September 18, 2022 Faith Story: He Blessed
He Blessed
Hebrews 11:1-2, 17-20; Genesis 27:1-29
Rev. Rhonda Blevins
September 18, 2022
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.
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By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac. He who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only son, of whom he had been told, “It is through Isaac that descendants shall be named for you.” He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead—and, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. By faith Isaac invoked blessings for the future on Jacob and Esau.
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When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called his elder son Esau and said to him, “My son,” and he answered, “Here I am.” He said, “See, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field, and hunt game for me. Then prepare for me savory food, such as I like, and bring it to me to eat, so that I may bless you before I die.”
Now Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game for his father, Rebekah said to her son Jacob, “I heard your father say to your brother Esau, ‘Bring me game, and prepare for me savory food to eat, that I may bless you before the Lord before I die.’ Now therefore, my son, obey my word as I command you. Go to the flock, and get me two choice kids, so that I may prepare from them savory food for your father, such as he likes, and you shall take it to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies.” But Jacob said to his mother Rebekah, “Look, my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I am a man of smooth skin. Perhaps my father will feel me, and I shall seem to be mocking him and bring a curse on myself and not a blessing.” His mother said to him, “Let your curse be on me, my son; only obey my word, and go, get them for me.” So he went and got them and brought them to his mother, and his mother prepared savory food, such as his father loved. Then Rebekah took the best garments of her elder son Esau, which were with her in the house, and put them on her younger son Jacob, and she put the skins of the kids on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. Then she handed the savory food and the bread that she had prepared to her son Jacob.
So he went in 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 your firstborn. I have done as you told me; now sit up and eat of my game, so that you may bless me.” But Isaac said to his son, “How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son?” He answered, “Because the Lord your God granted me success.” Then Isaac said to Jacob, “Come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not.” So Jacob went up to his father Isaac, who felt him and said, “The voice is Jacob’s voice, 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. He said, “Are you really my son Esau?” He answered, “I am.” Then he said, “Bring it to me, that I may eat of my son’s game and bless you.” So he brought it to him, and he ate, and he brought him wine, and he drank. Then his father Isaac said to him, “Come near and kiss me, my son.” So he came near and kissed him, and he smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him and said,
“Ah, the smell of my son
is like 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 peoples 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!”
If you ever worry that you haven’t done enough, I’m so glad you’re here.
Today in our deep dive into the heroes of faith named in Hebrews 11, we come to the story of Isaac.
· Isaac: the son of Abraham and Sarah.
· Isaac: the father of Esau and Jacob (who will become Israel).
· Isaac: sandwiched between giants in the great, unfolding story of the nation of Israel.
· Isaac: who didn’t appear to accomplish much yet received his place in that great “Roll Call of Faith” we’ve been exploring together.
Through Isaac, we can discover that it’s not greatness—it’s not huge success or amazing accomplishments that matters in God’s sight—it’s simple faithfulness.
Let’s get started!
Maybe it was Isaac’s childhood marked by suffering and shame.
He was the long-awaited golden child—the son promised to Abraham and Sarah by God. But God took God’s sweet time delivering that promise. His parents were 90 and 100 when Isaac was born. The whole scenario was so inconceivable that his parents named him Isaac, which means “laughter.” He was born . . . a joke.
Circumcised at 8-days-old because his dad received a mandate from God, Isaac’s sibling, a half-brother named Ishmael, was cruelly sent away by his parents, never to return.
And here’s a trauma Isaac likely never recovered from: Isaac’s father nearly murdered him for some religious ritual. One day, when Isaac was just a boy, Isaac’s father told him they were going on a trip. They made their way to a remote location where his daddy built an altar. Young Isaac noticed there was no animal for sacrifice and asked his daddy about it. Was it then he realized he was to be the sacrifice? Or would he realize it later? At the last minute, God provided a ram that his daddy sacrificed instead.
He watched the ram get slaughtered in his place. He would grow to know of his half-brother’s banishment for his sake.
What suffering Isaac knew as a small child! What suffering, and what shame.
The field of psychology didn’t exist in Isaac’s day, but today we know that childhood trauma can impair brain development. Traumatized children often become traumatized adults, resulting in myriad problems like poor stress management, physical maladies, relationship struggles, and stunted emotional growth.
We say, “kids are so resilient.” But are they? Really? Was Isaac “resilient?” Let’s continue his story and find out.
Maybe it was Isaac’s childhood marked by suffering and shame, or maybe it was his young adulthood marked by death and disappointment.
Now, I’m using the terms “young adulthood” and “middle adulthood” loosely, because according to the Bible people lived a really long time back in Old Testament days. Isaac’s young adulthood was marked by death and disappointment.
First, his beloved mother, Sarah, died when Isaac was 37. His grief was real. Three years later, when Isaac was 40, he married Rebekah, his second cousin, which gave him consolation after his mother’s death. But like his mother, his wife had fertility issues. And so he prayed. And he prayed. And he prayed. But no children.
We don’t talk a lot about infertility in the church, even though it’s quite common. Elizabeth Hagan is a pastor in Athens, Georgia who has written about her struggle with infertility.
During the darkest days of our infertility journey, my prayers went like this: “How long O Lord? How long will you keep us childless?” There’s not a lot of joy in this. Asking for the same thing over and over. Being stuck.
Now we have treatments for infertility, but it’s no cakewalk. It’s a frustrating cycle of hope and disappointment, hope and disappointment. It’s humiliating at times. And so incredibly expensive.
Isaac’s mother died. His grief was real. Then the struggle with infertility for 20 years. Death and disappointment.
Maybe it was Isaac’s childhood marked by suffering and shame, maybe it was his young adulthood marked by death and disappointment, or maybe it was his middle adulthood marked by problems and privilege.
But before we get into the problems and the privilege, let’s celebrate with Isaac. Rebekah finally conceives! And not just one baby in her womb, but two! The babies wrestled in her womb, a harbinger of things to come.
At 60-years-old Isaac became a father. Esau came out of the womb first. He was hairy, so they named him Esau, which means . . . “hairy.” Esau’s twin brother was clinging to his heel. They named him Jacob, which means . . . “trickster.” Another harbinger of things to come.
As the boys grew up, Isaac loved Esau more because of a shared interest in hunting. Rebekah loved Jacob more because he was more domestic. One day, Jacob made a delicious pot of stew. Esau came in from the field, exhausted and famished. He asked Jacob for a bowl, and Jacob would only give him a bowl stew in exchange for Esau’s birthright. (As the firstborn boy in that culture, Esau would be the sole recipient of his father’s estate, so this is kind of a big deal.) Esau acquiesced. Not his brightest moment.
When the twins are 15 and Isaac is 75, Isaac’s father, Abraham, dies. Now, remember that firstborn sons are the sole inheritor of their fathers’ estates. Who was Abraham’s firstborn son? Ishmael. But what happened to Ishmael? Sarah demanded that he and his mother be banished, exiled, so that Isaac would inherit Abraham’s estate. Now, Abraham remarried and had other sons and daughters after Sarah’s death. But who did that leave as the beneficiary of Abraham’s significant wealth? Isaac. That’s privilege.
Because of famine in the land, Isaac and his family relocated to a foreign land. This was all well and good for a time, until Isaac’s wealth and property grew, and the locals got jealous and forced them from the land.
Sometimes great privilege comes with great problems.
Ask the Royal Family, in the spotlight these past couple of weeks after the Queen’s death. The Royal Family certainly has tremendous privilege, and tremendous problems as well.
Or ask the wealthy man who once told me, “Rhonda, I used to think I wanted to own all these things. It turns out, all these things own me.”
Maybe it was Isaac’s childhood marked by suffering and shame, maybe it was his young adulthood marked by death and disappointment, maybe it was his middle adulthood marked by problems and privilege, or maybe it was his late adulthood marked by dreams and dullness.
Eventually Isaac and his family found a land to call their own, part of the land that God promised to his father Abraham so many years before. God appeared to Isaac in a dream, saying, “I will bless you.” But being in a new land meant that the women available to their sons for marriage were not of the same tribe. So when Isaac was 100, Esau took a wife from among the Hittite people. Isaac and Rebekah were not pleased by this—the Bible tells us that Esau and his Hittite wife “made life bitter” for Isaac and Rebekah.
And here’s the most famous story from Isaac’s adult life. When he was old and blind, he knew it was time to bless his heir as was the custom. So Isaac called Esau in, instructed him to hunt game and then prepare a delicious meal for him, after which he would offer a blessing. Esau did what he was told, but in the meantime, Rebekah devised a scheme so that Jacob would receive the blessing. She had Jacob put on Esau’s clothes. She affixed wool to his hands and neck (remember, Esau was a hairy fellow). Rebekah made the savory meal and sent it in with Jacob. Jacob was able to trick his father into thinking he was Esau. Because of his dullness of sight, Isaac offered the blessing of the firstborn to the second born. What the author of Hebrews described it this way: “by faith, Isaac invoked blessings for the future.” Isaac’s biggest mistake is what earns him a spot in the “Roll Call of Faith.”
The Hebrews believed that once a word was spoken, it could not be revoked. A spoken word became a living entity. So despite Esau’s pleading when he discovered what had happened, Isaac could not revoke the misplaced blessing.
Esau vowed to kill Jacob after Isaac’s death. So Rebekah convinced Isaac to send Jacob back to their homeland under the guise of procuring a wife (really she was getting him away from Esau).
20 years. That’s how long Jacob was away.
After 20 years, Jacob finally came back to Isaac and Rebekah with his wives and possessions. And when Isaac died at the age of 180, Esau and Jacob buried him.
Suffering and shame. Death and disappointment. Problems and privilege. Dreams and dullness.
That’s Isaac’s story. No big accomplishments. Overshadowed by his father before him, and (as you’ll see) his son after him.
But one thing he did to earn him a spot in the roll call of faith.
He invoked blessings for the future.
If you ever worry that you haven’t done enough, all you really have to do to earn your place among the faithful is to invoke blessings for the future.
Just this week, the founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, gave away his $3 billion company to invoke a blessing for the future by combatting the effects of climate change. Chouinard and his family placed the company in the hands of two entities: a nonprofit and a trust. In his statement, he says that “every dollar that is not reinvested back into Patagonia will be distributed as dividends to protect the planet.”
Instead of “going public,” you could say we’re “going purpose.” Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth for investors, we’ll use the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source of all wealth.
The skilled marketer writes, “Earth is now our only shareholder.”
Some say that he is reinventing capitalism. The New York Times reporter who broke the story said that the day following the publishing, another well-known founder/CEO contacted him, saying, “I may want to do something like this.”
Do you want to do “something like this?”
You don’t need a $3 billion dollar company. You don’t need a famous parents or famous kids. You don’t need riches or fame or some grand accomplishment.
All Isaac did was invoke a blessing for the future. That’s all you need to do as well.
Here’s the deal, when we measure our success by the world’s metrics, we’ll never measure up. We’ll never have the most money, we’ll never be the smartest, the best looking, the most accomplished. There’s always someone richer or smarter or more successful. There’s always going to be someone with better abs. When we measure our life by the world’s standards, we’ll never have “enough.”
But people of faith have a different measuring rod. We don’t live our lives for selfish gain, rather, we live in a way that invokes blessings upon the future. Jesus taught us to pray, and we pray it every Sunday, “thy kingdom come . . . on earth as it is in heaven.” We know we may not ever see that day, but we work for it, nonetheless.
Just like our forebears who invoked blessings upon us, let us set about the business of invoking blessings on the future generations.
In the middle of the Hebrews 11 “Roll Call of Faith,” the author interjects some commentary about what it was like to be counted among the faithful (Hebrews 11:13-14):
All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.
We may never receive the promises, but if we try, we can see and greet them for future generations. May those who come behind us find us faithful.