From sojourner to inhabiter - Gen 26: 1-5

The original Korean text: http://blog.naver.com/stevision/50025358680

 

You are a foreigner if the land where you live is not your father's homeland, that is, if you live alone away from your father's hometown. Abraham, Isaac's father, had lived as a foreigner in Canaan. But his son Isaac was not a foreigner for Abraham, Isaac's father, begot Isaac in the land of Canaan.

 

Some time after Isaac was married, there was a severe famine in Canaan. Isaac was thinking of moving to Egypt where there is the Nile. But God said to him, "Do not depart from your birthplace for I will give this land to your descendants."

 

Why did God prohibit Isaac who had no food from going to Egypt where there was food? Because God did not want Isaac to live the life of a stranger in a strange land. Even by the civil law of our country (Korea), if one uses another's land for 20 years without interference from the owner, it becomes his own. The land belongs to the first man to occupy it. And even if there is an owner of the land, anyone can make it his own if the owner leaves the land. When the famine broke out in Canaan, the landowners living there might have moved to Egypt with their possessions. They had to live there as a stranger. But Isaac, who endured the period of famine by faith in God's promise, now had the opportunity to occupy the land in which his father had lived as a stranger, but which was left unowned now. Many of them who departed from Canaan might have died on the way or in Egypt. At last, the lands without owner were before Isaac.

 

Isaac's position in Israel's history is that he has made Canaan the home of the Israelites. Later, Jacob, Isaac's son, and Jacob's sons went to Egypt, and they lived there, thinking that Canaan was their homeland where their forefathers had lived. When they got the chance, they returned to their ancestral homeland and built a nation Israel. Had Isaac left the land of Canaan because of hunger, Israelites would have lost the legal basis to return to the land of Canaan and to build the nation. That's why we should not give up what God has given us, when we feel a little hunger.

 

The same is true of church-life. In the church, there are believers who are like hosts and those who are like guests. If a believer who has worked like a host in his church goes to other church because the church is in trouble, he can gain only the status of a stranger in the new church. But even if you have come to a new church and been like a guest there, you can be the host of the church if you serve the Lord faithfully there whether there are good things or bad things. Isn't the same true of your job? He who is patient advances higher and higher in the company, while he who is not patient works as a new employee for life.