By Pastor Brooks Potteiger
Pastor Brooks Potteiger is an ordained minister in the CREC. He has also received Master’s degrees in Christian Apologetics and Pastoral Care and Counseling . He enjoys live-edge woodworking, photography, the poetry of George Herbert, the sturdy theology of the Puritans, the creative destruction of a chainsaw, and the convulsive belly laughs that accompany G.K. Chesterton amongst friends.
12 And Isaac sowed in that land (that is Gerar) and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him, 13 and the man became rich, and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. 14 He had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him. 15 (Now the Philistines had stopped and filled with earth all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father.) 16 And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we.”
17 So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar and settled there. 18 And Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, which the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham. And he gave them the names that his father had given them. 19 But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of spring water, 20 the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” So he called the name of the well Esek, because they contended with him. 21 Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that also, so he called its name Sitnah. 22 And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, saying, “For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.”
23 From there he went up to Beersheba. 24 And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham’s sake.” 25 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….
32 That same day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well that they had dug and said to him, “We have found water.” (Genesis 26:12-25; 32)
How do the sojournings of a patriarch from 4,000 years past relate to the encouragement of Christian educators? Why choose Genesis 26 as the concrete slab to build such an exhortation?
My defense for doing so is two-fold: Firstly, I have to admit I have been preaching through Genesis for a few years at church so I oft have Genesis on my mind. Secondly, as I consider our current cultural moment and your task as Classical Christian educators I find much common ground with you and Isaac’s situation.
Allow me to make a few parallels to explain. Beginning in verse 12 we learn that Isaac was tremendously blessed of God. He was astonishingly rich and as Americans in 2024 so are we. We have been trusted with a great inheritance and an embarrassment of riches both physically and spiritually. We can acquire food and medicine easily and access immediate information about anything at the tip of our fingers. If you hit a snag on any project you have YouTube to pull up a personal mentor who will walk your through each step to completion.
We have immediate access to, not just information, but literally anything, thanks to Amazon Prime. If any other person at any other point in human history saw us use this portal to the world’s goods, they would think we were practicing wizardry. Ponder this for a moment: if we want something we pull a magic wand out of our pocket, tap a button and it just appears on our front porch that same day, which is simply incredible.
So I go back to where I started. Like Isaac, we’ve been blessed with riches.
Andwe are not just physically rich, but we are rich spiritually as well. We have received a startling inheritance Even amidst the present onslaught of secularism in our day, we are still free to worship the Triune God on the Lord’s Day in broad daylight, through a live microphone and without fear. The currency we print in our country still reads, “in God we trust,” and our forefathers didn’t mean some vague sky-fairy by that; they meant the God of the Bible. In courtrooms throughout this land we still swear on the Bible and many judges still actually think that means something.
Here in Tennessee we are especially blessed by the recent actions of our legislature who enacted Resolution 803, which was a call to consecrate July as a time for prayer, repentance, and intermittent fasting. Consider this excerpt from the Resolution:
BE IT RESOLVED, that we recognize that God, as Creator and King of all Glory, has both the authority to judge and to bless nations or states.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we recognize our sins and shortcomings before Him and humbly ask His Forgiveness.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we ask the Lord Jesus to heal our land and remove the violence, human-trafficking, addiction, and corruption.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we ask that the Holy Spirit fill our halls of government, our classrooms, our places of business, our churches, and our homes with peace, love, and joy.
Though the spiritual inheritance we’ve received is often mocked and disregarded and obscured, it remains. Indeed, the Christian foundation our nation was built upon still continues to bless and protect us in manifold ways.
Again, like Isaac, we are a very rich people.
However, there is another way we are like Isaac in the text, which is the angle I really want to shape our time together this morning. In the providence of God, Isaac was given the task of re-digging wells his father had dug but that had been filled in with dirt.
In fact, you may have noticed that digging wells dominate the whole account of Isaac’s sojourning here and there are, if I counted rightly, 6 wells that are mentioned in chapter 26:
- There’s the wells that Abraham dug (but had been filled in)
- There’s Isaac’s re-digging of them
- Then there’s Isaac’s herdsmen re-digging wells in the valley (which Gerar herdsman claim it, “Esek”)
- another well that was quarried over (“Sitnah”)
- another well that they didn’t fight over (“Rehoboth”)
- Then there’s the well by the altar in Beersheba.
And, as good Bible readers, we know repetition is meant to get our attention. So, what’s the significance of the wells? Why do they dominate this section?
Many reflections could be made here. Here’s one: the well reminds us that the greatness of Isaac’s inheritance didn’t much matter if his people didn’t have access to fresh water. The promise, the people, the inheritance, and the faith wouldn’t survive if Isaac didn’t do the hard work of well digging.
And here is what I want you to understand at the outset of this year. The Lord has given you a good and noble task, but not an easy one. He has called you to be the Isaac’s of Christian education for our children. You are called to dig spiritual wells in the classroom with your words and with your way and with your faith. It is your task to allow the fresh, cool water of the transcendent virtues; the good, the true, and the beautiful to flow freely into the minds and then down into the hearts of this years providentially picked crop of students.
It is both weighty and glorious that Christian parents have entrusted you to some of the most important work on the planet, digging wells to water the souls of the next generation. And, like Isaac your task is especially challenging in this day because, in many ways we are having to re-dig the wells that once were.
In times past Christians used to take the reality of the transcendent virtues as a given. It was built into the common worldview and was in the air we breathed culturally. It was the standard issue education for most children. Indeed, around the founding of America, The New England Primer, which was the foundational textbook for American schools before the 1790’s, was brimming with rich Puritan theology, the Westminster Catechism was standard issue with repentance and prayer baked into the curriculum.
But the Philistines of secularism have stopped up those wells and the church, in large measure (and even unwittingly) watched while they did.
They have dumped the dirt of worldliness rather than godliness,. Of cynical skepticism rather than genuine tethered inquire. Disguised under the banner of “neutral education”, secularists have hauled truckloads of dirt clogging wells that were hewn long ago. The result of this is that the present default education often does not draw water from the well of the objective transcendent virtues, let alone of the Lordship of Christ. Rather, the mind of the modern student is steeped in the cesspool of subjectivism.
There thirsty souls are told that they can be whoever they want to be and they can do whatever they want to do. Students are not offered the living water of the Bible but are catechized that the Word of God is deceitful rather than their hearts, and that the Word should be questioned and amended or disregarded if it does’t conform to their immediate desires. The students in our day take their ethical cues more from Taylor Swift than from the Ten Commandments and the students you are charged to teach certainly are not immune.
All of this masquerades under the banner of freedom or progressivism but is, in actuality, an awful and agonizing burden to place on the young. They are told, in essence, that you are a god and, therefore, but create the world ex nihilo. This is not freedom. This is bondage.
And this is why a kind God has placed you at this post this year. To give you a task that will matter forever: To be educational Isaacs. To dig the well again so that the fresh water of objective reality can flow. In this task you are liberating your students from the crushing burden of being the god of their story by reminding them day by day and over and over again Who is. That it is t Lord Jesus Christ who is the hero of the True Story. It is He who is the Lord of the land and the King of the Kingdom. And, He is Sovereign over every subject, not just “chapel.” He is the Lord over their study of science, and literature, and history and rest time, and story time, and every other bullet point of every syllabus.
Christ and His Word are the headwaters, the spring from which every well in every room is fed. Day by day, you have the opportunity to tell them this Better, True Story.
History is not just a dusty rehearsing of dates and names but is a human recounting of God’s providence and authorship over the centuries. Most importantly history shows how Christ has dramatically and unceasingly caused His gospel to spread throughout the world through the vehicle of His Church.
As Chesterton famously quipped, “Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”
So, you tell History by placing the highlighter on the HIS and, we do so, not just to inform them about the past but to fill them with hope and courage for the future. Our children won’t be confounded by these strange days. Rather, they’ll say as they survey our current scene, “I’ve read this one before! Things are pretty dark and dire, therefor Christ MUST be about to do something incredible. Something that the saints 500 years from now will talk about.”
You teach them that Science is not just Science. Rather, it is thinking the thoughts of our brilliant, beautiful, purposeful Creator after Him. We teach them how it is not just the heavens that declare His glory but it is also His glory to conceal a matter and it is our glory to seek them out. Indeed, Proverbs 25:2 is likely the best definition of Science you will ever find.
You will teach them that literature is not just literature but it’s all an echo of the True Story. That, of course, Orcs are real and Sauron is real. But so are Elves and so is Aragorn. And that is because redemption is real and a King will soon return. And Sam, of course, is real too. Because loyalty and integrity and faithfulness is a far stronger force than brute strength – or Orcan grumbles.
We teach them that art is not just a sporadic, subjective expression from the synapses of a bewildered evolutionary accident. No, art can be analyzed as good or bad because beauty is objective. And we do good art insofar as we accurately reflect and reframe the glory of God in His world. And we can do art because we bear the imago Dei which is being redeemed through Jesus Christ.
We teach them that music class matters because our God is a singing God. He sung the world into creation and He sings over His people with joy (as Zephaniah tells us). And all of heaven’s angels sang in amazement, at the Creation of the earth (see Job). So, we love to sing and we strive to do it well. Both to, with the angels, answer back to our Creator in worship. And also because, like our Creator, our singing creates.It causes something to well up in our hearers that didn’t exist before. It creates new rush of joy. And it also often evokes strange pangs of pathos. That is because music done well often awakens our homesickness for the High Country, as Lewis called it. You all are the ones who help us parents teach them the deeper magic beneath music class.
Lewis suspected that when he spoke this ways some would claim he’s playing tricks with his words. To that he responded:
“Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education system has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modem philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth.”
But not at your institution. No. you’ll offer them living water. So, dig the well. Enchant them with the beauty and clarity and sanity that only the gospel of Christ’s Creative and Redemptive power can bring to every subject.
In closing, just two exhortations as you reach for that holy shovel of Classical Christian education:
Firstly, remember well digging is hard and frustrating. The work is slow. The results aren’t immediate. Blisters are inevitable. The blisters of discipline issues. Of not having the parental buy-in on something that would make a situation a whole lot easier. The blisters borne of grading poorly written papers, wrought with logical fallacies, after having taught them logic for two years. All whilst nursing a low grade headache. The blisters of seeming teenage apathy while you wonder if any of this is getting through at all.
Blisters will come. Frustration will come. And when they do you will remember that they are a feature, not a bug. And that is because the students are not the only ones who God will be maturing this year, You are also. God is a good Father who disciplines all those He loves, students and teachers alike. Well digging wasn’t easy for Isaac and it won’t always be for you either.
So, be of good cheer. fFrustrations will come, indeed, they must come! And that is by design. So will grace. So will maturity. So decide now to be a happy warrior on purpose when they do.
Secondly, when frustrations do come,remember that well digging is always an act of faith. Here is some strangely freeing encouragement: you cannot cause the good you long to see happen in these students. You cannot effect soul change. You cannot bring about sanctification. You can help cause “aha” moments. You can get them to recite facts, and poems and wonderful things. But you, in your own strength, cannot bring about true spiritual growth. That is the work of the Spirit alone. He is the only One powerful enough to make sanctification stick.
Or, in keeping with our metaphor, you can’t create water. Only Christ can. But you can dig a well.
You cannot produce spiritual fruit. Only the Spirit can. But you can build a trellis by faith, then watch the Spirit do His thing.
And He will. He can be trusted. He loves these student more than you do. He’s more committed to your work than you are. And His purposes cannot fail. As Paul reminded the Philippian church,
“I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6).
And all God’s people said: “phew.”
So, dig the well, by faith, five minutes at a time, day after day, trusting that in 10 months we will be able to survey the souls of these students and say what Isaac’s servants said at the end of our text today:
32 That same day [after Isaac had a feast with Abimelech] Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well that they had dug and said to him, “We have found water.”
