Abraham - Blessing our Neighbors

Wells may come and go, trees may grow and die, lambs may grow and die, covenants may be forgotten, but the everlasting God continues throughout all eternity. And this God is our God forever and ever, and He will be our guide even unto death.

Gracious Father, we do bring to you the worship and the love of our hearts. We realize that we don't know how to worship you as we should or how to love you as we should, but you see our hearts and you know our hearts' desire. Help us now to love you even as we study the word of God. We're listening to your word speak to us, and we know that you speak to us from a heart of love. And so may we receive your word now and then act upon it. Make us to be better Christians, better people, because we've studied your word together today. I pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

Someone has defined a neighbor as a person who can get to your house in a minute and take two hours to get back home. Well, we thank God for our neighbors and we don't care how long they stay because neighbors are important to us. We're supposed to love our neighbor as ourselves. Sometimes our neighbors can be a problem; sometimes we can be a problem to our neighbors. But neighbors give us the opportunity for glorifying God. I think it was Chesterton who said, "We make our friends and we make our enemies, but God appoints our next-door neighbor." That's generally true, unless you buy the house and put some of your family in it. God appoints our next-door neighbor as an opportunity for us to glorify Him.

Now in Genesis 21 and 22, Abraham goes through a series of trials. The life of faith in the school of faith always has to have its examinations. I've attended a number of different schools, and in every class, almost every class, we had examinations. And life is this way. Now sometimes you fail the examination and then discover what the test was and what the subject was. Abraham was tested by his family in Genesis 21:1-21, the problem with Hagar and Ishmael. I suppose of all problems, family problems are the hardest to face and to solve. Now he has neighbor problems in Genesis 21:22-34. And then in Genesis 22, he's going to have the greatest test of all—not a problem with his family or a problem with his neighbors, but a problem between Abraham and God. And God is going to test Abraham and ask him to put Isaac upon the altar.

Isn't it wonderful the way our gracious loving God prepares us for the big tests of life? I meet Christians who are frightened of the future. "Oh, what's going to happen next?" God is preparing you for the future. If you and I are obeying Him today, just today, moment by moment, hour by hour, and then day by day, if we are obeying Him a day at a time, He is preparing us for what He is preparing for us, and we don't have to be afraid. Life is made up of triumphs and trials, and it's the trials that give us the triumphs. We don't grow spiritual muscles by resting under a tree someplace; Abraham did that, too. We grow our spiritual muscles by going through difficulty. We don't like the difficulty. We don't enjoy it. We sometimes say, "Why, oh Lord?" or perhaps we're saying, "How long, oh Lord?" But God knows that we need them. It certainly hurt Abraham to have to give up Ishmael, but that prepared him to put Isaac on the altar. It was difficult for Abraham to struggle with his neighbors and try to get a treaty that would protect the well, but it helped to prepare him for the future. 

Abraham was a good witness to his neighbors in at least three ways. First of all, he was a witness to his neighbors in his walk. Genesis 21:22: "And it came to pass at that time that Abimelech and Phichol, the commander of his army, spoke to Abraham, saying, 'God is with you in all that you do.'" Now if this is the same Abimelech of Genesis 20, Abraham had once been very false to him. The name Abimelech is actually a title, like Pharaoh or Caesar. So it may not have been the same man, although the man held the same title. Here we have these pagans in the land watching Abraham, and after watching Abraham all these years, they come to Abraham and they say, "God is with you in all that you do." I wonder what prompted them to say that? 

Now perhaps it was the birth of Isaac. When the word got out—and word spreads rapidly out there in the East—when the word got out that a 100-year-old man and a 90-year-old woman had had a baby boy, why, that's something to think about. God is with you in all that you do. Or perhaps it was Abraham's wealth. He had a great host of people with him; he had 318 servants who could go out and fight for him. Here was this great camp of the great man Abraham, and as the pagans watched, they said, "You know, this man has the blessing of God." Read along with that statement Psalm 1: "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper." That's the blessing of God. 

Now they could never have gone to Lot and said, "God is with you in all that you do," because God wasn't. You know why? Because Lot wasn't with God in all that he did. You see, if we are walking with the Lord as Abraham was, then people are going to notice that God blesses us. That doesn't mean we're all going to be wealthy. It doesn't mean we're all going to have miraculous babies in our family. It simply means they're going to look at us and see that there is a difference.

Now what is that difference? God is with us. God with us, Emmanuel—that's one of the names of the Lord Jesus. Call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age." Often we read that wonderful statement in Hebrews 13:5: "Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.' So that we may boldly say: 'The Lord is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?'" I will never leave you nor forsake you. God was with him. 

This gave to Abraham an opportunity for witness. People knew that he worshipped the true and living God. Colossians 4:5 is a good admonition for us: "Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time. Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one." Those who are outside, the outsiders, outside the family of God, outside the blessing of God because they've never trusted the Son of God. And Paul tells us, "Now you be careful. You have wisdom and grace as you talk with these people." Abraham was a witness to his neighbors by his walk. They could look at him and know that God's blessing was upon him. That's one reason why we Christians sometimes suffer; the unsaved neighbors are watching us. And they're saying, "Oh, I understand that Mrs. So-and-so is ill. Let's see how Christians face illness. Let's see how Christians face a layoff. Let's see how Christians can face bereavement." And the unsaved world is watching us. And I trust that you and I will so walk in our daily lives that our neighbors can come to us and say, "God is with you in all that you do."

Secondly, Abraham was a witness to his neighbors by his words. Genesis 21:23-32. Now we have here two different kinds of words. First, we have words of promise. The king, Abimelech, said to him: "Now therefore, swear to me by God that you will not deal falsely with me, with my offspring, or with my posterity; but that according to the kindness that I have done to you, you will do to me and to the land in which you have sojourned." And Abraham said, "I will swear." I see nothing wrong in this. Here we have some outsiders who know that God's blessing is on Abraham. They're probably afraid that he may get bigger and stronger than they, or perhaps they wanted to share in the blessing. Perhaps they said to themselves as they came to Abraham's camp, "You know, Abraham is blessed of God, the great God that Abraham worships. And if he is our friend, perhaps his God will spill some of that blessing over on us." Isn't that why God called Abraham? "I will bless you and you shall be a blessing."

Are you a blessing in your neighborhood? Or are you a problem in your neighborhood? The apartment building in which you live, are you a blessing? Are you a blessing in the office where you work? Are you a blessing in the store where you clerk? Are you a blessing in the school where you study? Just go out and be a blessing to somebody else. I've learned that in my own life, whenever I feel like I'm getting depressed or discouraged, I just go out and find somebody who needs encouragement and I try to share Christ with them. That's a good way to overcome your dark days and turn them into bright days. God saves us that we might be a blessing. How do we live? We live by faith. As we live by faith, what lessons do we learn? We learn how to walk by faith. This is what Abraham is saying to me today. He is saying, "Be a blessing to others." These people want to share in the blessing.

This is what Abraham is saying: be a blessing to others. These people want to share in the blessing. Now you'll recall that previously Abraham had lied to Abimelech. You find this back in Genesis 20. Abraham and Sarah had lied about their marriage, and this had created a problem for Abimelech; God had closed up the wombs of all of the women in his family and in his household. Now as Abimelech sees Abraham's wealth growing, he sees he now has a son, and that son will inherit the wealth, he finds that he must make an agreement with Abraham. There's nothing wrong with this at all.

In fact, Abraham had had some agreements before with people in the land. You find it back in Genesis 14:13 where you find Abraham dwelling in Hebron, and he was dwelling by the terebinth trees of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and brother of Aner; and they were allies with Abram. You see, Abraham prior to this had formed a protective alliance. He was not compromising. He was not entering into an unequal yoke. He was not denying the God who had blessed him. Rather, Abraham was forming an alliance for safety's sake. You see, we as Christians work with different people at different times for different purposes. If a tragedy strikes your town, there's a storm perhaps, and you go out the next day to help clean things up, you don't ask people what church they belong to. You're simply doing a loving, humanitarian deed in working together with others to help people who have been hurt. Abraham is simply joining together that he might be on good terms with his neighbors. He's not compromising at all. 

So his word of promise is "I will swear." Now the word "swear" in the Hebrew means to bind by seven things. This is why you're going to find seven ewe lambs. To make an oath, to form a covenant, is to join together and to agree that we will not lie to one another. And the Jews connected this with the number seven. Now seven is the number of completion, the number of perfection. They wanted to have a perfect agreement. 

However, with our neighbors not only do we have honest words, sometimes we have to have words of rebuke. Genesis 21:25: "Then Abraham rebuked Abimelech because of a well of water which Abimelech's servants had seized." Now wells of water are important in the East; without water you simply can't do very much. And therefore, when Abraham dug this well, he wanted to keep it. But along came Abimelech's servants and they seized it. Now Abraham certainly had enough manpower in his camp to go seize it back, but he didn't. He preferred not to declare war. He was a peacemaker, not a troublemaker. He waited and prayed, and when Abimelech came along to talk to him about Abraham showing kindness, Abraham said, "I want to talk to you about what your servants have done."

Genesis 21:26: "And Abimelech said, 'I do not know who has done this thing; you did not tell me, nor had I heard of it until today.'" By the way, it's a good thing when you go to straighten out a problem to assume that perhaps the other person doesn't know about the problem. So often we rush in with our weapons and our arguments and then our neighbor says, "Well, I didn't know a thing about that. I didn't know my son broke your garage window. I didn't know that our daughter was walking across your lawn. I didn't know a thing about this." It's good to assume in love that people may not know about the problem. Abimelech said, "I do not know who has done this thing; you did not tell me, nor had I heard of it until today." 

Now let's solve the problem. So Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech, and the two of them made a covenant. The Hebrew word translated "made" means "cut." They cut a covenant. This takes us back to Genesis 15 where God took the sacrifices and Abraham laid the sacrifices on the ground and God walked between them. You remember that? The flaming lamp and the burning furnace? Well, I think that's what Abimelech and Abraham did. They took the sacrifices, and notice Abraham supplied them. He supplied the sheep and the oxen. They sacrificed the animals, they cut them, they laid them on the ground, and Abraham and Abimelech walked between the pieces, and this is cutting a covenant. It wasn't enough just to say, "We'll get along with each other." There had to be a sacrifice.

Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves. And then Abimelech asked Abraham, "What is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs which you have set by themselves?" And he said, "You will take these seven ewe lambs from my hand, that they may be my witness that I have dug this well." Now we have a dead witness, the sacrifices; now we have a living witness, the seven ewe lambs. And as long as those seven ewe lambs were in Abimelech's flock, they testified, "That is Abraham's well." It's rather interesting that even for men to have agreements that work, we have to have some sacrifice. I appreciate the fact that Abraham supplied all of the animals. He went the extra five miles, didn't he? You want to solve neighborhood problems? That's the thing to do. 

When God wanted to make a covenant, He involved a sacrifice. The sacrifice was Jesus Christ, His Son, on the cross. He gave to us a living witness that this covenant is true, the Holy Spirit of God who lives within us. We have the word of God that testifies that God has made His covenant with us. Therefore he called that place Beersheba, because the two of them swore an oath there. Beersheba means the well of the oath, or the well of the seven, because the word seven is the word oath in the Hebrew language. The well of the oath, Beersheba. So the name of the well testified that Abimelech and Abraham agreed, "This is Abraham's well." The living ewe lambs, seven of them, testified, "This is Abraham's well." The sacrifice that was the basis for the covenant testified, "This is Abraham's well." Abraham was a witness to his neighbors by his words. 

Finally, he was a witness to his neighbors by his worship. Genesis 21:33: "Then Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there called on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God." And Abraham sojourned in the land of the Philistines many days, giving Isaac a chance to grow up. That tree that Abraham planted was another testimony that Beersheba, the well, belonged to him. And there he called on the name of the Lord, which means more than prayer. Abraham built his altar and he publicly worshipped God.

Here is a new name for God: El Olam, the Everlasting God. We've had El Elyon, God most high, in Genesis 14:22, the most high God. We've had El Shaddai, Genesis 17:1, the all-sufficient God, the God who is sufficient for everything. Now we have El Olam, the Everlasting God. Wells may come and go, trees may grow and die, lambs may grow and die, covenants may be forgotten, but the everlasting God continues throughout all eternity. And this God is our God forever and ever, and He will be our guide even unto death. Let's be a good testimony to our neighbors in our walk, our words, and our worship, that they may know that the blessing of God is upon our lives. 

And now Father, we do pray that you will help us as we study the life of Abraham, because we want to know how to walk by faith. When we walk by faith, we bring joy to your heart. When we walk by faith, we bring glory to your name. And some of our listeners are having a difficult time believing today. Encourage us as we seek to walk by faith. I pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.