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Rehoboth

There are different stations in the walk of a man with His God. Abraham, for example, travelled from Ur of the Chaldeans through Haran Egypt, Philistine to Canaan. Different landscapes had different connotations, demands and challenges. Similarly, Isaac traversed different terrains. God interrupted him in an attempted economic relocation to Egypt like Abraham, his father. In concession, he sojourned at Gerah. Now Gerah was a place of many conflicts mixed with blessings. But Rehoboth was a blessed roomy place – a delight to one who has painfully sought rest from conflict attendant to obeying God.

The correlation between Abraham’s and Isaac’s sojourn holds for us a mine of truth, into which we may not explore in vain, should we endeavour to do so. Therefore, in this series, we shall consider the roughness and the smoothness the route leading to the Rehoboth poses.

Restriction

It was an omnipotent God talking to a limited man. God could be anywhere at any time. But man can only be in one place at a time. So although God can be known uniquely in different locations globally, man is only well known if he can be associated with a particular place over a given period. Due to this, God has planned a place through substitution for Abraham. And every blessing that is associable with this covenant must be delivered within the confines of this location. Hence the restriction of Isaac’s protraction to Gerar.

Secondly, the blessings Isaac was to enjoy were not due to his own qualification. It is God fulfilling the promised terms of His covenant with Abraham. It had nothing to do with Isaac’s current keeping of God’s commandments, statutes, and laws. Instead, it had everything to do but one with Abraham’s. Therefore, Isaac only needed to obey God and be at the location of the fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham. We can thus conclude that Isaac had to adhere to being locationally restricted to enjoy the boundless covenanted blessings due to Abraham. He had to be localized in famine to access his planned plenty. He must be constrained to enjoy a copious shower.

Now God did not promise Abraham Egypt, Babylon, Ethiopia, Ephesus. He only said in verse 3, “…for to you and your descendants I will give all these lands.” This connoted Gerar was part of the land promised by God to Abraham, now being occupied by the Philistines and ruled by Abimelech.

Remaining in our inheritance or, better still, possessing our possession in God entails that we are confined to the location marked out for us. The earth is of the Lord and the fullness thereof. But only an allotment its fullness can be ours. The Lord created vast earth but allotted Eden to Adam to tend. He had the world as a vast empire to Himself but only gave David Israel to rule. He has the whole world to Himself but restricted the ministry of Jesus to Palestine. My submission is that being restrained and choosing between alternatives is a critical junction where one decides to ply or continue plying the road to Rehoboth or not.

Like his father, Abraham, Isaac might have decided for Egypt. The primary cause of famine those days was draught. Digging wells lends evidence to this. If there were rain, cisterns, not wells would have been drilled to hold water. However, Egypt did not need rain to survive. They had their profitable irrigation systems.

Moreover, the Nile river gave Egypt sources for its thriving large-scale commercial agriculture. It was crucial to the economic survival of other parts of the world whenever famine struck. It was a flourishing land, a centre of attraction for any capitalist. Thence it was a natural place to descend for a man with many slaves and livestock.

Oh, our Christian walk shall ever be a walk of choosing between unseemly Gerar and a lushly Egypt! It will ever be a walk of choice between being driven by faith or sight. What an attraction Egypt always is at first sight! It always attracts our first imagination. But would an interruption or interception confine us to stand with God’s choice?

Imagine digging well in the face of for legally backed hijacking in Gerar. In contrast, there are readily available rivers and lakes where Isaac would pay to water his livestock in Egypt. Imagine residence at the mercy of Abimelech when one can afford acres of land in Egypt and live without incursion. These and more are the contravening circumstances existent in the locations to which we are restricted and the alternatives to which we might have descended. Yet, the just shall continue living by continually believing.

As we would, nevertheless, see, the state of the land at any point, through the eyes of faith, does not in any way inhibit God’s intention to bless and make abundantly fruitful. As indicated by this story, a land fraught with draught might be a veritable “riverside” by which our souls are planted, such that it brings forth its fruits in our seasons. Conversely, a land filled with greenery and fruitful fields may be full of thorns and briers that chokes every spiritual vitality out of our souls. The decider lies in deciphering God’s will. Better to be restricted and blessed in the end than to be left to a fall-headed free-flow. Till we leave this earth, each disciple blessings and ministry are localized. To be out of space is to be out of coverage.

Retour

Resistance can be God’s provident and sovereign way of reordering or guiding a man’s steps in the right direction. The methods of God are past finding our for no man can know what God does from beginning to eternity. All God gives us or makes us know about His plan for our lives are the ones we mature enough to comprehend.

Isaac moved from highbrow quarters in Gerar to the Valley of Gerar to Rehoboth. One would have thought it was a downward clime. Was sending Isaac out not a bad omen signalling tides were turning in the opposite of God’s promise to Abraham Isaac. Or how does one reconcile God’s “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands” with the king’s “Go away from us, for you are too powerful for us”? The reality, however, remains that God was in a process and the expectation His righteous will not be cut short. As we would see, the intended destination was the Rehoboth area of Gerar, which was around the bushy places Abraham had marked with wells. But, God must have, in mercy, estimated the faith of Isaac and might have found it unable to take such giant strides.

The maps we read are scaled, wavy lines of massive landscapes. Yet, they help us navigate our ways successfully. The man who has heard instructions on what to do has only had a mind map of God’s intention for Him. the bigger picture would be more demanding. That is, the reality may demand many rerouting. But, of course, these maps or instructions from God will act as guideposts. Thus, when Bro Isaac Abraham was chased Gerar’s Valley, the eyes of His mind must have been opened to the unexplored expanse of land in that region. Thus, he became freer to navigate. Our rerouting might be insight-, prayer- or persecution-driven. In Isaac’s case, it was resistance-based.

Since he had the freedom to explore now, his instinct first went intelligently to the wells his father dug to re-dig them. Oh, how this established that Isaac knew well the covenant of God with his father and the landmarks he made memorials for this sake! It gave God reassurance too that Isaac was committed to this generational covenant. Still, God permitted resistance, and Isaac greeted it with humility. However, God needed Isaac to dig his own wells. He needed him to make his own landmarks and increase the memorials that mark the lands that will be handed his generations to come. God required him to add Esek and Sitnah to the places the sole of Isaac’s feet shall tread upon.

Have you the promise of God for your life and the confusion with which you battle to stamp your feet on the course set before you seem as dark as the dungeon Joseph found himself on His way to glory? Are there too many resistances on your route to Rehoboth? Has this confused you, and you are about to throw in the towel? Please refrain and learn from this Patriarch that rerouting is one of the relaxation points on your road to Rehoboth. Have you been marched shamefully out of Gerar city with your activities in its Valley not spared by the opposition? Have you attempted to connect to those you think should mentor you in the faith, and satan-curated circumstances made them unreachable? God may have designed it that you should dig your own well. That is, seek Him as your present help and most enjoyable company along the needy aisles of loneliness.

May God grant us the grace to be flexible enough to discern through circumstances that He speaks through every avenue.