Which well is functioning in you? - David Mitts

Does a fountain send out from the same opening both fresh and bitter water? (Jas 3:11)
Last week we spoke about our new identity in Messiah.  We spoke about inner conflict and how it is of the old nature.  Our new nature is to be reconciled and to be an agent of reconciliation. Turn 2Corinthians 5:17-21
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2Co 5:17-21)
We live in a new creation reality.  We spoke last week about the divine exchange where Yeshua became sin that we would become the righteousness of God in Messiah Yeshua.  He didn’t just pay the price for our sin, He became our sin.  He exchanged places with us, becoming us (sin) so we could become as He is (righteous).  We become righteous as He is righteous.  He became sin as we were sin.  Can you see it? In this place, we by accepting Him as Lord and Savior, are translated from our citizenship and our being in the realm of darkness and sin, into the place where we became of the light. Look at Colossians 1:12-14
giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light. For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Col 1:12-14)
The word transferred, or in some translations “translated” means a complete status change.  We were sinners and through the death and resurrection we are transformed in the righteous of God.  This means that in our true being, in our spirit-man there is a blueprint, a program for living a “right” life.  It doesn’t mean we always do right, because we still have a will which has a pride orientation.  We have a mind that has been trained in being right and protecting itself from rejection.  Yet under that mind is a sweet spirit that is right.  Our spirit is as right as it can ever be.  This is who we truly are, the righteousness of God in Messiah Yeshua.  The reason we still sin after being born again is NOT because we “are sinners” trying to do the right things and failing because of who we are.  NO! That is the life before our salvation!
The reason we sin, is because we are in the process of renewing our mind to the word of God that is in us, fully alive in seed form. The Kenneth Wuest translation translates Romans 12:1-2 this way:
I therefore beg of you, please, brethren, through the instrumentality of the aforementioned mercies of God, by a once-for-all presentation to place your bodies at the disposal of God, a sacrifice, a living one, a holy one, well-pleasing, your rational, sacred service. And stop assuming an outward expression that does not come from within you and is not representative of what you are in your inner being but is patterned after this age; but change your outward expression to one that comes from within and is representative of your inner being, by the renewing of your mind, resulting in your putting to the test what is the will of God, the good and well-pleasing and complete will, and having found that it meets specifications, place your approval upon it. (Rom 12:1-2)
You see it is our will, which must be yielded to His will, which is possible because we are the righteousness of God in Messiah Yeshua!
Now, let’s return to the theme of today, which is to examine the well, or the source of living water in our lives. Look with me at Ephesians 5:25-27:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. (Eph 5:25-27).
The Word of God is related to water.  The Apostle Paul relates the Word of God to a bath.  The metaphor is that the Word of God can cleanse the filth of the world.  Now you can only clean something that is at its core pure.  If it is dirty through and through, it is only fit to be discarded.  Only when you can purify something, or in this case someone, back to its pristine state do you bother.
We are the righteous of God but we need washing by the Word.  So, I want to talk about making sure we dip in the right pool.
To do this I want to look at a strange story about Isaac, the son of Promise who is the prefigured Messiah.  He is the son of the father through whom salvation comes.
We don’t know a lot about Isaac’s life other than His marriage to Rebekah, and His 2 sons Jacob and Esau.  Also, we know that he was a miracle birth and that Abraham was asked to sacrifice him to open the way for the Father to sacrifice Yeshua.  BUT, we also know that he is the picture of the Son and of us as sons.  So, I want to look at a few verses of Isaac’s life with respect to water and wells.
Let’s turn to Genesis 26
Now there was a famine in the land, besides the previous famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. So Isaac went to Gerar, to Abimelech king of the Philistines. The LORD appeared to him and said, "Do not go down to Egypt; stay in the land of which I shall tell you. "Sojourn in this land and I will be with you and bless you, for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham. "I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws." (Gen 26:1-5)
We see a time of famine in the Land of Promise. Isaac want to go to Egypt. Because of it’s geography Egypt always had water and therefore food.  Egypt would have been a source of natural provision for Isaac.  BUT God had supernatural provision for Him and God has supernatural provision for us!
So, God tells Him to stay put.  He tells Him that it is His Presence that Isaac needs, not the waters of Egypt.  Where God’s water is, His blessing is.
Next Isaac follows in Abraham’s ways and lies about Rebekah being his wife:
So Isaac lived in Gerar. When the men of the place asked about his wife, he said, "She is my sister," for he was afraid to say, "my wife," thinking, "the men of the place might kill me on account of Rebekah, for she is beautiful." It came about, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out through a window, and saw, and behold, Isaac was caressing his wife Rebekah. Then Abimelech called Isaac and said, "Behold, certainly she is your wife! How then did you say, 'She is my sister'?" And Isaac said to him, "Because I said, 'I might die on account of her.'" Abimelech said, "What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us." So Abimelech charged all the people, saying, "He who touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death." (Gen 26:6-11)
Now, I don’t fully understand why Isaac and Abraham lied about their wives but what I do know is that God protected both of them by showing their enemy the truth.  The other thing I realized is that even though they did lie, God still blessed them.  This shows me that God’s blessing is by grace and not works. Lying to protect ourselves or to succeed in life, is rooted in the carnality of thinking through our own experiences and as we understand the “rules” of life.  Isaac and Abraham before him, understood that the covenant of marriage could only be ended by death.  So, if people knew that Rebekah was his wife and they wanted her, they could only accomplish that by killing him. Instead if Rebekah was his sister then they would want to win her favor through Isaac who would be the doorway to that favor.
What Isaac wasn’t seeing is the covenant with God was greater than the covenants of man.  God would protect Isaac and Rebekah and He does!  God will protect us as we rely on Him.
Now Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. And the LORD blessed him, and the man became rich, and continued to grow richer until he became very wealthy; for he had possessions of flocks and herds and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him. (Gen 26:12-14)
By staying at his post, in a time when no one was being blessed, Isaac was  The anointing on Isaac operated in spite of the famine. He was blessed NOT because the economy was doing well but because he was the son of promise.  We are sons of promise!
Now it gets interesting!
Now all the wells which his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped up by filling them with earth. Then Abimelech said to Isaac, "Go away from us, for you are too powerful for us." And Isaac departed from there and camped in the valley of Gerar, and settled there. Then Isaac dug again the wells of water which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham; and he gave them the same names which his father had given them. But when Isaac's servants dug in the valley and found there a well of flowing water, the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with the herdsmen of Isaac, saying, "The water is ours!" So he named the well Esek, because they contended with him. (Gen 26:15-20)
The Hebrew word “esek” means to oppress or to use force to get your way.  It is used in contemporary Hebrew to mean business with the underlying idea that business is about power and manipulation, getting the most we can just because we can. If you go to the suk in Israel, it is all about bargaining.  It is the outermost way of interacting with people is the world of bargaining and power. Its root is pride.
In terms of our washing by the water of the word, this well represents the need to be right through what we know.  It is the realm of theology.  It is where we try to convince people through the rightness of the Bible.  It is arguments and brings about winners and losers.
Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over it too, so he named it Sitnah. (Gen 26:21)
Unlike esek which was about force manipulation, sitnah is the same root as satan. Now, while there are certainly outer triggers, in this case Philistines, the well is tainted by inner conflict.  Calling the well sitnah, means Isaac realized that He was in conflict because conflict was in him!  At some point we need to realize that even if we are no longer trying to prove our point to the world, we still carry the lies of the world in our heart.  The accuser of the brethren has been cast out of the throne of God, but he still speaks to the thrones in our hearts and minds.  So we wash with the impure water that is mixed with the ungodly beliefs that are rooted in our insecurities about God’s love for us. Satan whispers lies that try to keep us in performance righteousness mode and we seek to fulfill our destiny as works instead of as a blessing of God.
He moved away from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he named it Rehoboth, for he said, "At last the LORD has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land." Then he went up from there to Beersheba. (Gen 26:22-23)
Now, Isaac realizes that the Lord is the way maker.  He finally has crossed over, from being a self-sufficient person to trusting God as His director.  In that place he can be fruitful and so can we.  Once we realize that God indeed has a plan for our lives, a “Rehov” which means a paved road, then we can rest in that place and stop operating according to the heathen economy.
Then he went up from there to Beersheba. The LORD appeared to him the same night and said, "I am the God of your father Abraham; Do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you, and multiply your descendants, For the sake of My servant Abraham." So he built an altar there and called upon the name of the LORD, and pitched his tent there; and there Isaac's servants dug a well (Gen 26:23-25)
Finally Isaac, begins to walk by the Spirit.  You see now He is tuned to the living water, the well of Beersheva which is the well of the covenant, the well of seven, the well of the completed work of the cross, the seventh day.  This is where we are to live to trust in the promises of God and allow the water of the word to wash us pure!
Activation: Peter Gabriel song.
Living Water, song

Ask to show you the rehov, the path that He has for you.

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