Saved by the Well – Isaac
Saved by the Well – Isaac.
“And the Lord appeared to Isaac and said… ‘Dwell in the land of which I shall tell you. Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you, for to you and your offspring I will give all these lands, and I will establish the promise that I swore to Abraham your father.’ (Genesis 26:2-3).
SAVED: The Hebrew word for save is “Yasha,” which means to be set free into the wide open; to be delivered in a time of desperate need; to be saved from destruction and certain death. “Salvation” literally means to become spacious, and refers to “the sense of deliverance from an existence that had become confined, compressed, or cramped.” (Eugene Peterson). When Jesus delivers us from our inner spiritual confinement, we are liberated into a wide open, broad, expansive place. The word for “wide open space” is the opposite of a straitjacket. Without Jesus, our soul will never be freed from our spiritual straitjacket. There are three passages in Psalms that describe this freedom deliverance beautifully:
- “From my distress, I called upon the Lord. He answered me and set me on a large place. After being in a tight spot, the Lord placed me into a broad space. Because I was hemmed in, I called on Lord Yahweh. He answered me and gave me room.” (Ps. 118:5);
- “Lord, you have not given me over into the hands of the Enemy; You have liberated me and set my feet in a wide expanse, a good and spacious land. You have given me the freedom to roam at large, where I can freely move. You have given me room to breathe.” (Ps. 31:8);
- “The Lord rescued me because He delighted in me. He brought me out to freedom into a wide-open space. My soul has been delivered because of God’s love for me, and my soul finally has some elbow room!” (Ps. 18:19).
I’VE GOT A RIVER OF LIFE (SPRING UP O WELL) (youtube.com)
THE WELL: There are four Hebrew words used in the Jewish Bible to describe the different kinds of ancient wells. There was the traditional well that was a deep hole dug in the ground to tap into an underground source of water. Another type of well was a fountain spring that had naturally broken through the earth’s surface on its own without man’s help. The wellspring is another version of well in Scripture in which fresh water flowed out of the ground in any number of ways to become available for cleansing, nourishment, refreshment, for survival itself. Life-giving wells of water have always been a powerful picture of our dependence upon God for spiritual survival. Just as Creator God has designed the human body to completely depend on water to live, our spiritual life totally relies on His presence in us to not just survive but to flourish. God is our spiritual well of fresh water, the only stable source of nourishment and purity. He is our fountain of life that gushes forth to replenish and cleanse us. God is our eternal wellspring of living water that will never run dry. Each of us is born spiritually dehydrated, and God alone is the constant, reliable water source to bring us back to life. As the silly joke goes, wells is a deep subject, and the biblical wells involve such stalwarts as Hagar and Abraham; Isaac and Moses; Samson and Solomon; the psalmists and the prophets. And of course, the glorious fulfillment of all these ancient stories of wells… Messiah Jesus and the woman at the well.
Isaac. Here is the miracle baby of Abraham and Sarah, the first Jewish child in history, whose name means “he laughs.” Isaac has been honored down through rabbinic tradition and continues to be remembered to this day for his midday prayer life, conversing with Yahweh in the middle of the afternoon in the great outdoors… “Isaac went out to meditate with God in the field toward evening.” (Gen. 24:63). Who knew that by simply digging some wells a biblical patriarch would soon be the stimulus for history’s first example of that insidious evil called antisemitism? This well-digging scenario in the land of the Philistines was the birth of “the world’s longest hatred,” according to Rabbi Jonathon Sacks in his commentary on Genesis. He continues… “No other prejudice has lasted so long, mutated so persistently, attracted such demonic myths, or had such devastating effects.”
The Backstory of Isaac and His Wells. Soon after the death of his great father Abraham, Isaac is forced to depend on the phiistines during a famine, and the local chieftain, another Abimlech who was probabyh the grandson of brahs abimlech, was intendt on cintinuing the original peace treatyh enjoyed between Abraham and Abimilevh years ago. Grandpa Abimlech even went so far as to give a royal edict, “Anyhwone who harms this man Isaac or his wife shall surely be put to death.” (26:11). It turns out that Isaac had planted crops in that land and soon reped “a hundredfold” because of Yahweh’s promies of blessing s upon His chosen people. So Isaac ebecame extremely wealthy, a proinent farmer and herssmean with huge flocks of livetock. Well, the philistgine were not ahappy with these devlepemtns. They began to fillin all the wells that abraham had dug long ago with abimllevh’s full permision. But now this Abimlech began to change his attitude toeard Isaac and ordered Isaac and hsi family and his prospering business to pick up stakes and leave the territory pronto. ‘Move away from us; you have becvome too pwoerful for us.” (21:12-33)