Increase Your Quality Of Life With This One Big Idea - Genesis 26 Series

There's much said about quality of life on a number of different planes. You can go to certain lists of states that have a better quality of life than others. But today I want to zero in on a truth that will increase your quality of life. In fact you know there are several different biblical truths that when you believe them and you recognize them and you understand them, they can increase your quality of life. Today we’re going to look at one that I think is going to be particularly helpful for you. It’s one that will guide you through your understanding of God and theology. When you understand the mercies of God (that’s what we’re going to talk about today), it changes you. It changes how you feel. It changes your ability to be grateful. It increases your hope. So something very important happens in our lives when we understand the mercies of God. Today we’re going to zero in on one chapter in the Old Testament that illustrates the mercies of God as we look at Genesis 26 and the story of Isaac.

The interesting thing about Isaac is he only gets one chapter in the Bible. He doesn’t get a lot of real estate. He was mentioned in the last chapter, but really as an introduction to the birth of his two sons, Jacob and Esau. He was mentioned in the story of Abraham and Isaac when he was sacrificed, but that’s really a story about Abraham, and Isaac is incidental in the story. But in chapter 26 he gets the whole chapter. It's all about him. In the next chapter he’ll be mentioned again because he’s going to bless his son Jacob. But this is the one chapter where he gets his attention. It's interesting and there’s a contrast really because Abraham, his father, gets fourteen chapters. His son Jacob gets eleven chapters. But he only gets one. Some have said he’s an unremarkable son to a remarkable father and an unremarkable father to a remarkable son. I think we can identify with Isaac in his life because he’s going to understand or he’s going to get to experience the mercy of God in his life.

I like when I study the Bible, especially as I’m going to present it to you, to put myself into the story. If I can find myself in the story as Isaac and feel what he felt and I can think what he thought then I can experience God working in his life, and then I’ll have something that I can apply to my own heart and then something to present to you as well. But it’s harder for me to do that with Isaac because his personality is very different than mine.

Isaac is the kind of guy that avoids conflict. Maybe you know someone who avoids conflict. I don’t avoid conflict. I’m not afraid of conflict. There are some people who love conflict. They generate it. Maybe you know some people like that. They just generate conflict to get things done or to make trouble or whatever, and they like watching the explosion and everything that happens. I’m not that kind of a person. But I don’t avoid conflict like Isaac seems to do, but I can deal with conflict when necessary. I think if Isaac were looking for a goal in his life it would be peace. Just give me some room with nobody around where I don’t have to deal with people so that I can have some peace. We’re going to see that God gives him that at least in his business relationships and his neighborhood where he lives in this passage. Well I’m kind of getting ahead of myself. So let me get into the passage itself and let’s see what God has to say for us.

In Genesis 26:1 it says this: Now there was a famine in the land. You know we don’t experience this same kind of geography or climate that was experienced in the promised land. So we don’t really understand this idea of famine as much. Our rains come randomly. We never know when they’re coming, so we look at the weather report to find out. But in Israel there are the former rains and the latter rains. The former rains come in about March for four to six weeks. They start about then. And then in October you have the latter rains. So if you’re a farmer you want to get your seed planted before the former or latter rains because you only have a certain growing season. You want as much water going on those plants as possible. If for some reason it doesn’t rain during the former rains, you will not see rain again until the latter rains. If it doesn’t rain again in the latter rains, you’ve got a problem because you don’t have any food to eat because you hadn’t had the rains to produce the crops that you needed.