tim Challies recently wrote:

God is holy, holy, holy and He both demands and deserves to be worshiped as such.
When I look at much of contemporary evangelicalism, I see churches that so obviously do not regard God as holy, not to mention holy, holy, holy. Their small worship proves they worship a small God.
They have a worship problem because they first have a holiness problem.

Our priority in worship is to glorify and enjoy our holy God, not to to glorify and entertain ourselves.

Abraham worshipped. He glorified and enjoyed God.
This is the best example of all that he left for Isaac.
And for us.