A Man of Faith

 DEVOTION

TO HEBREWS

A MAN OF FAITH

Heb 11:20

20 By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.

NIV

Although this is short and sweet, we should take the next three together as each has only one line, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, but each also desires some individual attention as they are in the Hall of Faith. Why did the author tell us so little about Isaac and yet put him on the list of people of faith? We know Isaac’s two sons, Jacob and Esau received completely different blessings about their future. However, even if Jacob deceived his father and took the blessing that belonged to the firstborn, Esau, Jacob is the one who Jesus would come into the world through his descendants. God would even change Jacob’s name to Israel so that all the twelve tribes would come through his sons and to this day the land is still called Israel, named after the son of Isaac. Perhaps this is why Isaac is in this Hall of Faith, yet we are told it is because he blessed his sons regarding their future. Here is a man of faith, who believes in the Almighty God, and when there was a famine in the land as there was earlier in the time of Abraham when he sent his sons to Egypt for grain. But the Lord appeared to Isaac and told him not to go to Egypt, and Isaac obeyed the Lord God and pitched his tent in the land of promise. God made a covenant with Isaac as well. But the story here is about Isaac following God's direction, staying in place, even when the physical evidence is telling him to go where there is grain. Later we are told that Isaac planted crops in the land and in the same year reaped a harvest one hundred-fold because the Lord blessed him. Here is our story as well. We move when our Lord God tells us to move, and we stay when our Lord God tells us to stay. We plant in the land our Lord God tells us to plant in and He will bless us because we have followed his command. We know many may not live the same way we do, but we do not go unless we are told to go. We stay because we are told to stay and He would bless us because we have faith. This applies to where we live, work, and worship. Speaking personally, had I not followed the voice of God telling me “Move here” when I lived happily in Illinois, I would have never ended up at a church, where through the blessing of the denomination, received enough educational requirements to become credentialed as a minister, and again, through the leading of the Lord God, move me from the placed I worshipped to become the lead pastor of another church. This is a blessing from the Lord God, to whom I follow when he says move, or stay, where I live, work, and worship, all the days of my life. We all have this same Lord God who will speak into our hearts and hopefully, a day is coming when people will say, there lived a man of faith.