Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #14 of Genesis, chapter 26, and we are going to read Genesis 26:15-18:

For all the wells which his father's servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, and filled them with earth. And Abimelech said unto Isaac, Go from us; for thou art much mightier than we. And Isaac departed thence, and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham: and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them.

For now, I will stop reading there.  In our last study, we were looking at the idea of a well in the Bible, which relates to salvation and the Word of God.  We saw that it was Abraham’s servants that digged the well in his days, and the Philistines stopped them (the wells) after Abraham’s death.  As I mentioned before, this ties in with the idea of God’s program of “times and seasons,” wherein God at various times, as it were, opened up a well of water from the Word of God, the Bible.  And when that time comes to an end, the well is stopped up.  In other words, the Holy Spirit went forth within the churches and congregations in a great way throughout the entirety of the church age.  Then came the end of the church age, and the wells of water were suddenly, as it were, filled with dirt, or filled with earth, and no water came forth any longer. 

Then came Isaac’s servants and digged again the wells of water that had been digged in the days of Abraham, his father.  And we will see as we continue looking at this, there was strife that took place over these new “wells.”  It is the battle of the Gospel that has happened over the course of history, with Christ going forth conquering and to conquer, and Satan riding after Him to take peace from the earth, and to destroy and do everything he could to hinder the impact of the Word of God on the hearts of men.

The wells were digged, and we spent some time discussing how God expects the reader of the Bible to dig into it and search the Scriptures.  We noticed that even the word “dig” is translated as “search out” in a few places.  The spies that went to Jericho were said to come to “search out” the land, and that is the same Hebrew word that is translated as “dig.”  First, it was Abraham’s servants, and then further on it was Isaac’s servants.  They were the ones digging the well.  We do not read (that I could find) that the Philistines digged the wells.  The Philistines were good at stopping them up; they were good at filling them with earth.  Later on, it says in Genesis 26:19-20:

And Isaac's servants digged in the valley, and found there a well of springing water. And the herdmen of Gerar did strive with Isaac's herdmen, saying, The water is ours: and he called the name of the well Esek; because they strove with him.

The herdmen of Gerar did not dig the well, but they were striving over it.  If we have time in this study or the next study, we will talk about the herdmen of Gerar and what that could point to spiritually.  But the herdmen were of Gerar in the land of the Philistines and they had a king over them, Abimelech, who was a type of Satan.  So being a herdmen of Gerar would be the same thing as being a Philistine; they were under the authority and rule of the king of the Philistines, who typified Satan, the evil one.

So no wonder it was the Philistines that were filling the wells with earth, and it was those that were under the authority and rule of the king of Philistines (the herdmen of Gerar) who strived over the well, saying, “It is ours.”  And that is the role of Satan and his forces as they have come against the true Gospel of the Bible throughout all the history of the world, right from the beginning in regard to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  God said one thing: “In the day that ye eat thereof, ye shall surely die.”  And the Serpent said another thing: “Ye shall not surely die.”  You see, the issue was striving over the tree of which God had spoken.  And in that case, it was Satan himself that was striving with God Himself.  From that point on, it was the ambassadors or messengers, the people of God, and the servants or forces of Satan that do the striving, going back and forth, and the battle ground is always the Word of God, the Bible, which we have today.  It (the Bible) was not always the Bible in book form, but it was always the Word, and now that Word of God has been compiled and published, and we are blessed to have volumes of it.  And there is constant strife over the Bible, and we will spend more time talking about this striving between Isaac’s servants and the herdmen of Gerar.

But, now, let us back up verse 15 where we read that it was after Abraham’s death, and we have to read verse 15 in order to understand that because Abraham did make a covenant concerning the wells with the original Abimelech about a hundred years earlier, which allowed Abraham to maintain the wells and have access to the wells, and they could bring the water up.  And it seems the Philistines honored this until his death, but once he died, the Philistines stopped the wells. 

In our last study, we saw that the word “stopped” is the same word used two times in Daniels 12.  Let us turn there again, in Daniel 12:4:

But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end…

And it says in Daniel 12:9:

And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.

The terms “shut up” and “close up” are  a translation of the same word “stopped.”   The Philistines shut up the wells or closed up the wells, and we spent some time discussing the similarity of the ideas because the “well of water” does identify with the Word which brings salvation, and to stop them would mean to stop the flow of the water.  Daniel, in this case, is a figure of those that prophesy or declare the revelation of God and, therefore, he is a figure of the Word of God itself, where God is giving the command: “Shut up the words, and seal the book.” 

The Bible is like a well of water and here in Genesis 26:15 we read how they did this and what they used to stop the wells.  They filled them with earth.  A team of Philistines went out there with their shovels and buckets, and they got buckets of earth and dumped them in the well, and they kept dumping in dirt to the point until they could see no water, and there would be no muddy traces, and there would be layers upon layers (of dirt) until any weary traveler that looked into the well would only see dirt, and if they sent down a bucket and lifted it up again, they would only get a bucket of dirt – no water. 

It was not that the enemies, Satan and the unsaved, “stopped up” the Bible.  No – it was God’s plan to seal up the Word, the water of the Gospel, and all the information we have been blessed to find since the second part of the Great Tribulation, going back to 1994.  Early on, we learned about the faith of Christ, the Sunday Sabbath, and how “baptism” is a picture of the washing away of sin, and that the physical water of baptism is just a sign that has no power in itself to wash away sin, just as any other sign.  The Old Testament sacrifices, like the animal sacrifice of a lamb being slain, was just a sign pointing to the spiritual reality of Christ’s sacrifice, but the blood of a slain animal could never take away sin.  Likewise, baptism pointed to the washing away of sin in Christ as He bore the sins of His elect at the foundation of the world.  In bearing them, He died and made payment, and they were cleansed with the “fires of hell,” as hell is a picture of the grave or death.  And the sin was removed and, therefore, that spiritual filth was cleansed and washed from the sinner in Christ.  Of course, there needs to be the application of it, which was by way of the sending forth of the Gospel, the Word of God.

But that was the idea, as God opened up these things to reveal the true Gospel that had been polluted and perverted with the idea of man doing some little “work” like believing: it is all election, but man has to do his part by believing.  No – there is none of that; it is completely the faith of Christ.  The water was always there, and we know it was always there because God did not add to the Bible.  He did not bring additional divine revelation.  He did not speak again from heaven, and He did not move prophets by giving them a dream or vision in which they received divine revelation at the time of the end (like the prophets of old) and scribe a new book, a new chapter, a new verse, or even an additional “jot or tittle.”  But what we do have is God removing the “dirt.”  You see, this is a wonderful illustration of a well “stopped up.”  It is not that the Philistines stopped up the Bible, but it is a vivid picture God is painting of the time of end when, at the time of the end, we would go to the same verses that the saints of old went to, not the professed Christians  that were never truly saved.  (We would not expect them to dig the well to find water.)  But the saints of old, the true elect children of God, went to the Word of God, and they could have followed the same practice of comparing spiritual with spiritual.  They could have sought the truth by first going to God in prayer: “O, Lord, help me.  Open my eyes that I may understand Matthew 24, Luke 21, Mark13, and help me to understand these things in Revelation 8, 9, 14 18, and chapter after chapter.  May I understand the things in Daniel, in Ezekiel, and throughout the Bible, that have to do with end-time doctrine, and the doctrines that God wants His people to have at the time of the end.”  But they would have come away with “dirt,” a bucket of earth, and no water.  And that is why God gave a warning in Matthew 13, a chapter that has to do with the end of time.  It says in Mark 13:11:

But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.

That is the “hour” of Great Tribulation, the time of the end when God would open the Scriptures.  That is the implication in Daniel 12, verses 4 and 9, when God would open up things in the book that was sealed till the time of the end, because it was only sealed until the time of the end.  And that is exactly what He did.

But notice the warning: “…take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate.”  This was God speaking spiritually, but this statement itself had been sealed up and could not be understood (before the end time), so we should not think that God’s people in the past were wrong in searching out the Bible or searching of end time things in all these passages, but God is just giving us a glimpse of why they could not figure it out and why they did not know the true revelation of God’s righteous judgment.  They would have saved themselves a lot of trouble by taking no thought and premeditating prior to that “hour,” for it would be given us in that “hour.”  At the time of the end at the time of the Great Tribulation, then we would speak, but when we would speak, it would not be us speaking, but the Holy Ghost.  This is a Biblical principle that many people do not understand, even some that claim to be true believers, but they think, “Well, we are no longer to have teachers.  Just God teaches me at this time.  I am done with teachers.”  They do not understand this principle.  They do not understand that when a man goes to the Bible and follows the proper methodology of comparing spiritual with spiritual, as 1Corinthians 2 tells us, the Holy Ghost teaches – not that man – but the Holy Ghost.  And when a man goes to the Bible and teaches some other way and he is looking at the Bible in light of what was said by theologians and in the light of Reformers, or in the light of church history or in the light of his denominational position, or of what he himself thinks as he contemplates the Word of God, and he says, “I think…”  Then, immediately, he is wrong.  We do not care what he thinks, if we are a true child of God: “We do not want to know your thinking.  We want to know what God thinks.”  That is why we see this Biblical principle in 1Corinthians 2:13:

Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

It goes on to say in 1Corinthians 2:14-16:

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

Yes, we have the mind, heart and soul of Christ – that new heart that God has put within us.  But further, we have the Bible.  The whole Word of God is the “mind of Christ.”  We look up a Word, which is a thought of God, a spoken Word that had come from His mouth, but before that it came from His mind.  When we see a word in the Bible and we want to know what that word means, we must search “the mind” of the One who spoke it.  So we look it up in this book (of the Bible) and in that book (of the Bible), and when we do so, we are often able to see a definition come to life that the Word itself is providing, and it is defining its own terms, and that is how we come to know truth: “This is what God is saying here.”  It is based on these other verses that are “here a little, there a little.”  Then the Holy Ghost (who is Christ and God) teaches us, and to teach, we have to speak.  We cannot teach through osmosis or mental telepathy to transmit thoughts or ideas to people.  There has to be a “speaking.”  At least that is the picture God is using in Mark 13:11:

… take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.

And when the proper way of studying has been done, now God’s people can “speak” the doctrine that has been derived from proper Bible study, and we do so.  And we share these things.  It is how God was able to seal up the Word, but now bring it forth, and He takes personal responsibility, does He not?  It is not that God’s people “speak,” even though we do speak as He is using us, but the emphasis is on the Holy Ghost “speaking,” and we know that He will not speak verbally in some booming, divine voice from heaven.  That would violate Revelation 22:18.  It must be through the process as described in 1Corinthians 2, and that means when you hear the Lord’s people (as you heard with Mr. Camping and Family Radio, and now with EBible Fellowship) as we are going through the Bible and speaking these things…and you do not find us quoting theologians, although there could be an occasional reference, but that is not how we are proving these things.  It is always the Bible, and we are constantly giving you the Strong’s numbers so you can look up the word and find all the other verses where that same word has been used, and you can do the identical word search we are conducting, and you can check us out.  So when we say, “This word is translated over here in this way, and over there in this way,” and then we bring it back to this verse, now the “light goes on,” and we begin to understand the verse in a different way, based on how God has allowed the translators to translate the same Hebrew or Greek word.  In allowing those different English or Spanish words (or whatever language it is translated in), God has utilized the translations to hide truth or to hide information.  And, yet, at the time of the end, He opened up the Scriptures, and one of the big ways He has done that is by allowing a man like Strong to develop Strong’s Concordance, or by allowing a man like Young to develop his concordance, or by allowing a man like Jay Green to develop an excellent interlinear Bible, and by further allowing other men to put these things into software programs. 

And now verses like Matthew 28:1 have been brought to life and revealed that had been hidden.  The churches had always worshiped on Sunday, but they never knew why.  You could not have found sound Biblical answers to why we worshipped on Sundays until relatively recently when we could study the original Greek words, and then, there it was.  We could see that the word was “sabbaths” (plural), and not “week,”  and that it said: “At the end of the sabbaths, when it began to dawn toward the first of the sabbaths.”  And it was so obvious and clear, because God had multiplied the Bible helps that provided great assist to the student of the Bible at the time of the end to understand these things properly.