Hebrews 11:20
"By faith (again) Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come." Many people don’t realize that. Why do you suppose the Arab world is so high in numbers ie...population? Because God promised Ishmael and Esau that He would bless them. They’re not there by accident. They’ve been blessed. Ishmael had twelve sons (the prince's of Saudi Arabia) and Esau had seven (they are truly the scattered people as they're among us) if memory serves me.
You know, I have to think, not only do they have 50 times more people than Israel (they’ve got almost that much more land area than Israel), but on top of that what’s under all their sand? Most of the world’s oil! Though the region of Israel's occupancy has its share as well. They can’t complain, my they’ve got blessings that they don’t even want to admit. So God hasn’t turned His back on them. And so even Isaac when he blessed the sons, he blessed Esau just as well as he did Jacob. But, Jacob of course, is the man of trusting faith. Now verse 21.
Hebrews 11:21a
"By faith Jacob, when he was a dying,…"
This takes us back to Genesis 48:5-22 and you can pick up all the blessings that he placed upon those sons there.
Hebrews 11:21b
"…blessed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff."
As he was dying, passing off the scene. All right now we jump up into the next generation. In verse 22 - of Joseph, the favored son of Jacob. You all should know the story of Joseph; I don’t have to rehearse that. Joseph ends up down in Egypt. And as the Hebrews have done from the onset of the nation, even though they’re hated, they’re despised, they’re persecuted - invariably some of them will end up where? At the top. You just stop and think about it. What percentage of the Nobel Prize winners are Hebrews? If I’m not mistaken, it’s about 50%. Yet the Hebrews are only less than one percent of the world’s population. They’re blessed.
Look at the talented people in the entertainment industry. What are most of them? Hebrews. Look at successful writers. What are most of them? I won’t say all, but what are most of them? Hebrews. Medical science. My goodness. Beginning with the polio vaccine, Jonas Salk, what was he? Hebrew or Gentile? He was a Hebrew. All the master scientists of the atomic energy program, what were they? Most of them were Hebrews. Oh, they’ve been blessed beyond human comprehension in spite of the world’s hating them, in spite of the satanic pressures to get rid of them. In spite of their being bond by a Religion which turned its back toward God and which caused the bring forth of Jesus as their redeemer. As the end of God's tolerance of their sin ie..idolatry.
And so never lose sight of that (even Joseph). Here he’s sold as a common slave, taken down into Egypt, becomes nothing more than a house servant but where does he end up? Second man in Egypt and I imagine if he had wanted to usurp Pharaoh’s seat, he could have. Daniel goes out into Babylon, nothing more than a manacled slave. Where does he end up? Second man in Babylon. Almost that far in the next empire, the Medes and the Persians. And so all the way up through human history, we’ve seen that these Hebrews with their talent, their intelligence, their energy, they just come to the top.
As long as they remained the loyal subjects of Yehovah He continues the watch over them but when He changed the program as recorded in Acts the dimension of all this also changed. Its' this change that most people just don't seem to get their heads around as they mix all these things as a salad and then try to make sense of it. If we don't rightly divide or delineated the word we'll never come to the knowledge of God and His workings.
All right, now here’s Joseph. Went through the life of a slave, imprisoned (as far as I can tell) about 12 years. Then he comes out and rises up to the second man in Egypt - but when he dies, they all die remember. When he died he made mention of the departing out of Egypt of the Children of Israel and gave a command concerning his bones. Well, you all know what that was, don’t you? Joseph told the Children of Israel of his day, "That one day, God is going to take you out of here and you’re going to go back to the land promised to our forefathers. And when you go, you take my bones with you."
Now what prompted him to request that? Well, I think it carries through to the Hebrews of the present day. If a Hebrew has got the money and the wherewithal, and he’s got any connection with his Old Testament Scriptures, where would he like to be buried? As close to the Temple as they can get. If they have the money, they would be buried right next to the Temple itself. Well, Joseph already had a comprehension of that, that when the Lord came to set up this kingdom, he wanted to be in the land of promise at resurrection day. That’s what he’s looking at. He’s looking at resurrection day. And so, by faith, knowing the promises made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that a Redeemer, Messiah, King is coming. He wanted to have his bones in the Promised Land, when that day comes, so he gave commandment that they were to take his bones with them. Now the early morning just before day break when the ground shook and the graves were opened and the ancient dead were raised with Him, these people were also raise with Him. Just as the Psalms tells us in Psalm 68:18 and then by Paul as recorded in Ephesians He says the same thing in 4:8.
Psalm 68:18-19
"Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the LORD God might dwell among them. Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation." and now Paul's take on this by the same Spirit;
Ephesians 4:7-10
"But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.(Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.)"
When Joseph said, "take my bones with you," when they got back in the Promised Land, did they just bury him at the first place that they came across? No. He was buried in a particular place and the amazing thing is, there are three pieces of ground in the homeland of Israel that were bought and paid for with current money, of silver. Three of them. And those three same identical places are the points of greatest controversy and bloodshed today.
But see, all of this ties in with Ancient Israel, and what’s going on today is tied together. You can’t separate them. Now I want to mention three crucial areas of the Middle East that were intrinsic to the book of Genesis. So before we go back and pick up in Hebrews chapter 11, we’re going to look at those three a moment. The first one of course is in Genesis 23, where we have the death of Sarah, Abraham’s beloved wife, the one who was part and parcel of that Abrahamic Covenant and the birth of Isaac. But now she dies and I think starting right here we find that part and parcel of the whole Hebrew mental makeup is a reverence for their burial sites. Even today if bulldozers are working in Israel and they turn up human bones, they have to stop. Now in America all it takes is a Snail Darter or some endangered species like that, but in Israel if they turn up human bones, then everything stops because they have such a respect for the human dead. And I think it began right back here with Abraham making such a big deal over a burial place for his beloved wife Sarah. Not to mention that which Jacob and Esau did over their father and the Jacob's sons over him when he died.
All right, Genesis chapter 23 and let’s start at verse 3. Now we’re not going to read all these, we’re just going to hit a couple of the highlights. But in Genesis 23, Abraham has been mourning over his wife Sarah.
Genesis 23:3-7 "And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the sons of Heth, saying, I am a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a buryingplace with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight. And the children of Heth answered Abraham, saying unto him, Hear us, my lord: thou art a mighty prince among us: in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead; none of us shall withhold from thee his sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury thy dead. And Abraham stood up, and bowed himself to the people of the land, even to the children of Heth."
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