Let the Shepherd Lead

Originally Proclaimed: 05/05/19

Intro:

• As we have become more connected through social media, the use of social media screenings in hiring situations has skyrocted.
• One web source gives these statistics, that 74% of IT related employers, 73% of manufacturing related employers, and even 59% of sales related employers do some form of a social media screening.
  • They report that 66% of all employers do a social media screening.
  • Further 47% of those employers will not call a person for an interview unless they have a social media profile or internet presence that they can review.
  • These companies are looking for…
    • Information that supports their qualifications
    • A professional online persona
    • What other people post about the candidate
    • And reasons not to hire the candidate.
  • Finally, 48% of employers continue a social media audit of their employees with 34% finding content that caused them to reprimand or fire an employee.
  • http://press.careerbuilder.com/2018-08-09-More-Than-Half-of-Employers-Have-Found-Content-on-Social-Media-That-Caused-Them-NOT-to-Hire-a-Candidate-According-to-Recent-CareerBuilder-Survey
• With the use of social media in hiring, it’s no wonder that other websites advise how someone can “clean up” their social media profiles (https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/how-to-clean-up-your-social-media-presence-before-a-job-search ) or Social Media Dos and Don’t During a Job search (https://www.thebalancecareers.com/top-social-media-do-s-and-don-ts-2062712).

Hook:

• When we connect with others, we have another dangerous tendency: we over expose ourselves.
• That is exactly the reason that these social media screenings have become so popular.
• Rather than only seeing a candidate’s game face in an interview, our social media connections and public internet persona relate more about who we are than someone could gather from just a conversation or two.
• Further, it is that history of connections that tell in public detail the story of our lives, loves, weaknesses, and fears.
• Which leads to the major thrust of my message today, namely that connecting exposes more about our true self, especially our weaknesses.
• My prayer is that you will see this as we look at three ways Isaac’s fears come to light in Genesis 26:1-11.

Message Points:

• Last week as we looked at Genesis 3 we saw in verse 7 that connecting with the serpent and acting on his contradictory information left Adam and Eve feeling over exposed.
  • Their immediate solution was to try to cover themselves with fig leaves, and today our methods apart from Christ are no different.
  • We can choose to have an internet free home, but this is really a fig leaf.
    • Connecting with others can still occur through traditional media, television, or even just conversations as we will see today.
    • However, even if we avoid all connections, we have put on display our what we fear is exposed through what we try to cover with that internet free home.
  • We also could choose to carefully manage our internet presence, but again this too is a fig leaf.
    • Even the most carefully curated can have something  revealing on them.
    • The nature of connecting either on the internet or in person allows us to have conversations, to read or view, to like, share, and post about the things most interesting to us.
    • By doing this we have revealed a portion about who we really are.
    • Our “viewing history” reveals what is important to us.
• This leads us to consider our passage in Genesis 26.
  • The very first verse tells us that again there is a famine in the land so Isaac went to Abimelek, a Philistine King, in Gerar.
  • If we had been reading straight through Genesis, the presence of a famine during Isaac’s time should make us think of Genesis 12:10-20 and Genesis 20:1-17.
    • In the author’s “viewing history” is Isaac’s father, Abraham who chose to go down to Egypt in the first instance.
    • In the second instance there was no famine, but Abraham moved to Gerar.
    • In both instances Abraham believed that because His wife was beautiful, the people would do harm to Him.
    • In both instances Abraham asked his wife to say that she was his sister.
    • And in both instances, Abraham’s connection and misinforming the other leaders led to trouble.
  • So immediately we know when we read verse one, that the author wants us to have in our minds the history about Abraham’s connections as we continue to read about Abraham’s son.
    • We should be asking, will Isaac respond to the famine by leaving the land?
    • Will he connect with foreign leaders and call his wife his sister?
    • Will things end in trouble for Isaac?
  • Before we move on, just a note about the term Philistine used here.
    • This word is used in the later books of Judges and Samuel to describe the people group well known as the Philistines.
      • They warred with Israel, had no defined king but lived in five cities ruled by five lords near the Mediterranean coast.
      • These Philistines were a sea people coming from the area of the Aegean sea.
    • Here though, it seems that the word describes another people group.
      • They also are from the Aegean sea and also settle in the region near the Mediterranean coast.
      • They however live in Gerar not one of the five cities, are peaceful and accommodating to the Hebrews, and have a well-defined monarchy, with the title Abimeleck (which literally means, “my father was king”) used for their monarch.
      • They may be also referred to as the Caphtorim mentioned in Deuteronomy 2:23.
    • This is important to recognize, because Abraham and Isaac’s interaction with these Philistines is not the same as Samson’s unhealthy obsession with the Philistines of his day.
      • These Philistines are curious and respectful of Israel’s God, and not at all opposed to learning more about Him and His power.
      • In Genesis 20, God even appears and connects with the king of the Philistines in a dream.
      • Both Abraham and Isaac look at these Philistines with suspicion and mistrust; not believing God can protect them and show Himself worthy of these Philistine’s respect.
• This leads us to the 1st weakness connecting exposes. Weaknesses in our faith are exposed in emergencies (26:1-6 see also Genesis 12:10-20 and 20:1-17).
  • The famine is the emergency that exposes Isaac, just as it exposed his father.
    • Further, his need to connect with a larger people group further exposed his weaknesses.
    • Neither Abraham or Isaac believed that God could be at work through a famine or their time with the foreign leaders.
    • And we are not any different than these men.
      • When some emergency situation in our life prompts our experience of a season of anxiety and worry, do we want to turn to others?
      • It amazes me as a pastor who counsels, how long folks wait to actually go to talk to others who might be able to help.
      • But that being said, I know how long I have waited when I am in my own personal emergencies to talk with my friend who is a pastor and counselor.
      • We would rather suffer than believe that God can bless us through the help and counsel of others.
      • And yet, the first real step in dealing with out emergencies is to connect with someone who can help us through those situations.
  • The remainder of the first six verses relate to us how God tries to connect with Isaac in the midst of this crisis of faith and gave him counsel.
    • God knows Isaac’s family history and intervenes with him to attempt to bolster his faith.
    • Rather than letting this famine become a season of material and spiritual drought, God wants to help Isaac.
    •  We can summarize God’s counsel into three pieces of advice.
      • First, in verse 2 – live where I tell you to live.
      • Second, in verse 3a – believe that I can bless you in this land.
      • Third, in verse 3b-5 – remember that I will keep all my promises to those who believe in me.
        • Those promises included giving the land to Isaac’s descendants and making his descendants numerous.
        • This is important, because Isaac had no property other than a burial cave for his family; and at this point he only had two unmarried sons.
    • These same promises are vital for all of us to remember in our emergency situations, and we need someone spiritual to remind us of them.
      • We have a book that tells us how God wants us to live. Every page of the Bible is useful to us for life and godliness. Romans 15:4 tells us that the Scriptures were written to teach us that we might endure with encouragement and hope.
      • That means that we should believe that God will bless us as we live to please him.
        • Now I am not saying that every day will be pleasant, or that we will not have trials and seasons of suffering.
        • But I am saying that even in the trials and suffering God will be faithful to bless us with all that we need to please and honor him.
        • What greater testimony to God’s faithfulness can we see than the person in the midst of a chronic illness, or a job loss, or a massive depression doing something as simple as making it to worship Sunday by Sunday?
      • And finally we must remember that God will keep his promises to us, that we will one day dwell eternally with Him.
• But into this beautiful picture of encouragement from God’s connecting to Isaac, we read verse 26:7.
  • All of God’s encouraging words do not keep Isaac from falling into his family’s weakness.
  • Notice that when the men of place begin to connect with Isaac and want to discuss his wife Rebekah, the temptation to fall back into old patterns is too great.
    • Even though Isaac knew God personally, and had God’s Word; he gave into his weakness.
    • When the people were directly in front of him, and God’s counsel seemed like a distant memory, Isaac could not resist.
    • And friends isn’t that the same way it is with us?
      • When we see that someone in the public has posted a picture we did not authorize or mentioned us in a comment unsolicited, what do we do?
      • When we receive that friend request or invitation to follow someone or something we know might be dangerous or questionable, how do we respond?
      • Most directly, when we have a conversation in person, on the phone, through text or chat and someone asks us about some part of our life we are ashamed about or that we just do not discuss, do we lie, redirect the conversation, or isolate ourselves?
  • Just like Isaac, when we connect with others, and they learn more information about us, their questions expose our insecurities.
• That leads us to consider the second weakness connecting exposes. Weaknesses known as insecurities are exposed in connecting (26:7).
  • Remember as we read verse seven that the Philistine men merely ask about Isaac’s wife.
  • It is his own mind that runs wild at this point.
    • We read that he was afraid to call Rebekah his wife.
    • He is the one who supposes that the men might kill him in order to take his beautiful wife.
  • Isaac’s insecurity about the trustworthiness of these men and their intentions rules in his life at this point.
    • Whenever any desire begins to force our hand and take control of our life that desire has become an idol.
    • As an idol it pushes Christ off the throne of our life and demands that we pay attention to it.
  • Such idols of insecurity must be dethroned just a soon as we notice them in our lives, because the keep us from seeing and remembering God’s blessings and promises to us.
    • That is why we need to be reminded so often of God’s promises in worship and Bible study.
    • That is why we need to resist the urge to refuse to connect to others. We should be on guard as to who we connect with, but we need someone who will tell us that we are over-reacting and forgetting God’s promises.
• The final portion of this passage leads us to see how Isaac’s indiscretion is found out.
  • Isaac hid the truth for a long time according to verse 8, but soon enough the king saw Isaac caressing his wife through a window.
    • This embrace, was overt enough to make it plain to all who saw it that Isaac and Rebekah were actually husband and wife instead of brother and sister.
    • The king summons Isaac and asks him why he did such a thing in verse 9.
    • And Isaac said he did it because he thought he would lose his life.
    • Abimeleck scolds Isaac and immediately gives an order of protection in verses 10-11.
      • This is important to notice because it makes plain that the king’s desire to respect Isaac and his family.
      • One might assess, that the king’s quick action to order protection for Isaac would have been  the same response if Isaac had trusted God and been honest in the first place.
• That is the third weaknesses connecting exposes. Weaknesses in our character are exposed by proximity (26:8-11).
  • Isaac’s way of dealing with his fear revealed a  weakness in his character.
    • He was willing to lie and to hide from the Philistines.
    • But more importantly he revealed his inability to trust God in the face of this situation.
  • And that weakness worked its way into public view the longer he lived in proximity to the Philistines.
    • And the same is true for us.
    • The Bible tells us in Psalm 90:8 the Lord sets our iniquities before us, our secret sins are brought into the light.
    • It is probably this passage that Jesus paraphrases in Mark 4:22 and Luke 8:17 which says that nothing is hidden or secret that will not be made manifest and brought into the light.
    • The longer we live in a community, the longer we have a social media account, the longer we are friends with others, the more likely we are to be exposed.
    • But notice what the Bible says. It is the Lord who brings secret things in us to light.
    • God wants to kill and dethrone the idols that control us by exposing them.
    • What secret do you have that you think you have hidden from everyone? Rest assured that God knows!
  • Which leads us to quickly consider the rest of Chapter 26.
    • Once Isaac is totally exposed, verse twelve says he planted crops and was exposed.
    • He dug wells and in the midst of famine water sprang forth.
    • The Lord continued to pursue him and reminded him again of His counsel and His promises.
    • And the relationships Isaac injured were finally healed as Abimelek in verse 28 asks for a treaty of friendship because he saw clearly that the Lord was with Isaac.
    • The 2nd Danger of connecting is having our weaknesses exposed, but Isaac’s story teaches us that God can overcome our weaknesses (26:23-29).

Conclusion:

• So friends, we know that people will want to know more about us and eventually discover who we really are.
• The question for us today is whether or not we will connect, open up, and trust that God will bless us for it.
• One of the main reasons people resist coming forward in an invitation is due to their fear of letting others know that they are sinners struggling in this world.
• But here is the truth friends. We all are sinners in need of the Savior.
  • Once we are able to admit that truth, and connect with God’s promises in Christ, we will passed over, ostricized, reprimanded or fired.
  • 1 John 1:9 tells us “if we confess, then he is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from unrighteousness.
  • Our Savior works exclusively with sinners who need him.