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If you would, take your Bibles and turn this evening to our text, which will be from Hebrews
chapter 11.
This evening we’re looking at verses 17 through 22 of Hebrews chapter 11.
Please give your attention to the reading of God’s word.
By faith, Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau.
By faith, Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff.
By faith, Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones.
Amen. You may be seated.
Let’s pray.
Father in heaven, we come to you this evening.
We come because in and of ourselves we do not have the eyes to see,
the hearts to believe and understand, the ears to hear what you have for us in this life-giving word.
So we ask for your spirit, that you would open up our hearts to hear and receive it.
You would open up the mouth of the preacher to give people, your people, food from your word.
We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
What will come next?
My wife’s grandmother, Ruby Cleary, made extensive preparations for life to continue after she was gone.
Some people never think beyond their own death, but not her.
She thought far beyond her own death, making preparations for her children and her grandchildren.
Her husband passed on a decade before her, and her oldest son, Kevin, was mentally disabled.
So she made him a ward of the state and set up a trust fund to care for him for the rest of his life.
But more than that, she got together with a group of moms that she knew who had similarly challenged children
and planned the construction of a whole group home for them all to live in.
They had only barely laid the foundation when she passed away, but the plans were already set and in place.
And it became a place for Kevin to be cared for when she passed away.
Her foresight far beyond her own death enabled her to prepare for her son to be cared for in a beautiful home,
surrounded by his friends.
She also made plans for her grandchildren, setting up college funds for each of them from which my wife benefited.
She was not an especially wealthy woman, but she could see far beyond her own life to her children and grandchildren
and made preparations for those that came after her.
Not everything worked out the way she had planned, but because of her ability to see beyond her own life,
her children and her grandchildren, she set them up with a legacy.
Tonight, under the banner of death-defying faith, we return to Hebrews 11 to see how an unshakable confidence
in the unseen and a rock-solid conviction that God rewards those who seek him
emboldened the patriarchs to live and die with eternity in view.
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph did not merely endure the trials in their life,
but they triumphed over them, looking past the grave to the God who keeps every promise.
We will trace this thread in three movements this evening.
Number one, Abraham’s parable of resurrection, how faith turned a father’s knife into a forecast of Easter morning.
Number two, Isaac and Jacob’s benedictions, how dying men spoke living words that still echo in the covenant.
And number three, Joseph’s skeletal conviction, how a coffin in Egypt became a compass pointing to Canaan.
And each scene confronts us with the same question.
Will we trust God when the path of obedience leads straight through the valley of the shadow of death?
Let’s fix our eyes on these clouds of witnesses and pray that their death-defying faith becomes ours.
Number one, Abraham’s parable of resurrection.
Verse 17, By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac.
And he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son.
In our passage, we find the author of Hebrews circling back around to highlight another aspect of Abraham’s life of faith.
The account of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is one of the most famous Old Testament stories.
I think the raw emotion of being commanded by God to sacrifice one of your own children,
especially your only son, probably is what makes it poignant even to those outside of Christianity.
It’s hard to imagine what it would take to believe God enough to obey him to the point of sacrificing your only son.
But in this case, for Abraham, it was even harder.
Isaac wasn’t just the only son born to Sarah and him,
but he was also the designated instrument of God’s promise of uncountable descendants.
Isaac had been produced by the power of God, the power of God’s promise,
from a situation in which ordinary conception was no longer possible.
And it was in Isaac that God’s promise of descendants was bound up.
Abraham had already tried to help God out in two other instances.
First, he had suggested in Genesis 15 that his servant, Eliezer of Damascus, be his heir.
But God refused in Genesis 15, reiterating his promise to Abraham of children from Abraham himself.
Then Abraham had a child with Hagar, Sarah’s servant,
and suggested in Genesis 17, verse 18, that Ishmael be the bearer of God’s promise.
But again, God refused Abraham’s offer,
insisting that the promised child would come miraculously from Abraham and Sarah themselves.
Finally, Isaac arrives to the astonishment and joy of Abraham and Sarah.
And then comes the baffling command concerning Isaac.
Sacrifice your only son, your pride and joy, the fulfillment and bearer of the promises of God.
This was a test of Abraham’s faith.
Verse 17 states it plainly.
I think you and I all sooner or later face Mount Moriah moments ourselves.
Mount Moriah, of course, being the mountain that Abraham went up to sacrifice Isaac.
Faith does not grow in a vacuum.
Faith grows through exercise, through trial, and through testing.
Romans chapter 4 reflects on the story of Abraham and his faith.
In this instance as well, Romans chapter 4, verses 18 through 21,
reflects on the story of Abraham leading up to the birth of Isaac.
It says, In hope, he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations.
As he had been told, so shall your offspring be.
He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead,
since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the bareness of Sarah’s womb.
No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God,
but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God,
fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.
Abraham’s faith was tested at each stage of his life.
Go out somewhere you don’t know.
Trust me to give you a son.
Now sacrifice him.
A trial, a testing of faith, involves an incongruity
between what can be seen with your eyes and what is promised.
When the promise and the sight match up, there’s no need for faith.
But faith bridges that gap between what things look like now and what has been promised.
Abraham had been practicing this all along, up to this point,
with God giving him promises which didn’t match up to the way things looked in the present.
God didn’t give Abraham these trials just to mess with him.
They were carefully crafted to cultivate Abraham’s faith.
The same is true, of course, for you and I.
God uses everything, even Satan, to allow doubts to creep up, assail us.
We see that in the story of Job.
But while Satan’s purpose is to make you lose your faith, give up, hate God and reject him,
God’s purpose is never that you lose your faith, but that it grows.
Sometimes it can feel like you’re barely hanging on by fingernails of faith, about to slip into despair.
And you can wonder, is God making my life hard just for fun, or so that I’ll give up?
His commands seem impossible to square with his intention for my greatest good and ultimate satisfaction.
Or life circumstances seem to be causing me to question his wisdom, purposes, power, or goodness.
Martha and Mary were starting to ask that question of Jesus when he showed up at the tomb of Lazarus.
Abraham had probably asked that question of God’s dealing with him as he wandered through Canaan,
as a stranger, having left houses, land, stability, with a perpetual promise of a son,
which became less likely year after year.
But each time the Lord came through and fulfilled his promise.
And this is actually one of the top reasons that we ought to be in frequent prayer.
When you’re bringing things to the Lord in prayer, you’ll notice when he answers those prayers.
And this will strengthen your faith.
Faith is not strengthened by assuring yourself that you’ve got this.
There is value in gaining maturity so that you’re not overwhelmed, thinking you can’t handle anything.
But faith is not about self-assurance. It’s about confidence in God.
God confidence. And it comes from seeking God’s help, obeying him, and seeing him come through.
Then we come to Abraham’s most challenging trial of faith of all, a command to sacrifice his own son.
Yet as we see in our passage, Abraham’s faith held up.
Verses 17 and 18.
In Genesis chapter 22, verse 3, we read that Abraham rose early in the morning to obey the Lord.
Genesis 22 doesn’t tell us much about what Abraham was thinking.
But Hebrews 11, 19 tells us he made the logical deduction that was only possible from faith.
He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead.
Abraham believed that Isaac was the fulfillment of God’s promise, the one through whom his descendants must be named.
And since he was called to kill him, suddenly the most unusual occurrence of resurrection became the most likely outcome in Abraham’s mind.
Abraham got to the point where he was expecting God to do something he had never seen or probably even heard of happening.
Resurrection.
Abraham had stopped doubting God’s means to achieve his purpose and promise.
And despite having no precedent for resurrection, he was so confident that Isaac would rise from the dead that he was able to attempt to go through with the slaughter of his own son.
Abraham was looking beyond Isaac’s death.
He was believing that nothing, not even death, could stop God’s promise from coming true.
He had stopped trying to help God out and had learned to finally and fully trust God to fulfill his promises.
Whenever an outcome is beyond our sight or ability, we’re tempted to doubt.
But when the path of obedience is clear, faith is what enables faithful obedience.
Verse 19 says that even though God intervened before death, Isaac’s rescue was a figurative resurrection.
Verse 19, he considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.
Now this phrase, figuratively speaking, is literally in the Greek the word for parable.
Now the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22 has long been seen as pointing to the substitutionary sacrifice of the beloved son of God on the cross.
The ram that was caught in the thicket, which saved Abraham’s beloved son through substitution,
was pointing to the one and only son whom the father sent to die for sins so that whoever believes on him would not perish but have eternal life.
And God commends Abraham’s faith in Genesis 22, verse 12.
Now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son from me.
And Romans chapter 4, verses 22 through 25, comments further on the relationship of faith to God’s counting Abraham as righteous.
Romans chapter 4, verse 22.
It is not written for his sake alone, but for ours also.
And it will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus Christ our Lord,
who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
The resurrection of Christ seals the justification of believers,
so that those who put their trust in Christ Jesus are counted as having obeyed God perfectly and never sinned.
Isaac’s figurative resurrection gave life to Abraham’s physical descendants.
Isaac’s physical descendant Christ’s resurrection gave spiritual life to Abraham’s spiritual descendants who share the faith of Abraham.
Isaac’s figurative resurrection gave life to Abraham’s physical descendants,
but Isaac’s physical descendant Christ’s resurrection gave spiritual life to Abraham’s spiritual descendants who share the faith of Abraham.
But as the author of Hebrews continues to think about faith,
he turns to the faith of Abraham’s son and grandson displayed in their deathbed benedictions,
which brings us to number two, Isaac and Jacob’s benedictions.
Verses 20 through 21, by faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau.
By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff.
The theme that we have seen running through these verses has been that of faith that can see a reality beyond death.
Abraham saw the life of Isaac beyond Isaac’s death.
Abraham didn’t know how it would happen, but he knew that somehow Isaac would be alive beyond this call to sacrifice him.
Death was not the end in Abraham’s mind because of his faith.
And we see that same kind of death-defying faith present in the lives of Isaac and Jacob.
Isaac and Jacob, those separate individuals, serve similar points in our passage,
giving a blessing by faith to those that would come after them.
Verse 20, by faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau.
Those of us who know the story from Genesis know that Isaac’s conduct and motives are not without fault,
not to mention the reprehensible deception by Jacob and his mother.
But once again, the author of Hebrews is not intending to tell the whole story here.
His point is not the well-known flaws. His point is the faith that empowers and emboldens spiritual actions, supernatural actions.
The adults and children who attended the Presbyterial Ohio Youth Camp in June will recall that the whole theme of the camp that week was on benedictions.
We don’t always think that much about benedictions at the end of worship services, but I think we ought to.
Now our culture, more broadly, considers prayers, even religion in general, as offensive at worst, but cute and meaningless at best.
And if we’re not careful in the church, we can sometimes be inclined to view our religious practices in worship as merely symbolic.
Sometimes it might come from a desire to distance ourselves from overly mystical views and practices within other branches of Christianity,
which is understandable, but it doesn’t mean it’s correct.
A benediction is a powerful word of blessing that is half prayer, half declaration, rightly issued by a minister of God on behalf of God.
When God commanded Aaron to bless the people of Israel in his name, the benediction of Numbers chapter 6, he concludes in verse 27,
So they shall put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.
Honestly, one of the top reasons I come to worship is to hear the benediction.
To receive that blessing from God, which I so desperately need to keep living a life of faith.
But in Hebrews chapter 11, verses 20 and 21, we’re reminded of the factor of faith in pronouncing benedictions.
If you recall the story of Isaac blessing Jacob and Esau, which is found in Genesis chapter 27,
Isaac didn’t consider his words mere well wishes for his children.
Once he had first pronounced that blessing upon Jacob, he could not take it back.
And he could not offer Esau an identical or a rival blessing, despite Esau’s weeping.
Esau’s blessing was a lesser blessing that harmonized with Jacob’s preeminent blessing, but did not negate it or usurp it in any way.
This corresponded, of course, to the word that God had spoken to Isaac and Rebekah before Jacob and Esau were born, namely, the older will serve the younger.
The author of Hebrews is highlighting the role that faith played in this act.
Isaac had confidence that realities which he could not currently see and which were still in the future would indeed come to pass by the power of God in response to his blessing.
Faith didn’t make the blessings efficacious.
Faith enabled Isaac to believe that the blessing he was pronouncing was true, that it would truly come to pass.
And we see something similar mentioned with Jacob in regard to blessing his grandsons.
In verse 21, by faith Jacob when dying blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff.
Jacob gives an unconventional blessing of preeminence to the younger of Joseph’s two sons Ephraim over his brother Manasseh.
The writer of Hebrews is zeroing in on the faith of Isaac and Jacob in pronouncing the blessings of God upon their descendants from their deathbeds.
But I think he’s looking at more than the mere fact that they were blessing their descendants.
I think he’s also considering the content of those blessings that Jacob and Isaac gave.
We find Isaac’s blessing in Genesis 27, verses 27 through 29.
Genesis 27, 27.
So he came near and kissed him and Isaac smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him and said,
See the smell of my son is as the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed.
May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine.
Let people serve you and nations bow down to you.
Be Lord over your brothers and may your mother’s sons bow down to you.
Cursed be everyone who curses you and blessed be everyone who blesses you.
Isaac’s blessing echoes and reiterates the promise that God had made to Abraham,
especially that last phrase, cursed be everyone who curses you and blessed be everyone who blesses you.
In his act of blessing Jacob, Isaac by faith is appropriating the promise of God to his father Abraham,
owning that promise for himself and passing it on to his son Jacob in faith.
He’s stating that he doesn’t think God’s promise ends with his own life.
Rather he believes it is only beginning.
And then if we turn ahead to Genesis chapter 48 verses 15 and 16,
we see Jacob grounding his blessing in God’s promise to Abraham as well.
Genesis chapter 48 verses 15 and 16.
And he blessed Joseph and said,
The God before whom my father Abraham and Isaac walked,
the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day,
the angel who has redeemed me from all evil,
bless the boys,
and in them let my name be carried on,
and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.
Further down in verse 21,
Then Israel said to Joseph, Behold I am about to die,
but God will be with you,
and will bring you again to the land of your fathers.
Jacob’s blessing of his grandsons and sons was rooted in his absolute confidence
that God would fulfill his promises.
His blessing was not merely wishing his sons and grandsons well,
but it was a faith-filled pronouncement that God’s promises would come to pass.
There was no doubt in Isaac or Jacob that God’s promises,
though largely unfulfilled and still in the future at their death,
were as good as done.
And this leads us right into our consideration finally of Joseph himself
in verse 22 of our passage.
So number three, Joseph’s skeletal conviction.
Verse 22, By faith Joseph, at the end of his life,
made mention of the exodus of the Israelites
and gave directions concerning his bones.
We move naturally from Jacob’s blessing Joseph’s sons to Joseph himself.
The account is found in Genesis chapter 50 verses 24 through 26.
Genesis 50 verse 24, And Joseph said to his brothers,
I am about to die, but God will visit you,
and will bring you up out of this land,
to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying,
God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.
So Joseph died being 110 years old.
They embalmed him and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
We see Joseph clearly sharing the same faith of his ancestors,
a clear confidence in God’s determination to fulfill his promise.
Joseph is assuming the certainty of God’s promise.
God will surely visit you, and making a request based on that confidence.
But there’s something more going on in Joseph’s final request
than merely confidence in God’s ability and willingness to fulfill his promise
to give Canaan to the Israelites.
Joseph also joins Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
in his insistence on being buried in Canaan.
This is important because there was a very real sense
in which Joseph inherited the position of the firstborn
after Reuben had forfeited it.
Since it is Joseph who receives a double portion among the Israelite tribes
by having his two sons each become tribes,
giving Joseph a double portion of the tribes.
As far as we know, all the rest of Joseph’s brothers
were buried in Egypt and never moved.
But for Joseph, it was extremely important that he be buried in Canaan.
This was despite the fact that Joseph had more reasons than any of them
to love Egypt and call it his ultimate home.
He was a ruler of all Egypt, second only to Pharaoh,
with potential for integration into the Egyptian religion
since he had married the daughter of a prominent Egyptian priest.
Joseph was living a great life in Egypt,
and to top it all off, his estranged family had all come down
to live in Egypt with him.
There was every reason for Joseph to call Egypt home,
and almost no reasons for him to long for Canaan.
This is why his request came by faith.
By faith, Joseph could see beyond all that comfort and security
that he was enjoying in the moment, in the present life,
and he wanted something more,
something better than this world could ever give.
He knew Egypt was not his ultimate home,
and he knew it was not Israel’s ultimate home.
Even in death, Joseph’s bones were left waiting,
year after year, decade after decade,
until the day when Israel finally left Egypt, led by Moses.
Exodus 13, 19 says,
Moses took the bones of Joseph with him,
for Joseph had made the sons of Israel solemnly swear,
saying, God will surely visit you,
and you shall carry up my bones with you from here.
But of course, Israel didn’t immediately go into the promised land,
but wandered for 40 years in the desert because of their disobedience.
And all that time they kept the bones of Joseph.
So that finally we read in Joshua 24, verse 32,
as they are settling in the land of Canaan,
as for the bones of Joseph,
which the people of Israel brought up from Egypt,
they buried them at Shechem,
in the piece of land that Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor,
the father of Shechem, for a hundred pieces of money.
It became an inheritance of the descendants of Joseph.
Joseph wasn’t being superstitious about his burial place.
God can raise the dead from anywhere.
He was making clear his faith in God’s promise
and his ultimate allegiance to God’s promised land.
He clearly expected to die outside of the promised land,
but his faith looked beyond his own death
to God’s promised fulfillment in Canaan.
All of these examples that we’ve looked at this evening
have to do with a faith that looks beyond death.
One of the things we confessed in the Nicene Creed
earlier in our service is,
I look for the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come.
Failure to believe in the resurrection,
the hope of life after death, is not optional.
Christians are those whose lives are marked
by a quiet confidence and clear preference
for the promised land that is to come.
Death comes to us all.
But Christians know for dead certain
that this earth is not our home,
and one day we will be with the Lord.
In Abraham’s case, he was called to believe in life after death
as he put his own son obediently on the altar,
knowing that somehow or another,
Isaac would have to be resurrected
since God’s promise was true.
Isaac and Jacob looked beyond their own deaths
with confidence that God’s promises
would come true to their descendants.
And Joseph demonstrates a consistent faith
throughout his life,
whether things were miserable or comfortable.
He started out sold as a slave by his brothers,
and just when things were starting to look up,
he became falsely accused
and was thrown in prison for years.
But in many ways, the real test for Joseph came
when he became ruler of Egypt
and had everything that this life could offer him.
The temptation was that much greater
to make Egypt his home
without any thought for the promised land.
The battle to hold onto faith is often much harder
when sight seems to be offering so many things,
everything you could want.
But despite all this,
Joseph never lost sight of the fact
that Egypt was not his home,
and that one day God would bring all of his people out.
And when he did, Joseph wanted to be sure
that he was part of that number.
Joseph kept his death-defying faith all the way to the end
and never lost sight of his true home.
Amen.
Let’s pray.
Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your word
that gives us windows,
that shows us the faith of your saints
who believed in you,
believed that you would reward,
believed that death was not the end,
and that you had a better city prepared for them.
We thank you that you give us that same spirit,
to give us the same faith
that we too might believe.
We ask that you would fix our eyes upon the author
and founder of our faith, Jesus Christ,
and give us the faith of these saints,
for we pray these things in Jesus’ name, Amen.
As we close, let’s continue our worship
by singing hymn 471,
The Sands of Time are Sinking.
Let’s stand as we sing, hymn 471.