The Faith of Jacob

Reformation Baptist Church

After the complicated story of how, by faith, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, we now come to a more straightforward story that Jacob did by faith, the blessing of Joseph and his sons. The blessings of Joseph and his sons are significant because of two things. Jacob tried to make Joseph effectively the first born son and receive a double portion. The other was that Ephraim was put before his older brother Manasseh. When Jacob was going to die, he had a testimony of being more concerned about blessing and having an expectation that it will impact on what was to come than on the fear of death. Since we know from Hebrews 11 that he was looking forward to a heavenly country, he had hopes for the future even as he died and he knew what God wanted him to do and that God would cause it to come to pass.