30  Faith That Defeats  Death (11:20-22)

By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even regarding things to come. By faith Jacob, as he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff. By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the exodus of the sons of Israel, and gave orders concerning his bones. (11:20-22)

Matthew Henry said, “Though the grace of faith is of universal use throughout the Christian’s life, yet it is especially so when we come to die. Faith has its great work to do at the very last, to help believers to finish well, to die to the Lord so as to honor Him, by patience, hope and joy so as to leave a witness behind them of the truth of God’s Word and the excellency of His ways.”

God is glorified when His people leave this world with their flags flying at full mast. If anyone should die triumphantly it should be believers. When the Holy Spirit triumphs over our flesh, when the world is consciously and gladly left behind for heaven, when there is anticipation and glory in our eyes as we enter into the presence of the Lord, our dying is pleasing to the Lord. “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of His godly ones” (Ps. 116:15).

The three patriarchs mentioned in Hebrews 11:20-22 illustrate the power of faith in facing death. These men had not always lived faithfully. They trusted God imperfectly, just as we do. All three men’s names appear frequently and favorably in Scripture, and we are inclined to think of them as models of the life of faith. In some regards they were. Joseph especially stands out. Though he was hated by his brothers and sold into slavery, he trusted and obeyed God amid many temptations and hardships, while completely separated from his family in a pagan foreign land.

The emphasis of this passage, however, is on the faith that Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph exhibited at the ends of their lives. Each one faced death in full, confident faith. For that they are in the Hebrews heroes gallery.

Many believers find it difficult to anticipate and to face death. Yet a Christian who, for the most part, has walked with God faithfully often finds that the last hours of his life are the sweetest. Whatever the ups and downs of their lives, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph went out basking in the sunlight of true faith.

What makes the dying faith of these three men so significant is that, like Abraham, they died without seeing the fulfillment of God’s promises. They passed them on to their children by faith. They had received the promises by faith and they passed them on by faith. In His covenant with Abraham, God had promised three things—possession of the land of Canaan, the creation of a great nation of his descendants, and the blessing of the world through these descendants. But Abraham never saw any of these things come to pass. He died in faith, saying, “Isaac, you will see the beginnings of these promises.” But Isaac also died in faith, saying the same thing to Jacob; and so Jacob also to Joseph. Hebrews 11:13 applies to all four men: “All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.” Yet they were so confident in God’s word that they passed on the promises to their children. They believed what they had never seen, and they passed on what they had never seen to their children. That is the assurance of faith. They had no inheritance to pass on but the promises of God, and these they considered a great treasure to bequeath their children. They had not seen the land possessed, the nation established, or the world blessed, but they saw the promises, and that was enough.

These men never doubted that the promises would come true. They did not die in the despair of unfulfilled dreams, but in the perfect peace of unfulfilled promises, confident because they were God’s promises. They knew by faith that God would fulfill the promises because they knew He was a covenant-keeping God and a God of truth. They died saying, “They will come. In God’s time the fulfillments will come.” They died defeating death, knowing that, even though they died, God’s promises could not die. That is a magnificent kind of faith, the kind of faith God honors.

Just as the saints mentioned in verses 4-19, these three men are presented to show that the principles of salvation by faith and of pleasing God by faith did not originate with the New Covenant. Faith has always been the way, never works. Without a single exception, every man of God has been a man of faith. Not Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or Joseph was saved by works. All were saved by faith. Without faith it has always been impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6).

ISAAC’S FAITH

By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even regarding things to come. (11:20)

Just as his father had done with him, Isaac passed on the blessings of God’s promise to his sons by faith. He had absolute certainty that they would come to pass. For the time being, the promises were the inheritance, which the patriarchs cherished as much as most people cherish material possessions, fame, and power.

Isaac lived longer than any of the other patriarchs, yet less space in Genesis and Hebrews is devoted to him than to the others. Whereas Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph each have about twelve chapters in Genesis that center on them, Isaac has just over two—chapters 26 and 27 and about half of 25. Isaac was easily the least spectacular and the most ordinary of the four. He was less dynamic and colorful, being generally quiet and passive. And, overall, he probably had the weakest faith. We know more of his failures than of his successes.

Because of a famine, Isaac had moved his family to Gerar. While he was there, God spoke to him in a remarkable and encouraging vision. “Sojourn in this land and I will be with you and bless you, for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham. And I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 26:3-4). In other words, the covenant promises to Abraham were passed on to Isaac directly by God. Those promises alone should have kept Isaac from worry and fear, for God could not have fulfilled them if Isaac were not protected. Not only that, but the Lord specifically told him, “I will be with you and bless you.”

Yet at the first sign of possible danger, Isaac proved faithless. When the men of Gerar asked about Rebekah, he said she was his sister instead of his wife, for fear that one of those Philistines might kill him in order to have her (v. 7). In that, of course, he was merely following in his father’s footsteps, because Abraham had twice lied in the same way about Sarah (Gen. 12:13; 20:2). Rebekah was beautiful and the Philistines were not above doing what Isaac feared. But rather than trusting the Lord for protection, he lied. Not only that, but he seems to have been more concerned for himself than for Rebekah.

God disclosed to King Abimelech Rebekah’s true relationship to Isaac, and the king put them both under a protective order. Abimelech, a pagan Philistine, was more concerned about the ethics of the matter than was Isaac, a chosen man of God. He rebuked Isaac sharply, saying, “What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us” (v. 10). God’s grace prevailed, though it was through an unbeliever, with no help, or even expectation, from Isaac.

The Lord continued to bless Isaac, who became wealthy. The envy of the Philistines caused them to keep filling up his wells until he finally moved out of their land, which seems to have been what the Lord wanted all along. At that point Isaac acknowledged God’s hand in the matter. “At last the LORD has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land” (v. 22). Yet even this statement shows little faith, because Isaac seems to be saying, “It’s about time!”

Then he moved to Beersheba, which was part of the Promised Land, and perhaps the Lord now said, “It’s about time.” He had to get Isaac back into the land by the back door and almost by force. Again the Lord spoke to Isaac and repeated the covenant promises, and Isaac “built an altar there, and called upon the name of the LORD, and pitched his tent there” (26:24-25). By His sovereign work, God brought the prodigal home. That is how grace operates.

Isaac often was cowardly and spiritually weak, but he had earlier believed God and was established in the scroll of the faithful. He followed his father’s example in some good things as well as some bad. Like Abraham, he trusted God for a son. Rebekah was barren, just as Sarah had been, and Isaac prayed earnestly for a son. “The LORD answered him and Rebekah his wife conceived” (Gen. 25:21).

Isaac was basically materialistic. He lived mostly by sight and by taste. He was partial to Esau, possibly because this son was a hunter and provided his father with many good meals. Even when Isaac was old and about to die, he asked Esau to go out and kill “some game and prepare a savory dish” for him before he pronounced the blessing on this elder son (27:7). He was thinking more of his stomach than of God’s promise. He must have known from Rebekah that God intended for Jacob to receive the inheritance rather than Esau (25:23), and he must have known from both his sons that Esau had sold his birthright to Jacob (25:33). Yet he was determined to give the blessing to Esau. This story is of no credit to Isaac, Esau, or Jacob. Isaac insisted on giving the blessing to the son who he knew was not God’s choice. Esau, who had despised and sold his birthright, thought he could just as easily buy it back. And Jacob, at his mother’s instigation, tried to secure the blessing by deception rather than by faith. The entire family acted shamefully. Father and son tried to do the wrong thing in the wrong way, and mother and son tried to accomplish the right thing but in the wrong way. God produced the outcome that Rebekah and Jacob wanted, but not for their reasons or by their methods. He did not honor what they did any more than what Isaac and Esau did. God only honors faith, and none of these had acted in faith. The right outcome was the result of His faithfulness, not theirs.

Not until the irreversibility of the blessing was obvious did Isaac begin to evidence faith. If Jonah was the reluctant prophet, Isaac was the reluctant patriarch. Only when he realized that the blessing was going to be on God’s man regardless, did he acquiesce. He finally said yes to God’s way. God had to box him into a corner before he believed; but he did believe. As he faced death, he blessed Jacob with the blessing that neither he nor his father had possessed and that neither Jacob nor his sons would possess. Isaac blessed Jacob in faith, knowing that God would fulfill the promises in His own way and in His own time.

In some ways Isaac was a blot on the Old Testament record. But in the end he was God’s man. He submitted and believed and obeyed.

JACOB’S FAITH

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

Jacob’s life was like his father’s in many ways. It was up and down spiritually. Sometimes he walked by faith and sometimes he stumbled by sight. He had times of great faith and times of fear and anxiety. He bargained with God on occasion (Gen. 28:20-21) and on other occasions he readily acknowledged God’s blessing (31:5). He reverently praised the Lord when he had the dream of the heavenly ladder (28:16-17), and once he was so intent on receiving God’s blessing that he wrestled with Him all night (32:24-26).

Unlike his father, Jacob did not try to circumvent God’s plan for his heirs. Joseph, though younger than all his brothers except Benjamin, was the chosen son to bless, just as Jacob, though younger, was chosen above Esau. In fact Joseph received a double blessing, in that his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, were both blessed; although again the younger son, Ephraim, received the greater blessing (48:19). Consequently, instead of only one tribe descending from Joseph, as with his brothers, two tribes (often referred to as half-tribes) descended from him.

As he was dying, Jacob blessed his son through his two grandsons. “Then Israel [Jacob’s new name] said to Joseph, ’Behold, I am about to die, but God will be with you and bring you back to the land of your fathers. And I give you one portion more than your brothers” (48:21-22). Once again, what was never possessed was passed on in faith. Jacob died as a man of faith.

JOSEPH’S FAITH

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

Joseph spent all of his adult life in Egypt. Though a fourth-generation heir of the promise, he could not claim even to have sojourned in the Promised Land, much less to have inherited it. It had been some two hundred years since God made the initial covenant with Abraham. Two hundred years of promise, and no fulfillment in sight. In fact, by the time of Joseph’s death, none of Abraham’s descendants (that is, the descendants of promise) lived in the Promised Land at all. Because of the famine in Canaan, Joseph had brought his father and his brothers to Egypt. Jacob was carried back to Canaan after he died, and Joseph would be satisfied if only his bones could be buried there. If he could not inherit the land, at least the land could “inherit” him. It was not until the Exodus that Joseph’s bones were actually taken to Canaan (Ex. 13:19), but his heart and his hope had always been there.

He had to look ahead to see the promise, yet he saw it clearly and confidently. “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” (Gen. 50:24). While he was making his brothers swear to take his bones back to Canaan, he repeated the assuring words of faith, “God will surely take care of you” (v. 25).

All three of these men believed God in the face of death. Their faith had sometimes wavered in life, but it was strong and confident in death. Death is the acid test of faith. For hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years, courts of law have taken a dying man’s word at face value. The need for lying and deception is over, and what is said on a deathbed is usually believed. So with our testimony of faith. Not only is the need for hypocrisy and pretense over, but it is extremely difficult to fake faith when you know you are facing eternity. A dying man’s faith is believable because a sham cannot stand this test.

A Christian who fears death has a serious weakness in his faith, for to die in Christ is simply to be ushered into the Lord’s presence. “For to me, to live is Christ,” Paul says, “and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). For those who believe, “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:54).