I want you to notice a couple of things here in the Hebrews text, first notice that the example for each one of these three men is something they did when they were dying, look at verse 21 by faith Jacob as he was dying you see it in verse 22 by faith Joseph when he was dying now verse 20 does not say that Isaac was dying when he blessed his sons Jacob and Esau but it did happen at the end of his life and Isaac was convinced that he was dying or at least felt the foreboding sense that death was near which prompted him to give the blessing to Jacob and Esau, we read that in Genesis 27 verses 1 and 2 now it came about when Isaac was old and his eyes were too dim to see that he called his older son Esau and said to him my son and he said to him here I am Isaac said behold now I am old and I do not know the day of my death he had lost his eyesight and he felt that his death was imminent and that's what caused him to bring Esau in to try and bless Esau and Jacob as well so all three of these men what is noted in Hebrews 11 is something that they did in their life at the time of their death and for Isaac it is when he sensed that death was near, now as it turns out he didn't die for another 14 -15 years after that, but he felt as if he were dying and the Lord let him live a little bit longer, so for all three of these men the evidence of their faith comes at the end of their life, in death, now this is where you might expect on a Mother's Day for me to do a whole sermon on the subject of death like I did when we were in Ecclesiastes but I'm not going to do that, I'm going to reserve talking about the imminence of death for later on because I have two more opportunities to do this, verse 21 and 22, second I want you to notice the details that are contained in verse 20, this should frame our thinking of our observations when we get back to the book of Genesis, there are three specific details, number one, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau and this tells us exactly the event that the author has in mind, second the giving of the blessing was an act of faith now this is going to cause us a little bit of a conundrum when we get back and start looking at some of the details of the story itself, but just notice that it is by faith that Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, and then third, the blessing concerned things to come and it is that fact that indicates to us that the blessing, though as misguided as it might have been, Isaac was doing it yet in faith so it is the blessing of Jacob and Esau, the giving of the blessing was an act of faith and the blessing concerned the things to come now with that in mind, go back because you've just read the entire passage that deals with Isaac here, go back to Genesis chapter 22 and we're going to pick up the narrative there, we're going to go through the life of Isaac and particularly this incident that's mentioned in Hebrews 11 verse 20, Genesis 22 and our going through this and looking at these three things as they unfold and dealing with the issues that they raise, this is going to serve as our exposition of Hebrews 11 20, by faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau even regarding things to come, it was Isaac and Jacob who were blessed, it was an act of faith and it concerned things to come now when we last left off with Isaac, he was crawling down off of the altar on Mount Moriah freshly bound and the angel had preserved his life and then there was a sacrifice that was made and Abraham according to verse 19 of Hebrews 11 received Isaac back as it were, as a symbol or a parable if you were of resurrection and immediately after that the covenant is reaffirmed, look at Genesis 22 and I'm just going to fill in some details we're going to be zeroing in on chapter 27 but we're just going to catch up, we're going to make up some time between Genesis 22 and Genesis 27.