Sunday sermon by Pastor Rajesh Mathew, 16th Feb 2025 

Genesis 26:22- 22 And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name [a]Rehoboth, because he said, “For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.”

The Lord said- 1. There is a breakthrough and a miracle with only your name written boldly on it.

Mathew 3:17- 17 And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

Luke 3:21-23- 1 When all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also was baptized; and while He prayed, the heaven was opened. 22 And the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from heaven which said, “You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased.”

• Jesus got baptised and when He prayed, the heavens opened.

The Holy Spirit says, when you pray, there will be an open door over your life. If you are a praying person, God will open miraculous doors for you. Nothing will stay closed before you.

• In Genesis 26 we read about Isaac. God opened a well for him. There is no way that we can see water in the wilderness but when Isaac prayed and dug wells and there was water in them though it was in the wilderness. The pit that God had dug was in the wilderness. 
• God is saying to somebody listening from the middle east that HE will open a miraculous door for you in the midst of that wilderness where you are.

God will bring you to your Rehoboth.

• A new well of blessing will be kept and revealed over your life in this season. If you would pray. 

1. God will bring you to your Rehoboth means ‘space, room, vastness, capacity’, you will not be crushed in lack.

It may seem impossible but a vastness is coming. For me, for you, for the church. For all those who have been praying

• Isaac had dug the same wells that were dug before in his father's time. But when he had dug it earlier, there was contention over it. Isaac did not quarrel. He moved forward. He moved from Gerar, to Isek to Sitnah. Siknah means contention, envy, bitterness, striving. When something good comes to you, strife, envy also comes with it. It stops you from enjoying the good thing. 
• But that did not stop Isaac. He did not stay there but once again by faith he moved forward in faith. He reached Rehoboth. Nobody came to quarrel there. There was no contention, there was no manipulation, there was no one who could pull him out of there. At Rehoboth there was vastness and blessing.

God is opening up a door for you

3 types of people to pray for: 

1. Those who work hard: Isaac worked hard. He spent his money. He spent his time. He wasted his time, his resources were wasted, the space was wasted. But it was then that God opened a Rehoboth over His life. No, you won't labour in vain. Your work will not go in vain. Nothing will go wasted. 

Prophecy upon your hands that whatever you do and labour for will be blessed and will increase. NO effort of yours will be in vain.

• Sometimes you need to pray to God to deliver you from the strivings of men. 

1 Corinthians 16:9- 9 For a great and effective door has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.

• Paul is saying that God has opened a door and there are opposers. The Lord will send people to help you. The devil will also send people against you, to envy you, to stop you from enjoying the blessing. In Luke 22, the Word says that Satan entered Judas (not demon but Satan himself). The devil also can use people to come against you blessing and the open door, to put mud into yoru wells. But from henceforth God will move you to another level where no one can cause contention.
• God is opening a Rehoboth over your life to see the fruit of your labour. • In 1 Corinthians 16 God opened the door and the evil brought opposers.

There is something called born again, you and I who are walking in Christ. There is a group called born against, these are people who are against the fact that you are born again.

• There are people like this in church also. They will try to choke the blessing. They are critical of everything, the protocol of the church, of the preacher, of the chairs placed etc. These are the born against in the church. 
• But God will move you into the blessing where no weapon fashioned against you will prosper. God will move you to a place of liberty, rest and spaciousness. 

2. Rehoboth means a place of rest. It is a place where nobody can cause confusion and strife. Claim that over your life. A season of rest, enlargement.

• It is not a place of tension. Most of us go through tensions in business, in married life. You don't need to live that life of perpetual tension. 

Rebel against the devil, and not against God.

WHAT DID ISAAC DO TO COME YOU THAT REHOBOTH?

1. YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE!

• Many in the past have been through the troubles you have gone through. Don't think you are the only one. Nothing that happens on the earth is new. Only God can do something new. Even COVID 19 was not a new experience, it had happened in the previous centuries too like the Spanish influenza. 

1 Corinthians 10:13- 13 No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to [a]bear it. 

• You may have been tempted but not beyond what you can handle. With that God will make a way.

Don't specialize what God has commonized!

• Cancer has attacked people before too. God has healed cancers in the past. The situation of debt that you are in has been faced by many in the past and they have been delivered out of it.

2. DON’T RELOCATE!

Genesis 26:2- 2 Then the Lord appeared to him and said: “Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land of which I shall tell you.

• Don't relocate. Don't move out to a new place just because some trouble comes your way. It's not location or relocation that is the problem but the issues is revelation. • You think going to US or Dubai will solve your problem, that’s not too. Don’t think the grass is greener on the other side. Listen to where God wants you to be.
• I am not against you going abroad. But do what God is telling you to do. Don’t leave the lace thinking that by shifting location, your life will improve. It's not the location. It's not the family you were born into or the school you went to or the school heart throb that you think you should have married.

The blessing is not where you are located but it is in the revelation that you receive from God’s Word.

• When we first bought this land, many people in the church told me that the location of this church is not conducive for everyone to come. Now you see a full church but the truth is the people have yet to come. What you are seeing is not what God has intended. The growth is only begun! 

3. DON’T DEPEND ON MAN, RELY ONLY ON GOD!

Genesis 26:1- 26 There was a famine in the land, besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines, in Gerar.

• If you want to grow, don't look to men for help, no matter how great the men may be. You should rely only on Jesus Christ. 
• Isaac went to Abhimelech. There is a limit to what man can do. Man is limited by time, space and matter. Men fail and men change. But Jesus is the same today, yesterday and forever. Keep looking only to the face of the Lord. 
• People may promise you a visa after going to a new country, but they may forget that once they reach; the ones who promised to walk with you may let you down and leave you. • Don’t look to men, no matter how wealthy or capable or influential they are.

God is faithful, God is dependable, God will never let you down. Even the one who promised to marry you, can let you down. But Jesus won’t!

Just fall in love with Jesus. Live for Him. Love only Him. 

• In your youth know God, serve Him and live for him and at the right time Go will send you the right partner.
• Don't go to kings. You want Rehoboth but don't trust men. Only God is dependable. • When you look up to God you always Go up. When you look up to men you always go down. When you look around you will only hang around! Decide where you want to look. Nobody who looked to God has been put to shame.

4. GOD APPEARED UNTO ISAAC THERE!

• Jesus came there, to the very place Isaac had worked hard and seen nothing. • In the season of famine, do not miss praying, keep building your altar. Some of you will have divine encounters. He will visit you in the midst of the furnace.
• Don’t relocate. If an ant form Kochi goes to US, will it become an elephant. If a mosquito from Mattancherry goes to Australia will it become an eagle. The lizard in your house goes to Dubai, will it become a crocodile?

It is not relocation but your relationship with Jesus Christ that brings you into the blessing.

I sense that’s some of you are going to have divine visitations and encounters from the presence of God.

In Genesis 28:16- 6 Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” 17 And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”

• In this chapter we see that Jacob left home and he was running away out of fear of his brother who was waiting to kill him. When he slept one night, placing his head on a rock, the heavens above him opened and he saw angels ascending and descending. The country and his house had shut their doors to him. While they shut their doors, the heavens opened up their doors over Jacob. He jumped out of his sleep, Jacob. He poured oil on that rock and called it Bethel! 
• Jacob only carried oil even when he left home in haste. If you carry the oil of God, the anointing of the Holy Spirit in every situation, you will see open heavens. Holy Spirit, come!! 

Carry the oil. No matter what doors shut over your life. If your hands have the oil of the Holy Spirit, God will open the door of heaven over you!

• JACOB says this is an AWESOME place.
• If you are fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit and communing with Him, God will do something Awesome. Heavens doors will always be open upon your life. Just like Jacob exclaimed this is AWESOME, you too will say that. This is an AWESOME blessing.
• In Malachi, the Lord says that if you pay the tithes into HIS storehouse, He will bless you.

When you tell God my life’s resources are yours, the Lord will say my heaven’s resources are yours!!

• The fatness of His anointing come upon you and the blessing associated upon it. Spiritual and material blessing upon you.

Genesis 28:14-15- 14 Also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. 15 Behold, I am with you and will keep[a] you wherever you 

go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.”

• When you rely on Jesus and when the doors of heaven open over your life, this blessing will follow you. I speak this blessing upon your life. 
• The door referred to a place in the Old Testament. But in the New Testament, the Door is a Person, Jesus.

John 10:7-9- 7 Then Jesus said to them again, “Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who ever came [a]before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.

• Jesus said I am the door. The door of the sheep, not the door of foxes and wild dogs. • Those who come to Jesus will experience Love, eternal life, peace, health, strength, prosperity and blessing. Jesus is the Door of Blessing and Eternal Life. 

BE BORN AGAIN AND NOT BORN AGAINST