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Faith in a future
The faith of Isaac, Jacob and Joseph
As we continue our journey through the letter to the Hebrews, and we have reached the point where the writer, in just a couple of verses, refers to the faith of Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, I want to take you back to the moment when God called Abraham.
Do you remember what God said?
Gen 12: 2-3 ““I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.””
To Isaac, Jacob and Joseph these words from God to Abraham, this blessing and this promise would have been so significant, so important, that it had the effect of determining who they were — a people who had been called out from among every other tribe and nation to be a people belonging to God.
The blessing to Abraham was not the first mention of God’s blessing.
We find it in Gen 1:28-30 “God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.
Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.
They will be yours for food.
And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.”
And it was so.”
Then again in Gen 5:1-2 “This is the written account of Adam’s family line.
When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God.
He created them male and female and blessed them.
And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.”
It was God’s will that his favour and goodness should rest upon all mankind, but we know that the fall changed that.
Instead of blessing there was a curse.
Instead of fellowship there was enmity.
Just look at Gen 3: 14-15 “So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.””
And Gen 3:17 “To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.”
The fall had consequences, not just for Adam and mankind, but for the created world, too.
It will produce food, but only through toil.
If you look carefully at verse 15 you will discover that God’s favour, or God’s blessing, is still there.
The woman has not been abandoned to Satan or left out of God’s presence.
She has a future; she will have a child.
And she is very much part of God’s plan.
God still wants to bestow his favour, but now his blessing is conditional.
It is for those who know and obey him:
Ps 128:1 “Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in obedience to him.”
Ec 8:12 “Although a wicked person who commits a hundred crimes may live a long time, I know that it will go better with those who fear God, who are reverent before him.”
Psalm 1 begins: Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked
and it ends: For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.
That curse was already there in Genesis 3:15 : “you will eat dust all the days of your life” and “he will crush your head.”
Without God’s favour, the end is only death.
The first time we witness God’s blessing, and curse, being passed on was when Noah had got drunk and fell asleep naked in his tent.
Ham saw it and reported to his two brothers, who took a garment and walked in backwards so that they would not see their father naked.
In response to this episode Noah pronounced a curse and a blessing:
gen 9: 24-27 “When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said, “Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.”
He also said, “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem.
May God extend Japheth’s territory; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth.””
We cannot dismiss these words as merely those of an angry man.
Noah was speaking here of a future, giving a prophetic message that he would not see in his lifetime, but would indeed come to pass.
Canaan was Ham’s fourth son and he received the curse, not Ham, probably because Noah’s sons, Ham included, had been blessed by God in Genesis 9:1 “Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.”
Shem, although he was not the eldest son of Noah, was singled out to be the bearer of God’s blessing and it was through one of his descendants that God was going to continue his plan of Salvation.
That descendant was Abraham who showed his faith in his obedience to God’s Call and, later, in his obedience to God’s command.
It’s not that Abraham was perfect, for therec were times in his life when he did things which were outside the will if God.
However, the writer to the Hebrews mentions none of those things.
having been reckoned by God as righteous because of his belief, not a single sin was, or would ever be held to his account.
It was faith alone which was important, and it was faith in a future.
I will make of you a great nation and through you shall all nations be blessed.
Abraham would not see this in his lifetime, but it is that promise and the promise of the land that sustained Abraham throughout the rest of his life till he died at the age of 175.
As we move on from Abraham, the writer , in the next three verses, takes us to the faith of Isaac, of Jacob and of Joseph.
Up to this point Faith has been demonstrated in what the patriarchs did.
Abel’s act of sacrifice was an act of worship.
Enoch’s faith in God was shown in his walk with God.
Noah’s faith was made clear in the work that he did for God, the building of the ark.
In Isaac, Jacob and Joseph their faith is demonstrated in what they said.
And it was all to do with their confidence in a future.
They would not see it in their lifetime, but they were convinced that God would and will keep his Promise.
Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”
The Faith of Isaac
Heb 11:20 “By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.”
We witnessed Isaac’s faith at the time of Abraham’s test of faith on Mount Moriah, and Isaac would certainly have been present when God reaffirmed his covenant with Abraham.
Gen 22:17 - 18 “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.
Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.””
We have no record that Abraham blessed Isaac, but Isaac would have known from his father that God had promised a future for him and his descendants and that even from before he was born Isaac was to be part of God’s plan: Gen 17:21 “But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.””
He would also have known that for four hundred years his descendants would be strangers in a country not their own, but that they would come back to their Promised Land.
Isaac, the son of the Promise, loved by Abraham and Sarah.
His life should have been pleasant and despite some difficulties over wells in the Valley of Gerar, he was content.
It was there that God appeared to him and repeated the Promise:
Gen 26:22-25 “He moved on from there and dug another well, and no one quarreled over it.
He named it Rehoboth, saying, “Now the Lord has given us room and we will flourish in the land.”
From there he went up to Beersheba.
That night the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham.
Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bless you and will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham.”
Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord.
There he pitched his tent, and there his servants dug a well.”
However this life of contentment did not last.
When you look at the account of his life in 25 to 27 you discover that Isaac was head of one of the most disfunctional families in the Bible.
To begin with Rebecca had been childless for about twenty years; then she had that difficult birth when Esau and jacob were born and God gave her the prophecy that the older will serv e the younger: Gen 25:23 “The Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.””
And how different they were.
Gen 25: 27-28 “The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents.
Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.”
Esau cared nothing for spiritual things.
he sold his birthright for a bowl of stew.
He married pagan Girls: Gen 26:34-35 “When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and also Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite.
They were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebekah.”
The passing on of God’s blessing from father to son was recognised by everyone in the family as being of great significance.
Isaac thought he was about to die, although in fact he lived on for more than a decade.
at this point he was driven by his own desires rather than God’s will.
He knew that Rebecca had been told by God that Jacob would be the one through whom the Promise would continue.
Yet he still seemed determined to bless Esau.
Esau, even though he was a profane man, still wanted to receive his father’s blessing.
Heb 12:17 “Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected.
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