But again it may be said, if Isaac's position in Gerar was wrong, how do we read, "Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received the same year an hundred-fold: and the Lord blessed him." (Ver. 12.) I reply, we can never judge that a person's condition is right because of prosperous circumstances. We have had already to remark that there is a great difference between the Lord's presence and his blessing. Many have the latter without the former; and, moreover, the heart is prone to mistake the one for the other,--prone to put the blessing for the presence; or at least to argue that the one must ever accompany the other. This is a great mistake. How many do we see surrounded by God's blessings, who neither have, nor wish for, God's presence? It is important to see this. A man may "wax great, and go forward, and grow until he becomes very great, and have possession of flocks, and possession of herds, and great store of servants," and all the while not have the full, unhindered joy of the Lord's presence with him. Flocks and herds are not the Lord. They are things on account of which the Philistines might envy Isaac, whereas they never would have envied him on account of the Lord's presence. He might have been enjoying the sweetest and richest communion with God, and the Philistines have thought nothing whatever about it, simply because they had no heart to understand or appreciate such a reality. Flocks, herds, servants, and wells of water they could appreciate; but the divine presence they could not appreciate.
However, Isaac at length makes his way from amongst the Philistines, and gets up to Beersheba. "And _the Lord appeared unto him_ the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father; fear not, for _I am with thee_, and will bless thee" (Ver. 24.) Mark, it was not the Lord's blessing merely, but the Lord himself. And why? because Isaac had left the Philistines, with all their envy, and strife, and contention behind, and gone up to Beersheba. Here the Lord could show himself to his servant. The blessings of his liberal hand might follow him during his sojourn in Gerar; but his presence could not there be enjoyed. To enjoy God's presence we must be where he is, and he certainly is not to be found amid the strife and contention of an ungodly world; and hence, the sooner the child of God gets away from all such, the better. So Isaac found it. He had no rest in his own spirit; and he assuredly did not in any wise serve the Philistines by his sojourn amongst them. It is a very common error to imagine that we serve the men of this world by mixing ourselves up with them in their associations and ways. The true way to serve them is to stand apart from them in the power of communion with God, and thus show them the pattern of a more excellent way.