Had Isaac not gone to Abimelech, King of Gerar, he would have no necessity for denying his wife; but the slightest divergence from the true line of conduct superinduces spiritual weakness. It was when Peter stood and warmed himself at the high-priest's fire that he denied his Master. Now, it is manifest that Isaac was not really happy in Gerar. True, the Lord says unto him, "sojourn in this land;" but how often does the Lord give directions to his people morally suitable to the condition he knows them to be in, and calculated also to arouse them to a true sense of that condition? He directed Moses, in Num. xiii. to send men to search the land of Canaan; but had they not been in a low moral condition such a step would not have been necessary. We know well that faith does not need "_to spy out_" when God's promise lies before us. Again, he directed Moses to choose out seventy elders to help him in the work; but had Moses fully entered into the dignity and blessedness of his position, he would not have needed such a direction. So, in reference to the setting up of a king, in 1 Sam. viii. They ought not to have needed a king. Hence, we must always take into consideration the condition of an individual or a people to whom a direction is given before we can form any correct judgment as to the direction. 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.