Sermon Tone Analysis

*Hebrews 11:20…* By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even regarding things to come.

*Commentary*

On the day that Abraham took Isaac upon the mountain to slay him, per God’s command (Gen.

22:1-2), there is no doubt that he learned about God’s promise to bless Abraham and his offspring.

Isaac represented mankind on that altar of sacrifice, and when the man of faith, his father Abraham, demonstrated his strong faith, God provided a substitute for Isaac and spared his life by providing a ram instead of his son Isaac.

That is the picture of Jesus Christ dying on mankind’s behalf.

And Isaac lived it firsthand.

He knew his life was over, and he probably had the same fears as anyone else would have had.

Then God spared him, and that day Isaac learned about the God of heaven first hand.

Up to that point Abraham had likely told Isaac all about the promise of the land, the seed, and the blessing (Gen.

12:1-3, 7).

But on that day Isaac lived it, saw it, and believed it.

It is likely that on that day Isaac’s faith was solidified.

Now one might expect Isaac to have lived a life full of faith, but strangely this was not so – at least not from the very brief account given of his life in Genesis 25:19-27:46.

Although Isaac lived longer than any of the patriarchs the story of his life in the Bible is shorter than Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, or Moses.

God did pass the promises onto Isaac (Gen.

26:3-4), and although these promises should have given him a sense of security and hope, Isaac seems to have lived in fear most of his life.

When the Philistines of Gerar (near Gaza) questioned him about his wife Rebekah, he lied about her saying she was his sister.

He was afraid they would kill him if she were his wife so that they could steal her from him (Gen.

26).

When King Abimelech was informed of who Rebekah really was he showed more fear of God than Isaac did!

Even after Isaac became wealthy while living in Gerar he seems to have spent his life questioning God up to that point and grumbling about his lot.

When things finally went his way he said, “At last the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land” (Gen.

26:22).

When Isaac finally moved back into the land he came to Beersheba in the south, and then God repeated the covenant promises to him (Gen.

26:24-25).

Isaac’s life seems unfaithful at times, but at other times he was indeed faithful.

His wife was barren, but she later gave birth to twins – Jacob and Esau.

Esau was Isaac’s favorite son even though God made it clear it was Jacob who would be blessed and loved by God.

Rebekah had to intervene through deception to get Jacob to receive Isaac’s blessing, but her deception was faithless.

God worked through it anyway, but the whole story puts Isaac in a bad light.

The point of Isaac’s life, however, is his faith.

The author of Hebrews, without condoning Isaac’s seemingly rebellious actions, points to the faith he had in blessing his sons at all.

One thing is for sure, and that is that Isaac believed in God’s covenant blessings.

This is revealed in Isaac’s blessing of his son – even though he thought he was blessing Esau (Gen.

27:27-29).

Isaac believed God and looked to the future for God’s fulfillment of what He promised.

The Greek text of Heb.

11:20 literally says, “By faith, even concerning things to come, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau.”

In blessing them, Isaac literally “spoke well of them; he praised them.”

*Food for Thought*

The blessing was an act of faith because it concerned a time beyond their lives.

When a person looks beyond their own life and into the future, they act on faith.

Simply teaching our children about Christ and leaving them an inheritance – both spiritual and financial – is an act of faith because it plans for their eternal future.

A person has strong faith when they know they’re saved – when they have the “assurance of things hoped for” – a certainty about God’s plan.

*Hebrews 11:21… *By faith Jacob, as he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshiped, /leaning /on the top of his staff.

*Commentary*

The next man of faith in Hebrews 11 is Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham.

God established His eternal covenant with Abraham and later with Isaac.

Then he established the same covenant with Jacob (Gen.

28:13-17) whom He later named Israel (Gen.

32:24-32).

The account of Jacob’s life has far more detail than that of Isaac.

From the day he is born his life reveals a colorful character.

He seems to have been an expert at deception and manipulation.

He cunningly took his brother’s birthright, then he later deceived his aging father in a successful attempt to receive the blessing of the firstborn.

His mother Rebekah may have taught him everything he knew, for she too appears very cunning (Gen.

27:5ff.).

Jacob traveled away from home in order to avoid his brother’s conspiracy against his life, and he found himself employed by a man (Laban) who seems to have had all of Jacob’s negative qualities and more.

It was this man for whom Jacob worked for 20 years, and also this man who became his father-in-law.

Jacob married his two daughters, Leah and Rachel, and worked as one of his hired hands.

At times Jacob acted wisely, and at times he was downright spineless, as in the case of his daughter who was raped by Shechem (cf.

Gen. 34).

He had two wives and two concubines by which he had twelve sons – the tribes of Israel – and one daughter named Dinah.

While reading the account of his life “faith” is not likely the first thing that comes to one’s mind about this man, but then again, no one’s life, if put under a microscope, would ever reveal a man of faith 100% of the time based simply upon his actions.

People are sinful, and God works through those sins in order to bring about His eternal promises.

Jacob was indeed a faithful man, and this is evident from what he believed about the future and how he blessed his sons concerning the future.

Jacob told Joseph just before he died while they were in Egypt: “Behold, I am about to die, but God will be with you and bring you back to the land of your fathers” (Gen.

48:21).

There they were in Egypt, outside of the Promised Land, but Jacob still believed God’s promise of possessing the land.

So the land which Jacob never possessed, he passed on to his 12 sons in faith, knowing that God would be true to his word.

He had the “assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things unseen” in giving these blessings (Genesis 47:29-31; 48:8-20).

Jacob, though weak physically, was strong in his faith, and his faith was expressed in the content of his blessing: “Let them grow into a multitude… a multitude of nations” (Gen.

48:16, 19).

Verse 21 says that Jacob died “leaning on the top of his staff.”

But Genesis 47:31 says that he “bowed himself on the head of the bed.”

The apparent contradiction is reconciled by the Hebrew word for “bed” and “staff” which are exactly alike in their Hebrew consonants.

Of course Hebrew has no vowels in its original text; those were added sometime around AD 700.

So “bed” and “staff” look identical without vowels.

The Septuagint (Greek translation of the Hebrew OT written in 250 BC) renders the passage in Genesis as “staff,” but later Jewish scribes placed vowel pointings that rendered it as “bed.”

“Top of the staff” appears original, and the rendering of “bed” in Gen. 47:31 would be a vowel pointing error added by later scribes.

*Food for Thought*

            Jacob believed in the future of his people because God revealed it.

Not much has changed since Jacob except that so much more about the future has been revealed since Jacob’s day.

In fact, the future has been revealed to strengthen the faith of God’s people (cf. 1 Thes.

4:18).

He’s promised to return, and our faith is expressed in our eager expectation of Christ’s return.

*Hebrews 11:22… *By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the exodus of the sons of Israel, and gave orders concerning his bones.

*Commentary*

            Joseph was the eleventh son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham.

His story in the Bible is one of the most beloved stories, and there is nothing in the account of Joseph’s life that puts him in a bad light.

As the son of Jacob’s favorite wife Rachel, he was indeed Jacob’s favorite son, and his brothers knew it.

When Jacob showed his favoritism toward Joseph by giving him a multi-colored robe his brothers hated him.

To make matters worse, Joseph had two dreams whereby he saw his brothers bowing down to him.

When he made this known to his brothers they were furious.

So when Jacob sent Joseph to check on his brothers while out in the fields, they took advantage of the opportunity to seize him by force.

Though they spoke of killing him, they wound up selling him into slavery to a group of Ishmaelites who later sold him to the Egyptians.

Of course they covered over their crime by telling Jacob that wild animals killed him.

Joseph’s story of faith basically begins with him in Egypt.

Clearly God led him through the darkest days of tribulation in order to bring him to the point where his faith would be fully mature.

Joseph, because God’s presence was so strong in his life, found himself second in command over all of Egypt – only the Pharaoh was higher in authority than he.

He managed the food supply in Egypt because he had foreseen the drought that the land was enduring.

People came from all over to buy food from Joseph – including his brothers who were living in Canaan with Jacob.

When they arrived to purchase food they didn’t even recognize their brother Joseph, but over the course of time he finally revealed himself to them.

Joseph forgave his brothers telling them that what they meant for evil God meant for good (Gen.

50:20).

Eventually Joseph moved all of his brothers and his aging father Jacob into Egypt to escape the famine in the land.

As Joseph was dying he told his brothers: “I am about to die, but God will surely take care of you and bring you up from this land to the land which He promised on oath to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob… God will surely take care of you, and you shall carry my bones up from here.”

Clearly Joseph knew the Abrahamic covenant and believed God’s promises.

He believed them so firmly that he commanded that his bones be taken up from Egypt after he died when the Israelites would one day return to the land.