They all lived by faith in a promise they had never seen. They never doubted the promise, however. They never doubted that it would come true. They died in every case, not in the despair of unfulfilled dreams, but in the confident hope that a promise would be truly fulfilled because it had come from God, whose word was always true. Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Perhaps you've heard that more is learned from what is caught than what is taught. In other words, what you say is important, but what you do, the example you set, can be even more critical. It gives weight to what you say, but that raises an important question: What can you learn from biblical characters who sinned greatly? What lessons can you take away from, say, a coward who endangered his wife to protect himself?
Well, today John MacArthur looks at the life of a man who did just that. As John continues his study called "A Faith That Pleases God," you'll find out how Isaac, despite some spectacular failures, was a model of genuine faith.
So, with that lesson, now here is John MacArthur. Let's look at Hebrews chapter eleven. Hebrews chapter eleven. And we find ourselves looking at the heroes of faith. And now, as we leave Abraham behind, we come in verse twenty to Isaac and to Jacob and to Joseph.
These are the four patriarchs that take up that large section of the book of Genesis from chapter twelve through chapter fifty.
So let's see what it says about them. Verse twenty. 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 worshipped, 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. Rather cryptic statements, wouldn't you agree? Very abbreviated and somewhat hard to understand if you don't know the full story. But keep in mind that this book was written to Hebrews. It was written to Jews who were familiar with the very detailed saga of Isaac and Jacob and Esau, as well as Joseph.
This was material they were very familiar with. It was critical for the writer of Hebrews to communicate to the readers that the only way of salvation was by faith. The most important message the world will ever hear: salvation is by faith alone, by grace through faith, not of works. Scripture makes that clear. It's always been that way.
And with all the weaknesses that marked the lives of, of Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, they died in faith. They died in confidence that the promise would be fulfilled, even though they had not yet received it, and that's why they appear among these heroes of faith. They were men who believed at the very end of their life that God, who had not yet fulfilled His promise, would fulfill that promise even after they were gone. God is greatly glorified. I think when any believer leaves this world with a flag flying at full mast in confident faith, any believer brings honor to God when the spirit triumphs over the flesh, when the world is consciously left behind, and there's an eagerness to grasp the realities of eternal heaven.
Any believer who dies with a heart blazing with hope brings honor to the Lord and a great testimony to the life of faith. When a mature, godly man, when an upright man, comes to the end of his life, what marks him is peace.
So it is in a sense with these men, and we would have to say that Isaac and Jacob and Joseph were far from perfect. For sure, their lives were murky and muddy and cloudy and sometimes downright dark. But there was always a flicker of the sunlight of faith, and certainly it showed up at the end. Abraham was a wanderer and a nomad his whole life. Isaac was the same.
Isaac, the son of the Promise of God was a nomad and a wanderer. His son Jacob was to spend his life as an exile out of the promised land in Egypt. He never saw the promise. He never saw the the great nation constituted. He never saw the blessings that would come to the world.
Jacob's son Joseph attained greatness. But that greatness was still the greatness of a stranger in a strange land. Joseph again in the land of Egypt. They all lived by faith in a promise they had never seen. They never doubted the promise.
However, they never doubted that it would come true. They died in every case, not in the despair of unfulfilled dreams. But in the confident hope that a promise would be truly fulfilled, because it had come from God, whose word was always true, they never saw it. They died in a sense, defeating death by dying not in despair but in hope, and passing on the promise that what they hadn't seen could be promised to the next generation, because in God's good time it would eventually come. And this is a magnificent kind of faith in a primitive time.
If we would listen to them, if they could come and talk to us, they might say something like this: God made a promise. God promised a people and a land and blessing and salvation. And God never breaks a promise. And we may not live to see the promise, but it will come. And we are links in the chain of its ultimate fulfillment.
That's how they viewed their lives. These then are men of faith, and the Jewish readers of the Book of Hebrews need to know they are men of faith. They need to know that they believed in God. In Abel, remember, we saw the life of faith. In Enoch, the walk of faith.
In Noah, the work of faith. In Abraham, the example of faith. And here we see the triumph of faith as it faces death. In the sense, they're like they're like sailors who waved their greeting. From this shore, and sail away to a shore that they can't see at all, but they are confident it is there, and they will arrive.
Now, according to verse six of this chapter, the only way to please God is to be a person of faith. Without faith, it is impossible to please Him.
So, if you want to please God and therefore receive His salvation, be reconciled to Him. It is a matter of faith. Faith alone brings us into a relationship with God. And these are examples of that kind of faith.
Some people crumble in the face of death, but not those who have a real faith—a God-given faith. All right, let's look at Isaac. Verse twenty by faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau even regarding things to come. The operative phrase here is things to come. Abraham had not received the promise, and the promise of God given to Abraham originally in the Abrahamic covenant is reiterated to his son Isaac.
But Isaac does not receive the promise either. Abraham had been promised the land, the nation, the spiritual blessings to the world. He never saw any of it at all. He didn't die in despair.
However, Abraham died in faith, confidently passing on the promise to his son Isaac, knowing Isaac would be the next step in the divine plan that would lead ultimately to fulfillment. Isaac does the same thing, passes it to Jacob. Jacob does the same thing. Passes it to Joseph. They all knew that God was faithful.
That's what believers know. They were believers, and they knew it. In the language of Hebrews ten twenty three, He who promised is faithful. God can be trusted.
Now, I think you were kind of struck by the fact that you had quite a section on Abraham there, but you just have one verse on Isaac. We would like to have a lot more information here. It would be easy for us if there was some given in this location.
However, the writer assumes that everybody who's a Hebrew reader of this letter knows the story of Isaac because it is such a familiar story to all Jewish people. But since you are not Jewish people, some of you are, but the majority of you are not, and since you may not remember the story in the Old Testament, you may not be familiar with it. We would do well to go back and kind of take another look at the story of Isaac and see how his faith manifested itself. And I will promise you this: if you'll stick with me on this journey, it will be extremely encouraging to you. Isaac lived the longest of the four patriarchs.
He lived longer than Abraham, longer than Jacob, and longer than Joseph, but less is recorded about him than any of the others. Basically, his life is squeezed into Genesis 25, 26, and 27.
Now, in summing up Isaac, we can say this: he was not spectacular.
Someone has suggested that he was an ordinary son of an extraordinary father, who became the ordinary father of an extraordinary son, which is another way of saying he was a not so extraordinary guy sandwiched between two extraordinary people, Abraham and Jacob. He lived a relatively quiet life, and was. Probably best known for his spiritual weakness and his somewhat passive nature, let's go back to Genesis 26. The story is certainly worth telling, and it will be a greatly encouraging story for you, because if this man, with all of his weakness, is in the list of the heroes of faith, guess what? There's hope for us.
That's what's encouraging.
Now, there's a lot of ways to kind of start the story, but let's pick up the story in chapter 26 and verse one. There was a famine in the land. That's in the land of Israel, land of Canaan. It's not yet belonging to Israel. There is no nation yet.
They're not going to come back there till 40 years after 400 years of of exile in Egypt. There's a famine in the land where the family of Abraham is nomadic, living, and they have to go somewhere else to get some food.
So Isaac, who was now an adult, went to Gerar.
Now Gerar was not a really good place to go because Gerar was a Philistine city sitting on the border of Egypt, right on the border of Egypt. And Egypt was not a good place to be.
So the Lord appeared to him and said, "Do not go down to Egypt. Stay in the land of which I shall tell you." You know, this is a sort of a concession on God's part. You shouldn't even get that close to Egypt. But if you're going to be in Gerar, stay there. Don't go beyond that place.
Verse three: Sojourn in this land, and I'll be with you and bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham. And here he repeats to Isaac the Abrahamic covenant: I'll multiply your descendants, the stars of heaven. I'll give your descendants all these lands. To your descendants, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because Abraham obeyed me, kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.
So here is the. Reiteration of the Abrahamic covenant to Isaac, who's the next in line, in the generations that will be the source of the fulfillment of the covenant. Isaac was obedient. Verse six: He lived in Gerar. He never went across the border.
So, in one sense, that is commendable—that he stopped at the border and didn't go where God told him not to go.
However, His weakness showed up immediately. Verse seven, when the men of the place asked about his wife, he said, "She is my sister." For he was afraid to say my wife, thinking the men of the place might kill me on account of Rebecca, for she is beautiful. Hmm, where did he learn to conduct himself like that? From his dad is right. From his father, from Abraham.
Abraham did it twice. Genesis twelve records that he did it, and then he did it again in Genesis twenty. Abraham was afraid that somebody was going to take Sarah away from him because Sarah was also very beautiful. And there was a famine in the land. Genesis twelve ten.
Abram goes down to Egypt. He goes past Gerar all the way to Egypt. He he says to his wife, verse eleven of Genesis twelve. See now, I know you are a beautiful woman, and when the Egyptians see me, they will say this is his wife, and they'll kill me, and they'll let you live. Please say that you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you.
Guess what? I want you to say you're my sister, so they can do anything they want to you without killing me. Oh, nice chivalry at its finest! Are you kidding? Pharaoh's officials saw her and praised her to Pharaoh.
The woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. Therefore, he treated Abram well for her sake and gave him sheep and oxen and donkeys and male and female servants. Female donkeys and camels.
Something bad went on there. You don't give all that stuff unless you get something in exchange. The Lord struck Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarah, Abraham's wife. Pharaoh called Abraham and said, "What is this you've done to me? Why don't you tell me she's your wife?
Why did you say she's my sister?" So that I took her for my wife.
Now then, here's your wife. Take her and go. That is one of the low points of male action on behalf of one's wife for self-protection. He lets some stranger ravage his own wife.
Well, it happened again in the twentieth chapter of Genesis. Abraham journeyed from there. Guess what? To the Negev and settled between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar, same place. Abraham said of Sarah, his wife, "She's my sister." Here we go again.
I'm surprised she didn't slap him, knowing what could come, or worse.
So Abimelech. Abimelech may be a title rather than a name because it's the same name in the account of Isaac, twenty years later, or so.
So anyway, it may be a title rather than an actual name. The king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. But God came to Abimelech in dream in the night and said, "Behold, you're a dead man because of the woman whom you've taken, for she's married." Now Abimelech had not come near her, fortunately, and he said, "Lord, will you slay a nation, even though blameless?" Didn't he say to me, "She's my sister," and she herself said, "He is my brother." In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands, I've done this. It's like fornication's okay, but I'm not going to commit adultery.
So Abraham had taught his son well, and so when we come to the account. Over here in the twenty-sixth chapter, he behaves in precisely the same way. Verse seven: When the men of the place see that she's so beautiful, they're gonna they're gonna want her. And so, verse eight: It came about when he had been there for a long time. Abimelech, king of the Philistines, again—that's maybe an official title rather than the name of a man—looked out through the window and saw.
And guess what? Isaac was caressing his wife Rebecca. Guess what? You don't do that with your sister. I love the King James version.
It says Isaac was sporting with his wife. Why the Victorian English were veiling everything, weren't they? And the Bimbelik called Isaac and said, "Ho, ho! Wait a minute! Behold!
Certainly, she's your wife. I watched how you conducted yourself with her. Why did you say she's my sister?
Well, because I I might die." On account of her, Bilalik said, "Why have you done this? One of the people might have easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us." Seems to me that the pagans, disconnected to this family, had more moral character than the members of the family of Abraham.
So Abimelech charges all the people, saying in verse eleven, "Whoever touches this man or his wife will surely be put to death." So he goes down. He lives on the edge of where he's not supposed to go, and then he lies. He's an absolute, outright, downright coward. But God is so gracious to him. Look at this in verse twelve: Isaac sowed in the land, and that's metaphoric.
And reaped, and it's not even the word reaped in in the original language. It is the word found. Isaac sowed in the land metaphorically and found in the same year a hundredfold. What happened? It doesn't mean he planted a crop that returned a hundredfold.
We told you that can't happen. But metaphorically, what happened is God blessed him incredibly. The Lord blessed him, and this is this is really good in the Hebrew. This is a play on words in Hebrew. In verse thirteen, the man became great, continued to become greater until he became the greatest.
It's really a Hebrew expression for being great. He became great. He he became greater until he became the greatest. He had flocks and herds and a great household, so that the Philistines down in that area of Gerar envied him. God pours out blessing, and Isaac is comfortable there.
Abimelech says to him, "Get out of here! You're too powerful for us. You intimidate us." Isaac departed from there and camped in the valley of Gerar. Oh, that didn't help. He went a few miles away and settled there.
He wouldn't leave. Verse eighteen: Isaac dug the wells of water, which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham, who was in the same area. For the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham, and he gave them the same names which his father had given them. But when Isaac's servants dug in the valley and found there a well of flowing water, the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with the herdsmen of Isaac, saying, "The water is ours. It's our land.
It's our valley." So he named the well Essek, which means conflict, because they contended with him. Then he dug another well. Quarreled over that, so he named it Sittna, which means hostility. He moved away from there and dug another well, and they didn't quarrel over that, so he called it Rehoboth, which means a broad place, a place where everybody can get along. But he settles there, and at last, in verse twenty-two, the Lord has made room for us, and he went up to Beer-sheba, and then comes the word from the Lord.
The Lord appeared to him the same night and said, "I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you, multiply your descendants, for the sake of my servant Abraham." Here's the repeat of the Abrahamic covenant given to him, and here is where, for the first time, really clearly, we see the demonstration that this is a man of faith. Verse 25.
So he built an altar there. And called upon the name of the Lord, and pitched his tent there. He took up his place in the very location where the Lord had come to him and given him the promise and the covenant. And there, Isaac's servants dug a well. The next little section talks about how they made peace.
With the people of Gerar, therein is the indication of the faith of this man. But I want to take you back to one previous incident, back in chapter twenty-five, twenty-five. Apparently, the the women in the family of Abraham—I don't know what it was—but they they all seem to have problem having children at first. And in the case of Isaac, his wife had a problem. Rebecca, chapter twenty-five, verse twenty.
She had gone, I think, about twenty years without ever having a child. Verse twenty-one. Here's another indication of the faith of Isaac. Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife because she was barren. And the Lord answered him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.
And then you have the wonderful story of the two twins in her womb. Right, the children struggle together within her. And she said, "If this is so, why then am I this way? Does it have to be this hard?" She's probably saying, "I would trade this for the 20 years of tranquility." So she went to inquire of the Lord. This is an indication again that they worship the true and living God.
The Lord said to her, "Two nations are in your womb; two peoples will be separated from your body. Through through Jacob would come the Jewish people. Through Esau would come the Edomites, the Arabic peoples." Two great peoples will be separated from your body. One people will be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger. The older was Esau, the younger was was Jacob.
But they were reversed when it came to the birthright.
So here is an indication that they followed the Lord because they prayed to the Lord, and the Lord heard their prayer. And then this prophecy comes, which the apostle Paul in Romans nine makes a big point of, doesn't he? That before they were ever born, the Lord chose Jacob and said, "Jacob, have I loved, and Esau, have I hated?" That there was bound up in this promise a sovereign act. Here you have a very good early indication of divine sovereignty, the purpose of God to give grace to one person. And withhold it from another.
And Paul in Romans nine says you can't question God's right to do this. God, after all, is God. God has a right to dispense His blessings according to His own sovereign will. God, as Creator of all things, has an unlimited right over all His creation. It was and is his own good pleasure that he created the world at all.
There was nothing that had any claim on him to call it into existence, or has any further claim on him for any benefit. When the world was in chaos, no part of the matter had any claim above the rest. That was which was left, for example, inert had no reason to complain that it was not given vegetative power. Nor vegetables that they were not given animal life, nor animals that they were not given human reason, nor our first parents that they were created inferior to angels. Nothing that he created had any claim on its maker.
That's why Paul said he had the same right or power over all as the potter has over the clay to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor. Nor can anyone say, "Why have you made me thus?" If if man has no claim on God when he is innocent, has he acquired some right by the fall? I don't think so.
So here is the indication of God's sovereign purpose: He chose Abraham, He chose Isaac, He chose Jacob, and through them would come the Messianic line. You are listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. John's current study is titled "A Faith That Pleases God." Well, friend, as you're continuing to see from this study, Hebrews 11 is packed with jewels of life-changing truth, and that's why Grace to You exists to give people like you access to solid Bible teaching through this radio broadcast. Through dozens of books and through thousands of online resources, and our best single resource to help you understand all of Scripture with greater clarity is the MacArthur Study Bible. And a quick reminder: from now through Friday, October thirtieth, you can get the MacArthur Study Bible with the Legacy Standard Text of Scripture in brown leather soft cover at twenty five percent off the regular price.
Take advantage of the discount. Order the leather soft Legacy Standard Edition of the MacArthur Study Bible when you contact us today. Call our customer service line at eight hundred fifty-five Grace, or visit our website gty dot org. And again, the sale runs through Friday, October thirtieth. To order the MacArthur Study Bible, that's the Legacy Standard version in brown leather soft cover at twenty-five percent off.
Go online to gty.org or call 800 55 Grace, and I encourage you to let us know how you're benefiting from John's verse-by-verse teaching. If a specific radio study time has encouraged you, perhaps John's current study on a faith that pleases God, or maybe one of the many Bible study resources on our website, has strengthened your faith. We'd love to hear about that. Email is a great way to reach us. That address is letters at gty dot org.
Once more, that's letters at gty dot org. Or if you prefer regular mail, write to Grace to You, P O Box four thousand, Panorama City, California nine one four one two. And now for the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for joining us today. Be back tomorrow as John Macarthur shows you how the story of Jacob and Esau, a bitter sibling rivalry, can strengthen your faith.
It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Fridays. Grace to you.
