Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #18 of Genesis, chapter 26, and we are reading Genesis 26:19-22:

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. And they digged another well, and strove for that also: and he called the name of it Sitnah. And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, For now JEHOVAH hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.

I will stop reading there.  We have been talking about this in the last couple of studies.  Regarding the “herdmen” of Gerar, the same word is translated as “pastors” or “shepherds.”  They are the herdmen of Gerar, and Gerar was in the land of the Philistines, ruled over by Abimelech, and Abimelech is a title, it seems, for the ruler of the Philistines.  King Abimelech appeared earlier in the book of Genesis, and this is a later king with the same name, and he they are a type and figure of Satan.  Therefore, to be a shepherd or pastor of Gerar would mean that they were under the power and authority of the king of Gerar, who is typifying Satan.

And we saw that a great number of pastors and shepherds that should have been shepherding the flocks were, instead, feeding themselves of the flock.  They are emissaries of Satan.

As I pointed out before, we see that Isaac is a type of Christ and his servants would typify the elect children of God, and they dug the wells.  And the wells have to do with the Word of God, the Bible, and digging into it and studying diligently, letting our hands and figures work as we turn page, after page, after page, and as we compare spiritual with spiritual and as we allow the Holy Ghost to teach.  This is the way we are “digging the well” and searching for the “water,” and the water came forth.  And in the day of salvation, it would be a well of salvation that a right proclamation would bring to those God had chosen to save.

That is why there was strife over the well between the herdmen of Gerar and Isaac’s servants; that is, it was Satan’s forces against Christ’s servants.  It was the age-old battle of souls that worked itself out over the course of history as the Lord Jesus went forth, conquering and to conquer, and He was followed by Satan, as we read in Revelation 6 about the riders on the white horse and the red horse.  And Satan’s aim was to take peace from the earth, or to take away the Gospel’s peace as Christ would come to a sinner in salvation. Without peace, we are at enmity with God, and we are still in our sins and under His wrath.  So this is the figure here, and the ultimate purpose behind the striving between the herdmen of Gerar and Isaac’s servants.

We read that the first well they dug was called Esek, and we are told it was because they strove with them.  And Esek is a word that means “to strive.”  It is #6230 in the Hebrew Concordance, and it is from #6229, which is used in the same verse.  The word “strive” is #6230 and the word “strove” is #6229, so it comes right from that word that means “strife.”  It was a well of strife.

It is significant that when the herdmen of Gerar came, Isaac’s servants did not fight with them or continue to strive.  They strove initially because it was instigated by the herdmen of Gerar.  Isaac’s servants had done the work.  They had found the water.  It was their well, but along came these herdmen that were under the power and authority of the king of Gerar, picturing those that are under the power and authority of Satan, and they strove over the well. 

And during the church age this happened, again, and again, all across the face of the earth.  A church would spring up, and it would often be true and faithful at its start, but then would come the “pastors” or emissaries of Satan into that congregation, and they began to strive over what?  It was over the Bible, and the Bible was the “well of water.”  It was through hearing the Word of God that one could become saved.  And they would differ and oppose and argue on point after point (of doctrine) until they reached positions of authority, and then they would implement their changes in doctrine into that congregation.  And at that point, what were God’s people to do? 

And this is the error that some of the Lord’s people can make for a time before they are corrected by God, and that is that they would engage in strife.  But God tells us that this is something we must never do, in 2Timothy 2.  And notice the context that is established in 2Timothy 2:23:

But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.

Foolish and unlearned questions about what?  Of course, it is the Word of God.  It is the Bible.  And this is not referring to someone who has an honest question that may sound foolish to someone else.  God is not talking about someone that comes with an honest question about the Bible, but it would be like some of the questions that the Pharisees would bring to Jesus – questions designed to trap and ensnare and catch in a lie, because they had their own agenda and their own understanding of what the Gospel was, and they thought that Jesus was a heretic.  And, yet, people were following Him and listening to Him, so these Pharisees would try to give the appearance of “true men” at times, and they would send forth their spies to try to trick Him and trap Him into saying something that could be used against Him.  They were questions like, “Should we pay taxes to Caesar?”   Or, in regard to the woman that was caught in the act of adultery, they asked, “Moses in the Law said that such a one should be stoned to death.  What say you?”  They knew if Jesus said, “Yes, stone her to death,” then they would have gone running right to the Roman authorities: “There is a man planning sedition.  He cares not for the Roman government.  He says this woman should be put to death.”  You see, it was a trap either way.  If He said, “Stone her to death, according to Jewish Law,” then they would run to the Romans.  If He said, “Do not stone her to death,” then they would run to the Jewish people and say that He did not care for the Law of Moses.  They probably thought it was a perfect trap.  “Either way, no matter what He says, we have Him!”  So they came to Him, and they had the woman there, and they said, “This woman was caught in adultery.   What say you?”  And, of course, Jesus, being God, knew of their plan, and He wrote on the ground.  He was probably writing the Ten Commandments, but whatever He wrote was certainly the Law of God, written with the finger of God, and He said, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” And then they went out one by one, from the eldest to the youngest, because they were convicted by the Word, the Word that Jesus was probably writing on the ground, and God also applied it to their hearts where the Law had been written upon the hearts of men. 

But this is the idea behind the verse that says, “But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.”  Then it goes on to say in 2Timothy 2:24-26:

And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.

So we must avoid foolish and unlearned questions because they gender strife.  And with social media today – with Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube – it is a very easy snare to fall into.  Maybe we share the Word of God on our personal Facebook page, and along comes someone that will contradict it, and they say, “No – this is how it is.”  And if you correct them and say, “No, that is not right.  This is how it is.”  And it can go back and forth, endlessly, if we allow it.  But the Bible instructs us: do not strive.  The servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle.  It is wiser.  It is the obedient thing to do, after two or three admonitions, as we read in another place in the Bible, in Titus 3:10: “A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject.”  If they are coming with that which is not true…and I have learned to do this.  And I say to them, “Please do not post these things on my Facebook page.”  And I do not know what it is about people that have other understandings of what the Bible teaches, but I would say that 99% of the time, with rare exception, they post again.  They post again.  So I come back and I say, “I asked you not to post on my page.  Please do not post this on my page.”  And, of course, they do it again, so I will “unfriend” them, or if it in one of our Facebook groups, they will be removed from the group because they are not acting like a “friend.”  As you may know, they call those on Facebook that can communicate with you as “friends.”  And I tend to view my page in the way I view my house, and if someone is coming to my house, it is okay if they teach something if I want them to teach, and if what they are saying is faithful, and they are qualified.  But if I do not want someone to teach, they cannot come into my house and then refuse to leave.  And refusing to stop teaching is like refusing to leave, after I have asked them to please stop and to quit doing that. 

In that situation, an individual has control over his page or group, but in the case of Genesis 26, Isaac and his servants are in the land of the Philistines, or we could say, just as we are in this world, so the Philistine had the upper hand, to a degree.  And remember that Isaac is a type of Christ, and he determined, “Let us let them have the well.  Yes – we did the work and found the water, and now they want to take it over.  Let them have the well.  We will leave and go to another location.”  And, again, this is what the Lord Jesus did do during the church age when a church would reach such a point that they were striving.  The Word of God would lead the people of God to go out of that congregation, and that is why churches have “broken off” and a certain number would come out and form another church.  And, of course, this applied to a whole denomination during the Reformation.  For those in the Roman Catholic denomination, there certainly was a great deal of strife, so, finally, many came out. 

Remember, we also saw this with the herdmen of Abraham and the herdmen of his nephew Lot, back in Genesis 13:5-11:

And Lot also, which went with Abram, had flocks, and herds, and tents. And the land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together: for their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together. And there was a strife between the herdmen of Abram's cattle and the herdmen of Lot's cattle: and the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then in the land. And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen; for we be brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left. And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before JEHOVAH destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of JEHOVAH, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar. Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other.

In this case, there was strife between the herdmen, but there was a peaceable separation because Abraham was a picture of God and Lot, the righteous one, was a picture of Christ, and it was already determined before the strife because God knew their flocks and cattle were too great for them to dwell together.  The church that God formed during the church age was enormous, so, perhaps, to help the spread of the churches, God split them up at times, and those that split could even have been two groups of believers.   It could have been over a misunderstanding of doctrine.  You know, the Lord had many truths veiled and they could not be seen “except through a glass darkly,” during the church age, so issues could have arisen where one group saw a thing one way and the other group saw it another way.  Perhaps, it even had to do with eschatology, the doctrine of the end time, and, therefore, one church could have developed along one line and another church along another line.  But God could have used both to a certain degree, as long as they maintained that the Bible, alone, was the Word of God and did not add or subtract to it and were faithful to the things God had opened up for the time and season of the church age.  And, yet, divisions did occur.

But in the case of Genesis 26, it is an outward picture of Satan’s forces (the herdmen of Gerar) taking over a congregation.  The first well was called Esek because they strove, and then we read in Genesis 26:21:

And they digged another well, and strove for that also: and he called the name of it Sitnah.

Now “Sitnah” is #7856 in the concordance, and it from a word, #7855, that is also found just one time.  It is a word translated as “accusation” in Ezra 4:6:

And in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, wrote they unto him an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem.

These were people in the surrounding lands that were adversaries and enemies of the Jews, so they wrote a letter to the king accusing the Jews.  They wrote an accusation.

And that is what was happening with the well.  The herdmen of Gerar were accusing Isaac and his servants of, perhaps, being thieves that were stealing their land and water, and allowing their herds to graze on their lands.  There was probably a string of accusations, and it was against the people of God, which the Bible tells us can be traced back to a particular source, if we turn to Revelation 12:9-10:

And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

The dragon is the “accuser of our brethren.”  The Devil or Satan is the accuser of the brethren.  While he had access (to heaven) up until the time of the cross, he would accuse God’s people on earth to God Himself.  He would say to God, “You have built a hedge around Job; tear it down and he will curse you to your face.”  This is the accusation that Satan made to God.  Then we find that almost immediately, Job’s wife said to Job, “Curse God, and die.”  Of course, she was in an extremely weakened condition, having lost all her children and the wealth of their household, and seeing her husband in the pitiful condition of having sore boils from head to toe.  You see, she was primed and ready for Satan to use, and he did.  So she mouthed the words of his accusation. 

So through the adversaries and enemies around the Jews, they wrote to the king, but the source of the accusation was coming from Satan.  And these herdmen or pastors of Gerar were accusing Isaac and his servants, because it is typical of what Satan does – he is the accuser of the brethren.

And we have experienced this, have we not?  We have experienced a great deal of accusations over the course of time, especially after we entered into the Great Tribulation and the Day of Judgment. And, remember, that even though Satan has been put down, he still exists, and he can stir up people to do his bidding and to make accusations.  So we receive all kinds of accusations of being heretics, being date setters, or being thieves, and anything else you can think of.

You know, you never find the Lord’s people making these kinds of accusations against others.  It is not for us to do.  Even the Lord Jesus Himself in the Person of Michael, when contending with the Devil concerning the body of Moses, it says in the book of Jude that He “durst not bring against him a railing accusation.”  If the Lord would not make a railing accusation against the Devil himself, then we are certainly not to do that.  And that is one big reason why we must step back from engaging in strife.  We are not to get into that kind of discussion where it becomes a critical argument, because when someone is showing that they will not listen to what the Bible says and they keep saying what they are saying, the temptation is to get down on their level and call them names right back.  But, no, we must not do that.  “I am sorry the Lord has not given you understanding concerning this, but we are going to have to end our discussion at this point, because there is no sense in continuing to talk about it since you are not listening to the Bible.”

Well, since I just mentioned ending the discussion, that is what we are going to have to do now, because we have come to the end of our time.  Lord willing, we will pick up this discussion in our next Bible study.