These are people of faith. I mean, their whole lives were built around this promise that had been given to Abraham and passed on to these three other patriarchs, and everything in their life focused on the confidence that they had that God would do what He said He would do because God could be trusted. They never saw it. Welcome to Grace to You with the Bible Teaching Ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.
Jacob and Esau, neither of them modeled a life of holiness and righteousness. Both were deceitful, selfish, and did things that were morally reprehensible.
So, why does the Bible include one of them in its hall of fame of faith? And what can you do to follow that man's example? Find out as John MacArthur continues his study, titled "The Faith That Pleases God." John will show you the key differences between these two infamous brothers, what their stories reveal about God, and what it means for your salvation.
So now here's John with the lesson. Let's look at Hebrews chapter eleven. Hebrews chapter eleven, and we find ourselves looking at the heroes of faith. 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. 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. 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.
Well, we don't have time to go over this entire story. It doesn't take us long to establish the character of Esau. That's why Hebrews twelve sixteen calls him a profane man. The Greek word profane means outside the threshold. What does that mean?
Outside the house, the walkway, the common walk. He was a very common, earthy man.
So, in the case of Esau, things. Went bad at the birth. They went bad through the whole story of Jacob and Esau, which we'll take a look at. Isaac was old. Listen, Isaac has ignored God's word in the prophecy.
Isaac has ignored the fact that the birthright has been exchanged. Isaac has ignored the profane character of Esau. He has ignored his marriages to pagan, idolatrous women. He ignores all that just because he likes him, because he provides what satisfies his appetite.
Well, Rebecca is not going to let this happen, and it's an amazing story. She says to Jacob. Behold, I heard your father speak to your brother Esau, saying, "Bring me some game and prepare a savory dish for me, that I may eat and bless you in the presence of the Lord before my death." Now, therefore, my son, listen to me as I command you: go to the flock, bring me two choice young goats from there, that I may prepare them as a savory dish for your father, such as he loves. Then you shall bring it to your father that he may eat, so that he may bless you before his death. The idea the father was: you bring me the meal, I'll give you the fatherly blessing, the right of primogenitor, the The right of being the heir.
Jacob answered his mother Rebecca, "Behold, Esau, my brother, is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man. How do we pull this off? My father will feel me. Then I will be as a deceiver in his sight, and I'll bring upon myself a curse and not a blessing. He doesn't mind lying and cheating, but he doesn't want to just expose himself to a curse." His mother said to him, "Your curse be on me!
I'll take your curse, my son. Just do what I tell you." So he went out and got the animals, brought them to his mother. His mother made savory food, such as his father loved. Rebecca took the best garments of Esau, her elder son, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob. And she put the skins of the young goats on his hands.
Now that'll tell you how hairy Esau was, folks. Wow. She put the skins on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. He came to his father and said, "My father!" And he said, "Here I am. Who are you, my son?" Jacob said to his father, "I am Esau.
I am Esau, or whatever he did. I have done as you told me. I get up, please sit and eat of my game that you may bless me." He hadn't shot any game. This was domesticated goat. But with the right spices, and his mother knew how to do it, Isaac said to his son, "How is it that you have it so quickly, my son?" And he said, "Because the Lord your God caused it to happen to me." Oh boy!
Now bring God in on it. One lie follows another lie and another lie. Isaac said to his son. It's just so quick. How did it happen?
Well, the Lord did it, and Isaac said to Jacob, "Please come close, that I may feel you, my son. Whether you really are my son Esau or not, a little bit of incredulity on the part of Isaac." So Jacob came close to his father, felt him, and said, "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau." He did not recognize him because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands.
So he blessed him. Amazing. He passed on the blessing to him, and in that society, that was everything. And he said, "Are you really my son, Esau?" He's struggling with this. And he said, "I am." So he said, "Bring it to me, and I will eat of my son's game that I may bless you." And he brought it to him, and he ate, and he also brought him wine, and he drank.
And and his father Isaac said to him, "Come close and kiss me, my son." In effect, as he passes on this blessing, he is investing the promise of the Abrahamic covenant in this man, Jacob, thinking he is Esau. Verse thirty. Then came about as soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had hardly gone out from the presence of Isaac his father that Esau his brother came in from hunting. He also had made savory food and brought it to his father, and said to his father, "Let my father arise and eat of his son's game, that you may bless me." Isaac, his father, said to him, "Who are you?" And he said, "I am your son, your firstborn, Esau." This is one of the real spiritual indications in Isaac's life. He trembled violently.
He trembled violently. This is conviction. He knew what he had done, and he said, "Your brother came deceitfully and has taken away your blessing." And he said, "Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright, and behold, now he has taken away my blessing." And he said, "Have you not reserved a blessing for me?
Give me something." So down in verse thirty-nine, Isaac, his father, turns and says to him. Behold, away from the fertility of the earth shall be your dwelling, and away from the dew of heaven from above you're going to have a hard life. The only bright spot in the story, the only thing you can say when you read a story like this and you see, well, wait a minute, here's a guy named Isaac who's in the list of the heroes of faith. How did he get there with this kind of stuff? And the answer is that there was a time when he prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife and indicated his confident faith in the Lord.
There was a time, and that is so very important. It's the most important little piece of the story. In a sense, I save it for now. Go back to chapter twenty-six and verse twenty-four, when the Lord appears to him and says, "I am the God that is to Isaac of your father Abraham. Do not fear.
I am with you. I will bless you, multiply your descendants, the sake of." My servant Abraham. We see the demonstration of Isaac's faith in the next verse.
So he built an altar there and called upon the name of the Lord and pitched his tent there. He took up his residence in the place where God had appeared. He built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. That is a statement for really expressing your faith in the Lord. You you might even conclude that that was the point of a real true conversion.
And so, in spite of the horrors of the life that these people seem to live, and the lies and the deception that is going on, and by the way, it it continued. Do you remember what the fallout of this was? First of all, Jacob never saw his mother again. He was alienated from his brother and lived in mortal fear that his brother was going to kill him. But eventually, he met again with his brother, and his life was spared.
How did he demonstrate his faith? The writer of Hebrews says he demonstrated his faith concerning things to come. All that can be said about this man in the listing. That occurs in Hebrews chapter 11 and defines him as a man of faith, is that he believed God for what he did not receive. He blessed Jacob with the true blessing, gave a secondary blessing to even to Esau, even regarding things to come.
This is the essence of faith. When he faced the end of his life and hadn't received the promise, and hadn't received the land, and hadn't received the nation, and hadn't become a blessing to the world, he nonetheless passed it to the next generation, knowing it was yet to come. Yes, he tried to do things his way. But as soon as he perceived the providential hand of God crossing his natural will and his natural affection, instead of murmuring and rebelling, he yielded. He submitted to the Lord.
He didn't reverse the blessing. And this is an evidence of his faith. He finally succumbed to what was right. Chapter twenty-eight, verse one. Isaac called Jacob, blessed him, charged him.
Said to him, "Don't take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Don't do what your brother did. Go to paid Naamah to the house of Bethuel, your mother's father, and from there take to yourself a wife from the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother. Get somebody that is from the family." A relative. May God Almighty bless you, and here's a repeat of the promise: make you fruitful, multiply you, so that you may become a company of peoples.
May He also give you the blessing of Abraham to you and to your descendants with you, that you may possess the land of your sojournings, which God gave to Abraham.
So, in the end, dear old Isaac, rolled over, accepted God's providential. Purpose through all the sinful machinations of that bizarre set of circumstances, and he died in faith that the promise would be fulfilled, and that his son Jacob was the next link.
Now that takes us to Jacob, and we'll make it quick, but let's go back to Hebrews eleven, verse twenty-one. By faith, Jacob, as he was dying, blessed. Each of the sons of Joseph, and worshipped, leaning on the top of his staff. Life of faith. For Jacob was like his father Isaac.
It was not the shining of the sun on a calm and clear day. Oh no, his life was murky and muddy and cloudy and dark and foggy and all of those things. But he walked by faith. Like Isaac, he encountered many struggles, many challenges. Victories came very, very hard for him.
The fog in his life was thick; sin was heavy, but his faith never waned. Turn to chapter twenty-eight for a moment, and let's see what we can know about him. Verse ten. Jacob departed from Beer-sheba, went toward Haran, came to a certain place, spent the night there, because the sun had set. He took one of the stones of the place, put it under his head, and lay down in that place.
He had a dream, and behold, a ladder was set on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. The Lord stood above it and said, "I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants." Here's a reiteration of the Abrahamic covenant to the next in the in the genetic flow, the genetic line, the descendants. Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth; you'll spread out to the west, the east, the north, the south, and you and in your descendants shall all the family.
So the earth be blessed. Almost verbatim, the Abrahamic promise: Behold, I am with you. I will keep you wherever you go. I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you.
Wow. Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I didn't know it." And he was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place!" This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
So Jacob rose early in the morning, took the stone that he had put under his head, set it up as a pillar, poured oil on its top, and he he turned it into an altar, a place commemorating that encounter with God. He called the name of it Bethel, that's house of God. Previously, the name of the city had been Luz. Jacob made a vow, saying, "If God will be with me and will keep me on this journey that I take, and give me food to eat and garments to wear, I return to my father's house in safety. Then the Lord will be my God.
This stone which I have set up as a pillar will be God's house. And of all that you give me, I will surely give a tenth to you." Here is indication of his faith. He wants the Lord to be his God. He wants to give generously. He is dependent on the Lord, and we see that in well, way over in chapter thirty-two.
He is terrified of his brother, Esau. Jacob, in verse nine of chapter thirty-two, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, O Lord, who said to me, "Return to your country and your relatives, and I'll prosper you," which we just read. I am unworthy of all the loving kindness and all the faithfulness which you have shown to your servant. For with my staff only I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two companies. Deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him that he will come and attack me, and the mothers with the children.
For you said. I will surely prosper you and make your descendants as the sand of the sea, which is too great to be numbered. And we're not going to be able to do that if Esau shows up and massacres us all.
So when you look at the life of Jacob, you see a lot of problems in his life. Obviously, all the duplicity, all the lies, all the deception. Yet he is anxious for the Lord to be his God. He's anxious to give to the Lord. He seeks the Lord in his hour of desperation.
And he trusts the Lord to be the source of his life and the source of his protection. And he was. He was. The time came for Jacob to pass away, and he passes on the birthright. He passes the birthright on.
To Joseph, let's look at chapter forty-eight of Genesis.
Now you know we're getting to the end. Came about after these things, Joseph was told, "Behold, your father sick." So he took his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, with him. Joseph had two sons. I don't want to get too complicated here, folks. We talk about the twelve tribes of Israel, don't we?
When they came into the land, there twelve tribes were allotted land. There actually were thirteen tribes of Israel. Because one of the tribes was Joseph, but his portion was split into two parts, Ephraim and Manasseh, and the Levites, the tribe of Levi, had no land. They were the priestly tribe.
So Joseph appears with his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. Jacob said to Joseph, "God Almighty appeared to me at Luz, back at Bethel, in the land of Canaan. Blessed me. He said, 'Behold, I'll make you fruitful and numerous, and make you a company of people. Give you this land to your descendants for you, for an everlasting possession.' Had he seen it?
No. Had he seen a great nation? No. Had he seen people like the sand of the sea? No.
It was a promise. He died believing that promise was true." Now your two sons who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt are mine. Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, as Reuben and Simeon are mine. But your offspring that have been born after them shall be yours. They shall be called by the names of their brothers in their inheritance.
And he goes on, and the key thing is the promise that is pronounced there at the very beginning. It is passed on. Through him to the next generation, namely Ephraim and Manasseh. I'm not going to read all the rest of this, but go down to verse 12. Joseph took them from his knees and bowed with his face to the ground.
He took both of them, Ephraim with his right hand toward Israel's left, Manasseh with his left hand toward Israel or Jacob's right, and brought them close to him. Stretched out his right hand, laid it on the head of Ephraim, who was the younger; his left hand on Manasseh's head, crossing his hands. Although Manasseh was the firstborn, he blessed Joseph and said, "The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day." And there is another indication of Jacob's true faith: the angel who has redeemed me from all. Evil, bless the lads, and may my name live on in them, and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and may they grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. When Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on Ephraim's head, it displeased him, and he grasped his father's hand to remove it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's head.
Joseph said to his father, "Not so, my father. For this one is the firstborn. Place your right hand on his head." But his father refused and said, "I know my son. I know he also will become a people. He also will be great.
However, his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations." And he blessed them that day, saying, "By you, Israel, will pronounce blessing, saying, 'May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.'" Thus he put Ephraim before Manasseh, so Ephraim becomes another name for Israel, as Israel becomes another name for Jacob. Israel says to Joseph, "I'm about to die, but God will be with you and bring you to the land of your fathers." There's Jacob's faith. He'd heard from God. He couldn't change his mind. He couldn't move his hands.
He died in faith, never having seen the results. That leaves us only Joseph, and what does it say in verse twenty-two of Hebrews chapter eleven? Simply stated about Joseph, it tells us that he also, while dying, when he was dying, made mention of the exodus of the sons of Israel and gave orders concerning his bones. He's dying now. He has not received the promise.
The promise now is very old. It's very old. It's 200 years since it was given to Abraham. Nobody has yet seen it. They've all died without seeing it fulfilled.
Look at Genesis 50, the last chapter in Genesis. Joseph, verse twenty-two, is in Egypt. He and his father's household lived a hundred and ten years. Joseph saw the third generation of Ephraim's sons. Joseph said to his brothers in chapter fifty, verse twenty-four, "I'm about to die, but God will surely take care of you and bring you up from this land.
He promised you that land." We're still in Egypt. They're all nomads. They're all wanderers. They've never been in the land. They've never possessed the land.
They've never had the kingdom. They've never been a blessing. They've never experienced deliverance and salvation. As a people, they aren't yet a people. I'm about to die, but God will do what He promised.
He promised an oath to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, "God will surely take care of you, and you should take my bones from here." So Joseph died at the age of a hundred ten, was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt. Wow! Died a stranger, never having received the promise.
Now, what is the writer of Hebrews telling us? You get it now, don't you? These are people of faith. I mean, their whole lives were built around this promise that had been given to Abraham and passed on to these three other patriarchs, and everything in their life focused on the confidence that they had that God would do what He said He would do because God could be trusted. They never saw it.
I mean, this is faith at its highest level, is it not? These aren't people who live at a low level. Sinful, absolutely. Deplicious, deceitful, absolutely. Weak, vacillating.
Sometimes immoral, absolutely living in a primitive time without the full revelation or the full riches of the spirit that we know today. They struggled, perhaps in ways that we don't, and maybe that's why there was more, a little more tolerance of those things, as Scripture indicates in the past. But what may be true about that part of their lives doesn't cancel out what's true about the commitment they made to trust God. They could not be deterred from giving the blessing to whom the blessing belonged. Abraham would not give it to Ishmael; it went to Isaac.
Isaac would not give it to Esau; it went to Jacob. Jacob would not give it to Manasseh; and went to Ephraim. They all died, never having seen it. They died as strangers, wanderers, nomads. A couple of them in foreign lands.
That was the evidence of their faith. They believed God for what they couldn't see, all the way to death. Unless you think that that's something very unusual and heroic, that's how you believe too. Because the heaven that holds you to Christ is a heaven you have never seen. That's what it means to live by faith.
Our faith must be rooted in the promises of God, not in what we see. A crucial reminder from John MacArthur as he continues his series here on Grace to You, titled "A Faith That Pleases God." Now, as John pointed out today, Jacob didn't merit God's favor. He, like most of the people talked about in this series, was a flawed, sinful man. That said, you might be wondering why does the writer of Hebrews commend men like Jacob, those whose lives were marred by spectacular sins? Here's how John answered that.
I guess in a sense, because everybody's life is marred by spectacular sins, if you want to call them spectacular. It's kind of a positive word for negative reality, but that's how it is in a fallen world. The Bible says that before we came to Christ, we were all driven by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. We were all children of wrath. We were all under the power of Satan, basically ruled by the kingdom of darkness.
We were in the kingdom of darkness. Our father was the devil. That's all of us. All of us, not some of us, but all of us. It may have manifested itself in different degrees of overt evil, but we were all enemies of God, haters of God, rebels against His law, and of course, we were transformed.
Paul says, "Such were some of you." After giving a horrible list in First Corinthians six of sinful behaviors, and Paul says to Titus. We all lived like this before we came to Christ.
So, if the truth were known about all of us, we had evil hearts. It may not have manifested itself in the same kind of evil behavior, but all our hearts were darkened and set against God. And the Lord transformed us. That's why Hebrews commends men like Jacob, because. All of us once were part of Satan's world before the Lord rescued us, and we were all marked by really spectacular sins, if the truth were known.
And we can all thank the Lord for His mercy and grace toward us, and for giving us new life and new loves. And helping us to walk in the path of righteousness. Yes, friend, we as believers in Christ have so much to thank God for. God's word outlines those blessings in detail. To saturate your mind with the biblical realities of being a Christian, there's no better tool than the MacArthur Study Bible.
And just a reminder that for a limited time, you can get the MacArthur Study Bible, specifically the brown leather soft edition with the Legacy Standard Bible, at 25% off the normal price. If you don't own the MacArthur Study Bible, this is a great time to order one.
So contact us today. Call eight hundred fifty-five Grace, or visit our website gty.org. Along with 25,000 footnotes that explain virtually every passage of Scripture, the MacArthur Study Bible also has detailed introductions to each book of the Bible, maps, and many other helps that will pull you deep into Scripture. And again, right now you can get the Legacy Standard Version of the MacArthur Study Bible with the brown leather soft cover at a significantly reduced price. The sale runs through Friday, October.
thirtieth, so order your Bible soon. Go to gty.org or call eight hundred fifty-five Grace. Also, remember that John's current study of faith that pleases God is available for free in MP3 and transcript format. Just go to gty.org and start downloading.
Now, for the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Watch Grace to You Television this weekend. Check your local listings, and then be here next week when John MacArthur looks at the faith of Moses, a man who left wealth, political power, and popularity to become a slave. What would compel a man to do that? Find out Monday when we return with another thirty minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time on Grace to You.
