Genesis chapter 27 and verse
1. And it came to pass that when
Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see,
he called Esau his eldest son, and said unto him, My son. And he said unto him, Behold,
here am I. And he said, Behold now, I am
old, I know not the day of my death. Now, therefore, take,
I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver, and thy bow, and go out
to the field, and take me some venison, and make me savoury
meat such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat, that
my soul may bless thee before I die. And Rebekah heard when
Isaac spake to Esau his son. And Esau went to the field to
hunt for venison and to bring it. And Rebekah spake unto Jacob
her son, saying, Behold, I heard thy father speak unto Esau thy
brother, saying, Bring me venison and make me savoury meat, that
I may eat and bless thee before the Lord before my death. Now therefore, my son, obey my
voice according to that which I command thee. Go now to the
flock and fetch me from Thames two good kids of the goats, and
I will make them savoury meat, and I will make them savoury
meat for thy father such as he loveth. And thou shalt bring
it to thy father, that he may eat, and that he may bless thee
before his death. And Jacob said to Rebekah his
mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth
man. My father, peradventure, will
feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver, and I shall
bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing. And his mother said
unto him, upon me be thy curse my son only obey my voice and
go fetch me them and he went and fetched and brought them
to his mother and his mother made savory meat such as his
father loved And Rebecca took goodly raiment of her eldest
son Esau, which were with her in the house, and put them upon
Jacob, her younger son. And she put the skins of the
kids of the goats upon his hands and upon the smooth of his neck,
and she gave the savoury meat and the bread which she had prepared
into the hand of her son Jacob. And he came unto his father and
said, My father. And he said, Here am I. Who art
thou, my son? And Jacob said unto his father,
I am Esau thy firstborn, I have done according as thou badest
me. Arise, I pray thee, sit and eat
of my venison, that thy soul may bless me. And Isaac said
unto his son, How is it that thou hast found it so quickly,
my son? And he said, Because the Lord
thy God brought it to me. And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come
near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee my son, whether thou
be my very son Esau or not. And Jacob went near unto Isaac
his father, and he felt him, and said, The voice is Jacob's
voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. And he discerned
him not, because his hands were hairy, as his brother Esau's
hands, so he blessed him. And he said, Art thou my very
son Esau? And he said, I am. And he said,
Bring it near to me, and I will eat of my son's venison, that
my soul may bless thee. And he brought it near to him,
and he did eat, and he brought him wine, and he drank. And his
father Isaac said unto him, Come near now, and kiss me, my son. And he came near, and kissed
him, and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him,
and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field
which the Lord hath blessed. Therefore God give thee of the
dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn
and wine. Let people serve Thee, and nations
bow down to Thee. Be Lord over Thy brethren, and
let Thy mother's sons bow down to Thee. Cursed be every one
that curseth Thee, and blessed be he that blesseth Thee. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from His word. I have called this little study
that we're going to have for the next few minutes, Isaac Blesses
Jacob. I might also have called it,
Jacob Deceives Isaac. Because it is impossible to read
this account without acknowledging how devious Jacob was in his
approach to his father. Now certainly, as we read these
verses together, we notice that Rebecca influenced Jacob greatly. But Jacob here is a mature man. I think you'll be surprised to
realise just how old he is. If my calculations are right,
he's around 77 years of age, and he is therefore fully responsible
for his actions. And as we read what Jacob said
to his father and what he did to his father, we find that it
is very easy to criticize Jacob in this. and perhaps that's all
that we should do and just leave it there because he told lies
and he was devious. Yet it is also true that the
guilt of this fraud, this lying, this dishonest deception must
also be mitigated, must also be softened by the determination
of Rebecca, the mother of both Esau and Jacob, to do that which
she saw was right in the eyes of the Lord. And I want just
to touch upon a couple of things which will, I hope, cause you
to think a little bit more seriously about what this passage is actually
telling us. You will remember that Rebekah
had been given a prophecy by the Lord many, many years before
that there were two nations in her womb, two nations, twin boys,
and that the elder would serve the younger. And when Rebekah
learned that, she believed it. And she knew that this was God's
will for both her and for the boys. And so for the whole of
her life, from that moment on, she understood that Jacob was
to have the blessing. And when we consider that, and
we consider Rebecca and her part in this, then perhaps we will
see these events in a slightly different light. I am not suggesting
here that the end justifies the means. But Rebecca's plan, and
it was she who suggested the deceit that was made by Jacob
upon his blind father, and Rebecca's participation in so much that
she directed what was to be done and aided Jacob in carrying it
out. She also, if we had read on a
little bit more, she managed the consequences of the event
and Esau's anger and she prevented violence by convincing Isaac
to send Jacob away to her family. She was deeply involved in this
whole thing. So when we read this passage,
we ought to read it with a certain spiritual awareness that actually
what Rebecca was doing here and what Jacob was doing in perpetrating
this fraud was acting to stop Isaac's defiance of God's revelation. You know, I think there might
even be a case to make here that by doing what she did this day,
Rebecca saved Isaac's life. I don't think that if What had
happened had gone this way, that God would have allowed Isaac
to bless Esau, that he may well have slain him there and then
that day, rather than allowing the blessing to go to Esau. Be that as it may, Rebecca's
involvement in this matter may well have been the difference
between life and death to Isaac. We are not excusing the lies
that Jacob told, but we do see in this matter that God's purposes
are fixed, even despite man's weaknesses, despite man's sin,
and despite man's desire to thwart the will of God. Now there's
much in this account that I cannot deal with and perhaps this really
just does open up the fact that we ought to spend a lot more
time upon this little passage on a future occasion. The narrative,
the story is packed with facts, with drama, with cunning, with
underhand scheming. There's deception and lies, there's
misrepresentation. But we are left with a question.
Can a man be guilty of stealing something that God says is his? And let me point out a few interesting
points here and then basically we're just going to have to leave
this and wonder about the meaning. Let's think first of all about
Isaac's blindness. We're told here that Isaac was
growing old and that his eyes were dim and that he couldn't
see. And that blindness led to the
possibility of this deceit by Jacob being effective. But I think there is also another
blindness which was afflicting Isaac here. He seems to have
been blind towards Esau's unsuitability for the blessing. Esau had grieved
his parents by taking wives of the Hittites, the Canaanites,
the heathen people, the idolatrous people who lived in the land.
Esau was not suitable to receive the blessing, the promises that
Isaac had received from Abraham and that he would give to his
son who would in turn give to his sons. The promises of the
coming Messiah and the promises of the glory of the gathered
kingdom of God upon earth. Isaac did not see that God's
love and blessing was upon Jacob. And Isaac, though he was blinded
to this, he nevertheless ought to have understood God's ways
in this matter. Let us think also of Rebecca. Where Isaac was blind, Rebecca
was farsighted. We really know very little about
Rebecca. But we do know that she was a
believer. She believed and she treasured
God's word to her. And the prophecy and the revelation
about the coming Messiah, Rebecca believed that. And therefore
she was as much a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ in her
day as we are believers of the Lord Jesus Christ in our day.
And she was wise enough It seems to have looked at the situation
and weighed up the possibility of why doesn't she go to Isaac
and say to Isaac, Isaac, this is wrong, this won't do, you're
giving the blessing to the wrong child, to the wrong boy, to the
wrong man. And it seems as if she had weighed
up in her own mind that Isaac would have been blinded even
to her overtures. so that she took this course
of action of deception instead. And I think it's very interesting
that she makes the point with respect to the fact that where
Jacob says to her, if I am found out in this deceit, it's not
a blessing I'll get, but a curse. And his mother said to him, upon
me be thy curse, my son. That was a tremendously bold
statement to make. She was there saying basically
that she was prepared to take the curse because she knew that
this was the right thing to do despite the circumstances. She was a wise woman. and she
believed that her action would succeed. Rebecca's action ensured
that the promised line was not mingled with idolatrous, worshipping
Canaanites or Hittites, those that Esau had joined himself
to, and that the promised line came through the Hebrews, came
through the Jews, as God had promised it would. So we've thought
about Isaac's blindness, we've thought about Rebecca's farsightedness,
and we think about Jacob's gain. We're told in the Bible that
God loved Jacob. God could have brought Jacob
out of the womb as the firstborn, but he didn't. And I believe
he didn't in order to show us the lesson of grace. That all
grace is according to God's goodness and mercy and not for what we
deserve. God didn't love Jacob because
he was a holy man or because he was a righteous man or because
he was without sin. We are shown here that Jacob
was a liar and a deceiver. And yet grace found that God
loved Jacob. And he was forgiven of those
sins because of the love of God towards him. His soul was justified
before God in Christ because of the love of God towards him. His desires were made to be after
the Lord. and the glory of God was manifested
in him because of God's grace and love towards him. And what
of Esau and of Esau's loss? Esau had shown that he despised
his birthright and the promises of God's blessing to Abraham.
Isaac should have known that. He wanted, Esau wanted the good
things, he wanted the blessings, but he despised the one from
whom the blessings came. He had given up his right to
those blessings, the right to the blessings of the firstborn
by selling his birthright to Jacob. And now he had lost his
father's blessing too. The Bible tells us repeatedly
in the Old Testament and the New Testament that the Lord God
declares, Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. Not because
of any inherent righteousness or unrighteousness in either,
but because that the purpose of God according to election
might stand. And we may not understand why
God loves one and chooses them to salvation and passes by another,
leaving them in their sins. But this is God's plan, and it's
not our plan. We are answerable to God. God is not answerable to us. If God blesses anyone, it is
all of mercy, all of grace, for not one of us deserves his love
or his blessing. May God grant us eyes to see
and ears to hear, to be like Rebecca with an understanding
heart and see and trust the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.