And what a beautiful morning that the Lord has provided for us. You know, I’m one of these types—in the wintertime, I struggle a little bit with cloudy weather. I love the sunshine. Praise the Lord this morning.
He is the sunshine of our life. He is the brightness for our lives, and we’re thankful. But He does allow us the clouds. I think that we might appreciate the sunshine.
So, this morning, we’re glad to be together to consider our Lord’s Word. So let’s begin with a word of prayer.
Lord, as we come this morning, who is it that is able to share the Word of God? Lord, I’m reminded of that great question in Revelation: “Who is worthy to open the seal of the book?”
Lord, it is clear this morning that really only You are capable of sharing Your Word, the Word of the Lord. But we come this morning as Your servants.
Lord, we ask for the anointing to share Your Word that You have promised us. And we ask for the anointing that we might be able to hear Your Word.
Now, Lord, of all that I share today, I pray that for every heart You will be able to speak. Lord, we just look to Thee. Lord, our lives depend on Your Word and hearing Your Word. Now bless both, we pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, I don’t know. I guess it’s been a couple of years since I started in the book of Genesis. We’ve been going through it. I know that we’ve probably been over a year on the life of Abraham, and we finally actually came to the end of Abraham’s life last time.
It’s been a precious journey, I think, for all of us, to see the life of the Lord worked out in Abraham’s life—Abraham the pioneer. And we’re all called to be pioneers. We have that pioneering spirit, that spirit that wants to press on, to seek out what the Lord wants, to have more of the Lord.
It is a pioneering spirit that we’ve been given. He was a pioneer, and praise the Lord for our brother Abraham.
But it’s interesting that in the Word of God, God refers to Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In other words, you cannot get the complete picture by just looking at Abraham’s life. We need to look at the life of Isaac, and we will look at the life of Jacob.
And so we will press on this morning to Isaac—our dear brother Isaac.
Isaac is considered a type of Christ. That’s the first thing we notice about Isaac.
He is the one who received from the Father. Abraham went out. He had to go out to the promised land. He had to pursue. And Isaac was born in the promised land. He lived in the promised land, and he died in the promised land.
His father, Abraham, had to dig those wells—the water of life. We find here that in the life of Isaac, he did not dig new wells. He just reopened the ones that had been closed up through the years of neglect.
Once again, he was one who received from the Father. And we have to look at this life of Isaac and understand the principle of living this Christian life from the life of Isaac as well as from Abraham.
Well, Isaac, as I mentioned, is a type of Christ. Isaac’s birth was divine in the sense that both his father and mother were unable to have children.
Abraham was a hundred years old. Sarah was ninety. And God waited until it was absolutely impossible for Abraham to have children. Then He divinely moved, and Isaac was born.
Sarah and Abraham had the promised child. It was divine. It was from heaven, this birth of Isaac.
In Galatians 4:29, it says that Isaac was born after the Spirit. Ishmael was born after the flesh. Spiritual—spiritual in nature.
Well, Isaac was also the heir of all things. He received all from the Father. In fact, in Genesis 25:5, it says Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac.
So Isaac was the heir of all things. In Hebrews 1:2, it says that Christ has been appointed heir of all things. He is the type of Christ.
In Isaac, we know that Abraham laid him on the altar to give him up as an offering for God. The father had to do that.
In Isaiah 53:10, it says that it pleased God to bruise His Son. He, our Lord Jesus, was laid on the altar by the Father, just as Abraham had to lay Isaac on the altar.
Isaac went willingly, as you remember, up to Mount Moriah and offered no resistance when his father laid him on the altar.
In Isaiah 53:7, speaking of our Lord Jesus Christ, it says:
He was oppressed, yet when He was afflicted He opened not His mouth;
As a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
And as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb,
Yea, He opened not His mouth.
Isaac was received back in resurrection. Now, we have to go to the New Testament to find that, but it says in the New Testament that Abraham, when he put Isaac on that altar, was convinced that God would raise him from the dead because he was the promised seed—resurrection.
In John 20:17, when the Lord appeared to Mary at the tomb, He said:
Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the Father:
But go unto My brethren, and say to them,
I ascend unto My Father and your Father,
And My God and your God.
Resurrection.
Remember all the trouble that Abraham went to to secure a bride for his son Isaac. And we remember that beautiful story of Rebekah coming and saying, “Yes, I will go. I will go to this man.”
A precious type of Christ receiving His bride, the church, in its maturity.
Today we say, “Lord, come, Lord Jesus.” You know, it’s going to be a wonderful day for our Lord Jesus Christ when we see that bride coming down out of heaven, adorned as a bride for her husband. It will be a great day for our Lord Jesus Christ.
So we see that in many ways Isaac is a type of Christ.
Another way to say this is that he carried the testimony of God in his life. He experienced God in his life, and God was able to testify of His offering—the willing offering of His Son on Calvary’s cross on our behalf—through the life of Isaac. He carried the testimony of God.
Now, brothers and sisters, I think the question that we have is this: We know none of us would dare say that we are a type of Christ. But we do carry the testimony of Jesus.
Do you realize that you are of divine birth as well? We are born of our parents into this fleshly life, but we have been born again by the Spirit. It’s a heavenly birth.
You carry this testimony in your life. That is why you are called a Christian—not because you are a good person, but because you have Jesus Christ.
And not only that, brothers and sisters, you have been born again: a spiritual birth, born from above.
You know, this birth of Isaac was miraculous. But I have to say it was less miraculous than your and my birth—that spiritual birth—because we have been born spiritually, of the Spirit.
If you think about it, most here probably are born of the Spirit. I wonder how much we appreciate that heavenly birth that has occurred in us, the life of Christ that has come to us out of that miraculous work of Calvary’s cross.
When He says you can be born again by simply receiving the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, He died for our sins, brothers and sisters, but the whole purpose was that we might come into a new birth and be born again. Hallelujah.
What a miraculous thing that has happened to you and me. It doesn’t happen to everybody.
But God has had mercy on you and me. He has opened our eyes to see our need for a Savior, and we accepted Him. We may not even have known it, but at that moment, you were born again—a spiritual birth.
I remember when I met the Lord Jesus Christ, I had no idea that I had been born again. I just knew I had met the Lord.
Oh, what a testimony we have. And how much of that testimony, of that new birth, that new life, has been manifest in our lives personally?
Isaac was the heir of all things. Christ is the heir of all things, and it says we are made joint heirs with Christ.
Isaac was heir in the promised land, but brothers and sisters, we have been made joint heirs with Christ, and all that He is to inherit is ours as well. Isn’t that marvelous? What a testimony we have. We are heirs.
Isaac was laid on the altar. Now, brothers and sisters, we know that the Lord Jesus died in our place on the cross. But He says to us who would follow Him, “Deny yourself, and take up your cross daily.”
That means that we do have the testimony of the cross in our life if we’re willing to take it up. Now, what does that mean, to take up the cross?
That means, brothers and sisters, when God’s will in your life crosses your will, that we take up the cross. We deny ourselves and take up the cross and say, “Lord, not my will, but Thine be done.”
How many times in your life have you come to that crossroad? You’ve come, and there’s Calvary standing before you. And you finally have to say, “Lord, not my will, but Thine be done.” That’s the testimony of Calvary in your life.
And Isaac went willingly. Sometimes I go kicking and hollering, but Isaac went willingly.
But you know, brothers and sisters, I know us all, because you’re very similar to me. There are times when we just say, “Lord, I’m not willing, but make me willing.” And He even receives and accepts that.
Isaac willingly went, and we too willingly have to take up the cross. And when we do, it is a testimony to the work of Calvary in our lives.
Isaac was received in resurrection. We have been crucified with Christ, and we have been raised with Christ.
Have you experienced that in your life? Is it a testimony in your life—those times when you just had to say, “Lord, this old man has been crucified. I don’t recognize him anymore. It’s You, Lord. It’s You.”
That’s resurrection life working in you, overcoming in you. It’s resurrection life. You have the testimony of resurrection.
Isaac received a bride.
Now, brothers and sisters, at Pentecost, it says we were all baptized into the body of Jesus Christ. Out of 1 Corinthians 12:13, I think it is, we’ve been baptized into the body of Christ.
And the body of Christ, I think we are pretty knowledgeable now, is the church. And the church is to be presented to Christ. That’s what we see in Revelation when it says He sees the bride coming down—the city coming down from heaven, adorned as a bride for her husband.
A part of the bride—you have that testimony. We’ve come into such greatness because of our Lord Jesus Christ.
You know, we often look at the story of Abraham and Isaac, particularly when he took him up to Mount Moriah to lay him on the altar. And we say, “You know, what a story.”
Brothers and sisters, that’s your story too, whether you know it or not. Whether you know it or not, as Christians we follow that same path.
You know, for Abraham, he had to lay that precious son of his on the altar, just as the Father laid His precious Son, Jesus Christ, on the altar.
But you too, and me too—have you not come to that place in your life when there was something so very precious in your life that the Lord put His finger on and said, “I want you to put it on the altar”?
I don’t know what it could be. It could be many things. But it’s the very gut of your soul, if I might say it that way—the center of your heart, usually—something so precious to you.
It may even be something from the Lord, as Isaac obviously was given of the Lord. And He says, “I want you to give it back to Me now. I want you to give it back.”
Those are very difficult, but also a very precious testimony of putting your Isaac on the altar. We all have to do that. It will come to us. You don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to try to make it happen. It will just come.
But it’s not to destroy us, but to release us and to satisfy. Brothers and sisters, in our lives there are things that we have to put on the altar. Sometimes they are consumed. God says, “No more.”
But other times He brings that thing that is so precious to you back in resurrection life—no longer the natural, but now the spiritual.
Well, that’s our testimony that we are to maintain and to carry in our lives. We’re not types of Christ, but we do carry the testimony.
And may the Lord be merciful and gracious in these coming days. We too will manifest the testimony of that life, that new birth that has occurred in all of us.
Now, how does all this relate to our Christian life and walk? Abraham was a pioneer. By faith, he would bring a nation into being through the promised seed—a people for God.
And we too are pioneers, that pioneering spirit. I spoke on it last time. But how do we live that pioneering life, brothers and sisters?
In the life of Abraham, we see him going out, pursuing, advancing, pressing on, even to the very grave, doing God’s will. But how can we live such a life? That’s why we need to look at the life of Isaac.
In Genesis 25:5, which I read a little while ago, it says Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac.
Remember this this morning: the great feature, the spiritual principle, that we see in the life of Isaac is that he was a receiver. He received. He accepted the grace given to him. He received all from the Father. He just received.
And that is the great feature, the great principle that comes out of the life of Isaac. Abraham had to pursue the promised land. Isaac was born there, as I mentioned, lived there, and died there. He just received it.
Abraham dug those wells, and Isaac just reopened them. Once again, he just received the wealth.
So what does this mean to you as a pioneer? Where is such provision to make it through?
The simple answer is—and I think you could well answer it if I asked you—Christ is your provision. Christ is made available to you through the work of Calvary.
Christ is your provision. Before you knew the Lord Jesus Christ, you were in a condition unacceptable to God. You needed Someone to save you. You needed what we call salvation.
And when you found the Lord Jesus Christ, you were saved. You were saved because of Christ. He is your Savior. What you found, more than salvation, was the Savior. And because you found the Savior, you are saved.
I hope you see the difference. You are saved by simply receiving the Lord Jesus Christ.
Not only were you saved, but Jim touched on it this morning: you needed to be redeemed. It wasn’t just a simple matter. God’s righteousness had to be preserved, which meant that you needed to be purchased—redeemed.
How is that done? It was done when you met the Redeemer, our Lord Jesus Christ. It was done in Him.
It was done by simply receiving the Lord as your Redeemer, and His blood has purchased you. That is the price that He paid for you: His own blood, His life, shed on your behalf. He is your redemption, and you get it by simply receiving.
Brothers and sisters, not only that, but you need to be accepted. Even after the Lord Jesus saves you, you need to be accepted.
You know, a lot of people, when they’re saved, struggle and say, “I just can’t believe that the Lord loves me. I can’t believe that He has accepted me.”
Well, let me tell you: when you accept the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Father accepts you, because when He looks at you, He sees His Son in you.
And you are accepted because you are in Christ, because you have received Christ.
We know that sin reigns in our mortal body. Where is the victory over sin? Does the Lord just give you something called victory?
You receive the victorious One. When you receive Christ as your Victor, then you will know victory over sin.
Sanctification—a scriptural word—but basically it means to be set apart.
When you accept the Lord Jesus Christ, you just don’t go on as you always have. You just don’t live in the world as you always have. Something has changed, and you need to be set apart. You need to be different than the rest.
And how does this occur? How does your sanctification occur? You are sanctified in Christ. He is your sanctification. You get sanctification not by works, but simply by receiving the Lord Jesus.
Holiness—we all think of holiness as being so far from us, I guess. But how do you become holy? By not doing certain things or by performing certain good acts? Certainly not.
The Lord Jesus Christ is your holiness. And when you receive Him, you have holiness in you. All we simply have to do is let that live in us.
The Christian life—the principle of the Christian life that we learn out of the life of Isaac—is that we have to learn how to receive, to receive these things in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The way through as a pioneer is not through strength of will, but it is through the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
Let me say it another way: You have the life of Christ in you—His nature, His holiness.
His nature is that He does not love the world. You know, we struggle with loving the things of the world, but the Lord did not. That life is in us.
So how can we ever deal with this matter of loving the world? It’s by receiving Christ, letting that life that is in you have dominance. Because that life naturally does not love the world.
And if it’s living, the love of the world will pass away. But if the old life is still very active, we’ll find that we love the world very much.
What about your prayer life? What about your life in the Word of God? What about your communion with the Lord? What about your fellowship with other brothers and sisters?
Let me say this much: the nature of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ is a life of prayer. It’s a life that loves the Word. He was always quoting the Word.
He was always in communion with the Father, and He loved fellowship. It’s natural. That’s what I’m saying: it’s natural. It’s a part of that natural life that we receive when we receive the Lord Jesus Christ.
And if those things are not active and real in our life, that means we’re neglecting this life of the Lord in us and mostly living by the old life.
But the secret—the amazing secret—is simply receiving.
“Lord, I’ll receive You as my life. Lord, You know I’ve not been praying much. Lord, I know You are prayer. I just turn my life over to You now. I want Your life to live a life of prayer.” It’ll come just natural.
You may not have a desire right now to read the Word, but if you go back to the Lord and say, “Lord, I know Your life’s in me. I know I’ve been born again. I should be loving the Word of God. Lord, may Your life be dominant in my life.”
Communion, fellowship—these are signposts to which life we’re living.
And you know, as I remember the messages our brother Stephen gave on spiritual exercise, he was saying the same thing. Or let me put it another way: I’m saying the same thing he did.
It’s that life that’s natural. That natural life of the Lord in you does these things. It desires to do these things. It wants to; it loves to do these things.
And so we just need to say, “Lord, live in me. I receive You, Lord, for my life for today.”
Now, it’s true: when we receive the Lord Jesus Christ, we receive Him once and for all, so He’s there. But we do have to open our hearts, I think, daily to Him and say, “Lord, it’s Your day. It’s not mine. I need You to live it.”
That’s the secret, I think, of the Christian life. And that’s the secret we need to learn from Isaac’s life: the secret of receiving.
The Father has provided all.
Now, as to the historical, more practical side of Isaac’s life, Genesis 25:5 says that Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac.
And I couldn’t help but think about Ephesians 1. Ephesians 1 says that we’ve been blessed with all blessings. God has blessed us with all blessings.
Now, how does God bless us with all blessings? Somebody tell me.
In Christ. It goes on to say, you’ve been blessed with all blessings in Jesus Christ—in Him.
And it goes on to say, you have been chosen in Him. You’ve been predestined in Him. You’ve been accepted in Him. You’ve been redeemed in Him. You’ve been forgiven in Him. And He has abounded toward you in all wisdom—in Him.
He has made known the mystery of His will in Christ, and you have obtained an inheritance in Christ.
All the spiritual blessings—not earthly. We’re into earthly blessing; we know that. But He says all spiritual blessings are available to you in Jesus Christ. You just have to receive it.
Now, I’m not into the prosperity gospel, but we certainly want to take advantage of every spiritual blessing, whether it is physical or not. We want to take advantage of every spiritual blessing because it’s for your health and your strength and your maturing in Christ—all spiritual blessing.
You know, sometimes I think we focus too much on ourselves. “Woe is me. You know, I’ll never amount to anything. I just have to go along. I have to live the best I can.”
The Lord never wanted us to think like that. He says, “All spiritual blessings are available to you in Christ Jesus.” How many of them do we just say, “Lord, I receive it”?
Think about that. The Lord never intended our life to be nearly as complicated as we make it. It’s just to be simple: “Lord, I have the spiritual need. I receive it from You.”
Do you think He’s going to say no? He knows how to give good gifts to His children. So we need to trust Him.
You know, the more I thought about this message, the more I thought, “You know, Lord, we really fall down at this very fundamental issue of receiving the grace of God, don’t we?” We really do.
I guess it’s because we’re so used to trying to depend on ourselves, but we don’t know it. We blast off in the morning with a quick prayer, and we’re on our way doing our thing. I’ve been guilty of it.
But the Lord says, “No, no, no, no, no, no. Come on. I’ve got spiritual blessing for you today.” God’s spiritual blessing.
Well, may the Lord show us the great secret of the Christian life is receiving.
Now, there’s more. There’s more because we haven’t got to Jacob yet. It was that great transforming work that we see in Jacob, and we’re all Jacobs. But we have to learn the secret of Isaac’s life as well.
Well, let’s go to Genesis 25:11. Genesis 25:11.
Tremendous passage here:
And it came to pass after the death of Abraham, that God blessed Isaac his son;
And Isaac dwelt by Beer-lahai-roi.
Isaac dwelt by the well of Beer-lahai-roi.
What is Beer-lahai-roi? The place of living water.
The reason I asked Draga—I wasn’t trying to embarrass her—is because when we were in our Friday night meeting together on this chapter, that’s the thing that had touched her so deeply.
And as I reread this thing, I said, “Lord, indeed, this is the secret.” In Isaac’s life, he dwelt by the well of living waters.
And actually, the interpretation goes on a little further. It is the well of the living One who reveals Himself—the well of the living One who reveals Himself.
The well speaks of life. You know, the Lord says, “If you drink the water I give you, it’ll be a well of water springing up into eternal life.” The well of life, the well of the Lord—he dwelt there, the well of life, Beer-lahai-roi.
It’s also a place of seeing God, of learning God, of encountering the Lord. That’s where you encounter the Lord: at the well of Beer-lahai-roi. And he dwelt there.
Seeing the living One, receiving revelation, light, understanding that we need for this Christian life—it’s a place of light and revelation.
Dwelling speaks of permanency. I hope I got that out right. It’s a place of rest. And for him—listen very carefully—Isaac, it was home. It was home.
Often, I would say my home is at 1154 Shady Farm Lane, Ashland, Virginia, ZIP code 23005—one of the few things that I’ve been able to memorize.
But that’s not truly my home. We need to be dwelling in the place of living waters, in the place of revelation, the place where God reveals Himself to us.
He dwells there. A well speaks of satisfaction, nourishment, refreshment. It’s the place you go when you’re thirsty.
Well of living water—are you dwelling at the well of Beer-lahai-roi?
You know what changes us, transforms us? We’ve heard that Scripture before: “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.”
Looking to Him, seeing Jesus, experiencing Him—and that’s what the well of Beer-lahai-roi represents: seeing Christ, experiencing Christ.
That should be our daily life. That should be our home. That’s where we should really be at home. That’s where we should really feel at home: experiencing Christ, seeing Christ.
Where we dwell is so important. We may physically dwell at an address, a street address, but spiritually, where we dwell is so important.
In this matter of experiencing life, experiencing and seeing the Lord, you know, it says that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ.
Not most, but all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ. If you really want to know God, you’re going to have to know Jesus Christ. There is no other way. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him.
He is the One who is the revealer of who God is. All this fullness is in Christ, that He might manifest God to all of His creation.
He is the vessel through which the Godhead is able to express who God is—God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s ways. They are expressed in Jesus Christ. All the fullness dwells in Him.
The Word goes on to say He is the exact representation of God. And we can know Him. How? We know Him because we know Christ.
Think about it. I think it’s amazing that God, who can just create everything, do everything, provide everything, says, “I want fellowship with this man. I want him to know who I am. I want him to fellowship with Me. I don’t want him to be a stranger.”
“I want to see him every day. I want to meet with him. I want to talk to him. I want to share My heart with him.”
But he’s got to want it too. He’s got to want it too.
You know, we can know God in Christ. He is the Head.
It’s interesting: when you come to the New Testament, Christ is described in a double way. I don’t know how else to say it, but if you want to see in the New Testament, I’m not talking about Christ as He was in His physical body walking the earth, but after He was resurrected and after Pentecost, something tremendous happened.
And the way the Word of God describes it is this: Christ is the Head, and He has a spiritual body. And He manifests this fullness that is in Him through the spiritual body.
He is the Head. All the fullness is there. But He has been given a spiritual body now to express the fullness of God.
When He came in His physical body, He was very limited. Only those who could hear Him could receive. It was very limited.
But now He is unlimited, and God has chosen that the Lord Jesus have a spiritual body, that the Head have a spiritual body. And that spiritual body is the church. It is the Lord Jesus Christ.
And it goes on to say that the church is the fullness of Him that fills all in all. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him, but the church is the fullness of Him that fills all in all.
So if today, if you want to know Christ—this is the point—if you want to know Christ, if you want to know something of His fullness, you’re going to have to know Him not only as Head, but as Body.
There are many members, and all members are one. Then it goes on to say, “But so also is the Christ.” It doesn’t say, “So is the church.” It doesn’t separate the two. They are both Christ.
The Christ, when we look at the Christ, is composed of a Head and a Body, not just a Head.
Now, often, brothers and sisters, we understand our need to know the Head and to receive from the Head, which we all should. But you know where Christ manifests Himself most? It is in His Body.
Yes, He will manifest Himself directly to you. I do not deny that. But if you just limit your life to that, then you’re limiting your revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is both Head and Body.
They are one.
Do you know what the church is? Well, most people would say, “Well, it’s really the combination, everything put together, of Christ in you and Christ in me and so on and so on.” That is partially accurate.
Today, the church has not come to its maturity, and its fullness is not purified. That’s why the Lord says it is precious to Him, and He is washing it with the Word of God. He is taking out all the impurities.
In other words, the church is really Christ in you and me together as one—without me, without you, without the old stuff. That’s what it is.
And so today, it is a work of God in this Body of His, that He’s got a lot of wrinkles and spots that have to go. Spots: thinking of things that are counter to Him and His nature. And wrinkles: just lifelessness.
You know, we start wrinkling when the life starts going. That’s what those wrinkles are all about. We should always be living new and fresh—Christ.
What is your dwelling place? It is Christ. It is the Christ—Christ the Head, Christ the Body. This is your home. It is your home.
Listen to this: it is the place of life and revelation. If we think we can just operate with Christ the Head, then we’ve missed God’s way.
We need to know Christ the Body. And I almost hate to even separate them into two because they are one.
And maybe a little illustration would help. What’s that story about the headless horseman? What’s it called?
Well, the body without a head is like that headless horseman. It has no function, really, because it has no directions from the head.
But let’s think of it the other way: a bodiless head. Is Christ just the Head? If He is, He is not complete.
The complete Christ is Christ the Head, Christ the Body.
And I’ve said the main point is: Where is your dwelling place? I’m trying to say in a roundabout way that you cannot live without Christ the Head, but you cannot live without Christ the Body either.
We need to dwell there. It is the well of Beer-lahai-roi, and that’s where we need to be dwelling—the place of life and light and revelation. That’s where we need to be. We need to meet Christ.
And looking at this thought, I have a lot more today, but I won’t finish. I’m going to finish here with these thoughts.
I thought it was so marvelous, because we’ve recently shared on this. You may have forgotten. We shared on the story of Rebekah being brought to Isaac.
Oh, I love that story. I’m not a romantic, obviously. I think it’s pretty obvious. I probably am not. But I love that story. I’m a romantic when it comes to that story.
I just think it’s so marvelous that this woman, so far away, would go and just say, “Yes, I will go,” with this man—speaking of the servant who is the Holy Spirit.
It’s like when the Spirit talks to you, you need to say, like she did, “Yes, I will go. Spirit, I’m ready.”
You know, it was like the Lord put the love for Isaac in her heart before she ever left.
And the love was in Isaac’s heart before she got there. Isn’t that a marvelous picture of the Lord now waiting for His bride?
The love of Christ is in the bride, and the love for the bride is in Christ, waiting to be joined. Marvelous, beautiful story.
But you know where they met? When they met, when she got off the camel, put the veil over her face, they were at the well of Beer-lahai-roi—the place of life and revelation.
That is Christ the Head. That is Christ the church. That’s where they meet: at the well of Beer-lahai-roi—living waters, light, revelation, seeing more of Christ.
And they dwelt there. One day we will dwell forever.
Well, I think I’m going to end here this morning rather than try to go on another thirty minutes. Let’s just end here this morning.
Lord, as we come back to You this morning, we just have to give You so much thanksgiving for the testimony of Christ that has been given to us.
Lord Jesus, how You are working in our life just like You worked in Abraham’s life and in Isaac’s life, for a testimony to Yourself.
Lord, we are often so neglectful. Neglectful—forgive us. But make us into receivers.
Lord, may we become true receivers, not trying to do dutiful things, not trying to do the right things, but just simply responding.
Lord, may You in these days really get home to us that this life that we have naturally loves God. It naturally loves fellowship. It naturally loves to pray. It naturally loves to have communion. It’s just natural.
Oh, Lord Jesus, may we receive all of Your blessings that You have—all of these spiritual blessings in Christ.
And Lord, teach us to dwell by the well of Beer-lahai-roi. We pray in Jesus’ name.