Genesis 27:1 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.
Deceived By the Senses
We perceive the world around us through our senses. There are five of them, right? They are taste, feel, smell, sound, and touch. When you see a little baby crawling around, that baby is indulging every sense. Objects are going into the mouth. Things are stared at for long periods of time. Everything is being touched.
Isaac was an old man, but he was still indulging his senses. The Bible introduces the story of his blessing of Jacob whom he supposed to be Esau by saying, “And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim.” We know that Isaac decided he was going to bless Esau even though God had made it plain that Jacob was to be blessed, and Jacob decided he would deceive his father so that he would indeed be blessed. One man was scheming to accomplish God’s will and one man was scheming to thwart God’s will.
What’s interesting is how this deception was pulled off by Jacob. He passed himself off to be Esau. If I were to ask you what it was that allowed Jacob to deceive his father, I think most of us would say that Isaac was blind. The first verse tells us that, yet if you read the rest of the story, every other sense was engaged in this story and most of them worked.
For instance, in verse 21 we find that Jacob felt his son to verify that is was Esau even though it was not. In verse 22, he heard the voice of Jacob, and was a little conflicted because he heard one thing but felt another. Again, in verse 25 he ate of what he thought to be venison that his son brought. In verse 27, he smelled his son, and perceived the scent of Esau’s garments, which is exactly what they were. Isaac was at least as deceived by the senses that worked as he was by the one sense that did not work. In fact, the easiest person in the world to deceive is a person dependent upon his senses.
Someone says, “Seeing is believing.” Well, that may be, but seeing and believing are not the same as knowing. In fact, Hebrews 11 says, “Through faith we understand.” Faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” We can see very little, and sometimes what we can see is worse than seeing nothing at all because it is better to see nothing than to be deceived by your senses. The best way to navigate life is to trust a God Who can see farther and Who knows more than you or I possibly could. Faith is living beyond what you can see to what God knows.