“By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come.”

Hebrews 11:20.

I. A father shows his faith by a concern for his children.

Jacob showed concern for his children when faced by the possible threat from Esau. “And Jacob lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, Esau came, and with him four hundred men. And he divided the children unto Leah, and unto Rachel, and unto the two handmaids. And he put the handmaids and their children foremost, and Leah and her children after, and Rachel and Joseph hindermost,” Genesis 33:1-2.

II. A father should share his faith with his children.

God has required that His Word be the subject of conversation in the home - Deuteronomy 6:5-7.

“Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the LORD,” Psalm 34:11.

“Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him,” Genesis 18:18-19.

“And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” Ephesians 6:4.

III. It is a great blessing to be taught of ‘things to come’.

Girls and boys, there are ‘things to come’!

1. Things beyond our imaginings.

2. Things of vastly greater importance than the things of this present day.

3. Being told of these things we ought to get ready for them.

(Bell rings for change of class and its sound tells us to be ready for a change!)

IV. Not everyone who hears the gospel benefits from it.

Esau was taught and blessed by his father Isaac ‘concerning things to come’ but he counted that blessing as nothing! He would have heard of the promise of God to Abraham but despised it.

“Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears,” Hebrews 12:16-17. (Genesis 27:33-39).

Yes, even an ungodly man enjoys the blessings of the Lord but they are but temporal blessings, Matt 5:45. Esau did become great but only in an ‘earthly’ sense, Gen 36. Of him came the Edomites, the enemies of Israel. He was taught by his father of ‘things to come’ but such instruction was cast away by Esau.

Jacob believed that God would fulfil his promise to his posterity; and God gave him to see what would befall them in their future generations.