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Isaac gets largely lost among the heroes of old that we call "the patriarchs." We read time and time again in the New Testament of the phrase, "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" and really we focus more on Abraham and Jacob than we do the middle one. Preachers like to preach about how Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees and idolatry to go to the Promised Land. We like to talk about how he was willing to go beyond his father's relationship with God and to strike out in faith in uncharted territory. We like to talk about how he besought God for Lot's sake and defeated kings and risked his life for others and how he chose the mountainside rather than dwell in the sin-filled plains of Sodom and Gomorrah. We like to talk about how Abraham came to be called a "friend of God" and the "father of the faithful." We like to discuss how he made covenants with God and stayed faithful even to the point of being willing to sacrifice his only son on the mountain. We like Abraham. You don't have to look very far to apply a principle of truth to your life from the story of his life.

We like Jacob, too. We like to preach about how his very name was "deceiver" and how he tricked his father into giving him the birthright only to be tricked by Laban with the old "switch-the-ugly-daughter-for-the-pretty-one-on-the-wedding-night" trick. We like to talk about how that he dreamed and saw a staircase to heaven with angels descending and ascending. We like to talk about how he wrestled all night with a manifestation of God and in one night -- a twenty-four hour period -- allowed God to change his nature and transform him into Israel, "a prince with God." We like Jacob. It's easy to learn something powerful from his life story.

And then there's Isaac. It's not too often that we preach about Isaac, and the problem is not that we have anything against him or anything, but -- well -- it's just that Isaac doesn't do a whole lot in the Bible. While his father and son were wrestling and talking with God and having dreams and theophonies of God appear to them, Isaac seemed to be known primarily for marrying a beautiful girl, Rebekah, and just existing. He doesn't fight any wars or see any angels or dream wild dreams. He doesn't have any huge character flaws that jump from the page at us, and yet although he is named among the heroes of faith, Isaac seems, well, sort of ordinary. The only thing that stands out about his life is that he seemed to be fascinated with wells. Not big fishes of the sort that that swallowed Jonah -- not that sort of "whale" -- but the sort of wells that are deep holes dug in the ground to find a source of water. In fact, if you could find one phrase that best describes what we know about Isaac, it would be that he was foremost a "well digger."

To us who live in the era of flush toilets and in-door plumbing, we miss the great importance of what Isaac did. In the dusty and dry climate of ancient Canaan, droughts were much more serious events than they are today. Water was life and without water, life ceased to exist. If you were going to survive and live and be fruitful, then the most precious commodity was a steady supply of water. And so the digging of wells was perhaps one of the most important endeavors that someone could undertake: in the desert regions, nothing was more important than an ample supply of fresh water.

But not everyone was willing to be a well digger because digging wells by hand is hard work. I have never dug wells, but I know firsthand about how hard it is digging by hand because my best friend and I once spent the better part of a week digging a "foxhole" on the edge of the woods at our home in North Louisiana. We were only about eight years old and we were playing "war" back before they "discovered" that allowing your sons to act like they shot each other affected them mentally. And since we were "G.I.Joe" and had to defend against the forces of evil, we wanted to be prepared and dig ourselves a fox hole. Originally our plan was to cover the edge of the yard with trenches with which we could run through to better battle positions, but as we began digging the first fox hole with shovels that we found lying around the shed, we both quickly decided that one fox hole was going to be enough. We also learned that the hard clay was much more packed than we first imagined and so after much work every day for a week or two, we finally decided to stop when the hole was big enough for Earnest and I to be completely out of sight while on our knees. We decided that foxholes that you could stand up in were highly overrated!

To conceal our "position" from the enemy, we spent the better part of an afternoon cover it carefully with sticks and then a layer of pine straw and pinecones so that it looked no different than the normal ground around it. We took the mounds of dirt and moved them to another location as not to give the site of our foxhole away and went to bed with the full intentions of getting up the next morning and manning our positions. Technically, it wasn't our fault that my dad decided to get up that morning and mow the grass, and it was not our fault that he decided to mow out further than he did normally in an effort to extend the yard a bit. No matter what dad said after we didn't intend for it to be a "lawnmower trap." It was supposed to be a foxhole, dad just got too close to the "battlelines," there. And the worse thing was that he filled the hole back up! I can still remember that disheartening feeling as Earnest and I realized that all the hard work that had gone into digging our masterpiece, had been covered over.

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As God decided to begin blessing Isaac, the 26th chapter of Genesis says that the Philistines -- his enemies -- rose up and began to fill back in the wells that Isaac's father, Abraham, had left for him. I can imagine the despair as Isaac got the news from the servants going to fetch water, "master, the well has been filled up!" And then comes the chief shepherd in from the fields, "master, we have no water for the sheep and livestock because the enemy has come and filled in our life springs." The Philistines thought that such tactics would drive Isaac away from the Promised Place that God had given him. They thought that a little discouragement and opposition and blocking off his life springs would cause him to give up and move away from the Promised Land. But they underestimated Isaac's faith and resolve, because the scriptures say that Isaac stood up and wiped the disappointment and frustration off of his face and grabbed a shovel and he and his servants began to remove the stuff from the wells that God had given him! And not only did they begin to redig the wells, but also after they reopened the springs, Isaac declared that they would be named just as his father, Abraham, had named them. There was more than just needing water here, Isaac was declaring to the enemy: "I'm staying here in the promises of God and I'm not going anywhere!"

I'm preaching to people today, that need the resolve and lesson of Isaac to permeate your life. Isaiah prophesied about our generation and said:

A water springing flowing from the depths of the earth with refreshing water has always been a sign of the Holy Spirit in the Bible because just as you could not physically exist without the constant inflow of fresh water in those days, so you cannot spiritually make it without the constant moving of the Holy Spirit within your life. In our other text, Jesus told the woman at the well in Samaria:

Jesus was telling the woman that she needed to spiritually change water sources! The water of this world would only satisfy her spiritual hunger for so long. She had been using relationships to try to fulfill that longing that she had for God to work, but it only quenched her thirst for a short time and that longing and thirst for something that was missing would come back. And so Jesus said, "you need to change wells!" You need to switch from the wells of this world, to the well of water that I can give. And He said, "the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

The Gospel of John later tells us what Jesus was speaking of when He spoke of this living water:

Verse 39 states that He was speaking of the Holy Ghost which had not yet been poured out, and what strikes me as interesting is that He said that when a man believes on Him as the scriptures have instructed him to do, "out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." In like manner, Jesus told the lady at the well, that the Spirit would flow "in the believer." And so if water represents the Spirit flowing through us, then our very individual lives are the "wells" from which the Spirit springs up!

When the first believers finally got to experience the infilling of the Holy Spirit that Jesus prophesied about, the Bible says that:

And the immediate response of some of the carnal people looking on was "they've been drinking" and yet Peter said "they aren't drunk as ye suppose." They had been drinking, but not from a keg or a wineskin, but from a well that had sprung up deep down inside of them. Their spirit man had tapped into the deep fountains of the blessings of God and so as the Holy Ghost flowed it flowed from them as a deep fountain. They were doing as Isaiah said they would do: "with joy drawing from the wells of salvation" and found themselves as the conduit through which the Spirit flowed. Within them, there had been uncovered a well of joy and salvation through the power of the Holy Ghost!

Now perhaps you can see that the story of Isaac in our text is very important after all! The wells passed down to him had been filled in and yet Isaac refused to let that stop him. The story of Isaac in our text speaks to the group of people here that have never received the infilling baptism of the Holy Ghost because. like Isaac, we are born with a spiritual well that was designed to be tapped into the Spirit of God. Adam, our human "father," was originally given this relationship with God. But something called "sin" filled up the well of the spirit in everyone of us before we were even conceived and since our birth, the enemy or our soul has done his best to completely block it off.

Your enemy doesn't want you to tap into the life source of the Holy Ghost and has done everything he can to stop you. First, he deceived Adam and Eve into sinning so that we were born with Adam's sin still blocking the entrance into the spirit. And then in your own life more things have been thrown into the well of the spirit. You have a well within you that wants to tap into the things of God, but it is filled with past sins and failures, and heartaches, and disappointments. It is filled with hurts and lies and pain and just stuff of this life. And the devil has convinced you that it's too much work to try to get past all of that to allow the Spirit and will of God to flow in your life freely! Like me and my friend staring forlornly at our undone work that day, and like Isaac seeing the dirt that had been dropped into his well. The devil has convinced many that to get where they need to be in God is too far away. It's too much effort and there's way too many obstacles to be removed to even bother trying.

But I've come to preach to you today. "Eve, the devil cannot make you eat the fruit." "He cannot make you do anything." The devil had to go before God and get permission before he did anything to Job, and then only did what God said that he could do. Get this: the only thing the devil can do to you without permission is "lie to you." But it's time to stop believing the lie of the devil! Most of the junk blocking the well of the Spirit in your life has been placed there by simply living in this sinful world. All the devil can do is speak to you and he is telling you as you gaze at your life, knowing that deep down inside of you there is a longing to be right with God; deep down you wish for something greater and for the Spirit of God to flow freely from the fountain of your soul. But the devil is telling you "there's simply too much stuff that is in the way. "Getting right with God will take too much effort; too much time; to much sacrifice." The voice of Satan is saying, "Don't do it; it's not worth even trying."

But I've come to tell someone that it's not time to let the enemy of your soul win, but rather it's time to dig up the well that God placed within you! It's time to redig the wells of salvation in your life! It's time to find a place of repentance and shovel past unforgiveness and hurts and past failures and find your way to the life spring that is still flowing! He can remove the obstacles that fill your life with one swipe of mercy! A broken and contrite spirit He will not refuse! And the devil is a liar, because it IS worth the effort and it IS worth the time and the waters of everlasting life are sweet enough that no matter what you've got to dig through to get to them, they will far make up and refresh you from the effort and the strain!

It's time to get the determination of Isaac in our own lives today and say "I refuse to give into the desires of the enemy that would destroy me!" I'm going to dig until I hit the life spring of God's Spirit being able to flow freely in my life! God promised me that I could "with joy draw from the living waters of salvation" and I'm going to dig through all of the mess in my life and push past whatever I must in order to grasp that promise for myself! Even if it's your first time and you've never received the gift of the Holy Ghost, somebody here today needs to dig down and hit the fountain of the Spirit today!

And Isaac's actions also speak more than just to those who have never tapped in before, because there are some here that have drank from that well in the past with joy and yet they have allowed the enemy to come in and throw things in it to stop the flow. There are people under the sound of my voice that have tasted and seen that the Lord is good and yet you allowed the devil to throw bitterness or unforgiveness or sin into the well and stop it up. Or you have allowed the cares of life and the things of this world to become a higher priority and choke out the life spring of God within you. To you, God would say "it's time to re dig again those old wells!" It's time to remove some old hurts and old harbored attitudes and to tap back into what God wants to do in your life! It's time for a generation of Isaacs to rise up and say "I will re dig those wells and drink again from their waters!" I will not allow the enemy to drive me from where I must be! Sure it's work. Sure it requires sacrifice, but the rewards far outweigh the effort! We must redig the wells of salvation in our life, no matter what obstacle that we must get through!

And before I move on, let me say that Isaac's actions speak also to those of you who have entered the promised places of God and like Isaac in our text, you are choosing to dwell and stand upon what He has promised. And yet the enemy has brought about obstacles to your tapping into those promises. You've made up in your mind to live for God and do His will and receive His promises, but it seems that the enemy has done what it was said he did in Ezra's day when the enemy came to "frustrate their purposes" (Ezra 4:5). The enemy has done his best to fill the wells of promise with persecution and strife and despair and pity and feelings of insignificance and any other lie that he can slide in there! But it's time for the church of the living God to make up her mind: I will not leave where God has placed me in His kingdom! I will not accept what the enemy has said and done as the final verdict. If I've got to sacrifice some more and dig some more and work some more and stand some more, then I'm going to do it.

That's why praise is so important! Because often we have to praise "through some things" in order to get to where we want to be in the Spirit of God moving in our lives. In a sense, almost every service we come in with things that we must press beyond in order for God to do what He wants to do. It doesn't necessarily have to be sin, but can be just the cares of life or the worries and heartaches of living in this world. But somebody needs to make up in their minds: "Whatever I've got to shovel out of the way in order to stay connected with the life spring of God, then I will do it!" Like Isaac, we need to make up in our minds that "devil, you can do your best to stop up God's Spirit and promises from flowing in my life, but know that every day I'm going to get a shovel and here we go again: I'm not going anywhere, but I will stay here and I will drink from the blessings of God Almighty!" It's time to redig the wells of promise in your life!

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Not only did Isaac re dig the wells in the promised land that the enemy had covered in, but the scriptures say that he renamed them to again be the names "that his father had called them." The enemy had not only tried to fill the wells up, but also started to call them by another name!

I am reminded of another story in scripture found in the book of 1 Samuel. We read in the fourth chapter of the tragic story of the ark of the covenant being captured by the same enemies that Isaac faced, the Philistines. In 1 Samuel 4, two sons of the priest Eli named Hophni and Phineas decided to take the ark of the covenant, the golden box upon which God's presence rested in the temple, out to battle with them. The problem was that Hophni and Phineas had been evil and God would not bless them. The results were disastrous; not only was Israel's army crushed in the ensuing battle, but both Hophni and Phineas were killed. And even worse, the sacred ark of the covenant was stolen by the enemy and taken into Philistia. The Bible says that when the old priest Eli heard the news of the death of his sons, he grieved greatly, but when he heard that the glory and presence of God in the form of the ark of the covenant had been stolen, he fell out of his chair and broke his neck from the shock!

In the last part of the chapter we learn that Phineas' wife was with child and not yet full term when the messenger came with all of this bad news. The stress and grief at losing her husband and father-in-law was nothing compared to the shock that the glory of God's presence had departed Israel. The horrible news threw her into premature labor, and it was such hard labor that as the boy finally was born, she began to lose her lifes. We find the sad ending to this story in the scripture:

With her last breaths, Phineas' wife named her son "Ichabod" which means "no glory." What a sad, sad ending to a sad story.

But God allowed this story to be recorded for a purpose. Everything that had happened to her was a great tragedy, but the greatest tragedy was that she believed the lie that because of all of the bad things that had happened, future hope was gone. You see, the glory of God wasn't departing for forever. It wouldn't be a permanent thing. In fact, after the Spirit of God knocked over and destroyed the Philistines' fish idol and struck the entire countryside of Philistia with hemorrhoids, the Philistines would be more than happy to send the ark back! It looked gloomy when the ark was stolen but the story wasn't over -- not by a long shot -- and in fact the greatest days of Israel were still ahead!

What's the point preacher? I'm trying to get you to see that Ichabod's mother made the grave mistake that many people today do in the spiritual sense. She made the mistake of letting the present circumstances name her future for her. She should have named her son "the glory of the Lord will return" or "the glory of God will be back." Or maybe something like "don't worry, it won't end like this." But she caved in to how gloomy and bleak the present situation appeared at the moment so that she allowed the temporary situation to name her future!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: "don't make eternal choices based upon temporal circumstances" and "don't let your present name your future! I don't care how dark it looks or how gloomy the past is or the storm is, with God there is always hope of a brighter day! But whether or not you experience that hope is whether or not you allow your present circumstances to dictate to you what your future will be! To relate it to Isaac's day, it depends upon what you do when the enemy takes your promises and future in God and tries to rename them to what they want them to be. You can go along with it and let the enemy and present trials to dictate to you your future, or you can say "it won't end this way!

And so the story of Isaac again speaks to those who have never drank from the true wells of salvation today. Like Ichabod, you have been named all of your life by a name that the enemy of your soul gave you. Sin has said "you will always be this" and it has named you accordingly. Your life circumstances into which you were born has named you with a name. Your past failures have named you with a name. But I've got good news for you today! God says to you just like He told the prophet Jeremiah:

Before the name of sin and this life ever was pronounced, God had a name for you! He had a plan for your life to be blessed and great and mighty in Him and that plan was in place before you were ever born! It's just what God had named in your life has been circumvented by what the enemy has named your destiny to be! But it's time for someone to get the spirit of Isaac and say "not only am I going to redig the wells of the Spirit and promises of God in my life, but I am going to rename them after what my Father originally named them! It's time for someone to refuse to give into the naming of your destiny that has been given by sin and go back to what God originally said! You don't have to be a failure. You don't have to be an alcoholic. You don't have to be like your daddy or your grandparents. You don't have to keep the legacy of sin and heartache moving forward, because you can be different!

And so to the group of you who have never drank from the wells of salvation, I speak to you that it is not enough to just have the well of the Holy Ghost springing within you, but you need to get into a baptismal tank and be renamed! It's time for the old man to be buried and the name of Jesus Christ to be called over you! The scriptures say that:

The name of Jesus is "above every name that is named." That means that it is the highest revealed name of God and that is often the only way that we preach these verses, but it also means that the name of Jesus is greater and higher and more powerful than any name that can be named by the enemy! It's time to dig up the wells of water of the salvation and it's also time to declare that we will believe the report of the Lord! Stop believing the lies of Satan about what you will never be and claim the name that God has given you!

And perhaps there is someone here who have taken on that great name of Jesus onto your life in the waters of baptism and yet the devil has tricked you and has tried to bring sin again between you and the Spirit of God and has tried to rename your life what the devil wants it to be. To you Isaac speaks: "don't just sit there and let the enemy name your future; it's time to redig the wells of salvation and it's time to rename them to the original names! You are first and foremost a child of God because you were called by His name and it's time to refuse the destiny of the devil for your life! It's time to go back to your father's original name for your life! It's time to go back to what He said would become of your life. It's time to go back to the hope that He has for you! Be like Isaac and refuse to allow the enemy to name the well of your life!

And finally, some of you like Ichabod's mother have allowed despair to cause your present circumstances to name your future. You are in the storm and you've been there so long that you can't imagine that sun would ever shine again. You are looking at your life and you have tried to keep the relationship with God open and pure so many times and it seems like the enemy always comes in and throws a hitch in the plans and places obstacles there. You come to church and put on the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness and yet you feel as if every week, the minute you leave church Sunday, that the devil renames your life. You went out named "conqueror" and "victor" and then it seems like he comes in and renames you "conquered" and "victim." It's time to get the attitude and stamina of Isaac and redig and rename your wells! It matters not what the devil says that you will always be, if you will refuse the name and believe the Lord's report!

And I close with a scripture:

Hear what the Spirit is saying to the church! It matters not what the enemy has named you or sin has named you or your life circumstances have named you. If you will "overcome." If you will dig past all of those lies and everything else and redig that well of living water that God intended to be in your life. If you will do these things, then God will give you a "new name!" You may have been a sinner, but through Him you will be a saint! You may have been a drug addict, but through Him you will be clean! You may have been a liar or cheat, but through Him you will become a prince with God! You may have been an adulterer but when He gets through with you, you will be His faithful bride! Don't let what the enemy has done in your life be the final act. Like Isaac, it's time to redig and rename some things in our lives!