“Are we going to make it?” That is a question we all ask from time to time. Will we be able to turn in our paper by the submission deadline? Will our team hold on to their lead until the clock strikes triple-zero? Will our car keep chugging along on fumes until we roll into the next gas station? Some of these questions are more important than others, but it does not get much more important than this: Will God’s people survive? Will their Lord and Savior bring them through? The author to the Hebrews has a definite answer: Yes, we will make it because God is unchangingly faithful! This is the fourth installment in our series on Hebrews 11, The Hall of God’s Faithfulness. In Part 3 we began considering Abraham, the prototypical believer in the Old Testament. Now in Part 4 we start with Abraham’s testimony to Christ and transition to the testimony of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.
Abraham Believed the Promise
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, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. (Hebrews 11:17–19)
By now we are familiar with this opening refrain, “by faith.” The imperfect Old Testament saints, sinful though they were, lived and operated by a true faith in God’s salvific promises to them. They looked ahead to the Christ who was to come. Why? Because God had testified to them about who he is and what he does. But even in the midst of their knowledge, assent, and trust in God and his trustworthy promises, some moments must have been absolutely dreadful. That is what Abraham was experiencing. We read in Genesis 22 that God told him to offer up Isaac, his only (or only begotten) son. This is the one whom Abraham and Sarah had awaited for decades, and he came when they were both as good as dead (Heb 11:12). God’s answer had finally arrived: Abraham saw the first of the innumerable offspring that the LORD had promised to him. But now God himself commands Abraham to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice to God? This is a father’s worst nightmare. How could Abraham move forward and trust God? Simply put, it was because Abraham trusted the foundational (or fundamental) promise of God. And what is God’s foundational promise? A Savior for his people. Or as those who have come later in redemptive history, we could say that God’s foundational promise is Christ for us.
You see, Abraham had learned who God was by this point in his life: God was the one who kept his promises, even if he did so in ways we would not usually expect. The Lord of heaven and earth had proven again and again that his Word is sure and that his actions are in line with his Word, even if we cannot see the whole picture. That is what gave Abraham the confidence to do a little reasoning. God is faithful. God promised him descendants and kept his promise in a miraculous way by giving Abraham and Sarah a son when they were both past the age to become parents. It was through this son that the rest of his descendants would come, and through them would one day arise the one through whom “all the families of the earth would be blessed” (Gen 12:3). Therefore, the only legitimate conclusion that remained for Abraham after he heard God’s dreadful imperative was that God would raise Isaac from the dead!
Abraham was a good candidate for looking back. He had come from prosperous Ur, yet now he owned no property in the Land of Promise. He had a beloved son, yet now he was commanded to kill him. Still Abraham looked with faith to God for the future. God had testified to Abraham, and Abraham believed. The patriarch had come to realize that “even death is no obstacle to the fulfillment of God’s purposes.”1 In Genesis 22:5 Abraham tells his servants, “I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.” The Hebrew words for “worship” and “come again” here are both plural—Abraham was expecting both himself and Isaac to worship God and return to the servants. And that is exactly what happened, even if it was not quite the way Abraham expected. As Hebrews 11:19 reminds us, Abraham did figuratively receive Isaac back from the dead because the angel of the LORD stopped him before he slew his son (Gen 22:11–12). And so Abraham and Isaac point us ahead to Christ—this father received an only begotten son from the grave. This is the ultimate hope for God’s people: The Father received his Son from the grave, and this is because God’s foundational promises must come to pass. So when you wonder or doubt, as Abraham surely did from time to time, look to God’s foundational promises to you in Christ! Listen to the testimony of Abraham.
Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph Believed the Promise
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. (Hebrews 11:20–22)
Now that we have transitioned from Abraham to his descendants, we see blessings turned on their head: the younger coming before the older. That is not how people expected things to go. Jacob’s blessing came by trickery, while the blessing on Joseph’s sons came by choice. Still, both blessings came by God’s grace to people who did not deserve it. Yet God was still working out his plan, even when it seemed to subvert everyone’s expectations. What were these blessings? In this case, God promised about an unseen future, much like Noah back in verse 7. Both stories feature old, blind patriarchs on their way to the grave—Isaac and Jacob. Both trusted the God who had been faithful to them and knew he would be faithful in the future.
Then we come to Joseph, and we see he had faith in God’s promises even before the Exodus. As he was about to die, he gave instructions for his remains: Take my bones to the Promised Land. Even though he was a mover and shaker in Egypt, he was looking for a heavenly city that was greater than any earthly superpower (Heb 11:10). Now, “make mention” in verse 21 is probably better translated as “remember.”2 Thus it would read: “By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, remembered the exodus of the Israelites.” How did he remember something that had not yet happened? He remembered by trusting in the promises God has already made to Abraham. We read the following words in Genesis 15:13–15:
Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age.”
God testified to Abraham, and through him to Joseph, therefore Joseph trusted him. In other words, Joseph knew what God had done was a preview of what God would do. In the words of one of my former seminary professors, “We who live since Jesus inaugurated the new covenant have seen God keep his greatest promises at the greatest cost to himself.”3
One thing we should realize throughout this famous chapter of Hebrews is that the patriarchs had a forward-looking faith. They were looking to the Christ who was to come. And he came! The Hebrew Christians had what the Old Testament saints were looking forward to, and so do we. Look to Christ.
In the coming months and years, we will doubtless have many times in our lives where we wonder what God is doing. Will we make it? Will God’s people survive, and will our Lord and Savior keep his promises to us? What is God doing? He is keeping his foundational promise: salvation in Jesus Christ. So trust him, even when things are unexpected! We cannot know the details of the future or exactly how God will bring about his purposes for his people. But we can know who God is and what he has done for us in Jesus. That is more than enough of a foundation for our faith! Our Lord reminds us about this in his famous words from Matthew 28:18–20:
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
God keeps his promises. Christ came. Christ saves. His church will prevail.
Conclusion
All four of these figures (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph) had to deal with potential death or approaching death. Yet they all trusted in God to do what he promised. We see here a group of believing generations which were bookended by sorrow: sacrifice and slavery. Yet God and his promises remained. Christ came. The Hebrew Christians needed to be reminded about that, and so do we. Jesus is better. He is the culmination of the whole story. Look to him, and do not look back!
Notes
- R. T. France, “Hebrews” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary 13, Hebrews, Revised Addition, ed. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland (Zondervan, 2006), 158.
- Luke Timothy Johnson, Hebrews (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 513.
- Dennis Johnson, “Hebrews” in ESV Expository Commentary, Volume XII: Hebrews–Revelation (Crossway), 172.
©Chris Smith. All Rights Reserved.
You can find the whole series here.
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Christopher Smith
Christopher Smith is originally from Bellevue, Nebraska. A graduate of Westminster Seminary California (M.Div 2019; MA (Historical Theology) 2020). He is associate pastor of Phoenix URC in the United Reformed Churches of North America. He is currently pursuing a ThM in systematic theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary.
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