Genesis 27:12 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.
Perhaps you have known someone who is always seeking for an angle. They are always scheming for something. Every time they say, “Hey, would you like to make ten dollars?” you are thinking, “What is in it for you?” I think there is a little bit of that in all of us. When you come to the story of Jacob, Jacob’s family was a family of schemers. Now they were also a family of faith, and you can see this battle, between faith and scheming, played out throughout the book of Genesis. Someone has said that faith is living without scheming.
In Genesis 27, you have the story of parents, Isaac and Rebekah, and their two favorite sons. Isaac’s favorite son was Esau, and Rebekah’s favorite son was Jacob. Both of them wished for their favorite son to receive the special birthright and blessing that was coming to the eldest. Genesis 27:1 says, “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.” Basically he planned to give Esau the birthright and the blessing. He did this apparently without the knowledge of Rebekah. Rebekah found out because she had ears in the house, but he did not tell her. He should have. This should have been a public event, but instead he did it secretly.
In Genesis 25:23, God made it very clear that the elder of these brothers would serve the younger. Isaac knew this. He knew what God had said, but he wanted to thwart God’s plan and will, so he used deception in order to thwart God’s plan. Verse 6 says, “And Rebekah spake unto Jacob her son, saying, Behold, I heard thy father speak unto Esau thy brother.” She hatches this plan that while Esau was out hunting for venison for his father, Jacob would come into his aging, nearly blind father and pass himself off as Esau so that he would receive, by deception, the blessing that his father intended to give to Esau.
So, you have Isaac scheming to thwart God’s plan, and you have Rebekah scheming to fulfill God’s plan. One had a good end in mind and one had a bad end in mind, but both of them were scheming instead of trusting God. You have to decide today whether you can do the right thing in the right way or whether you are going to do the right thing in your own way, in which case it is not the right thing anymore. That is exactly what happened here.
Jacob came in and used hair that was not his own to make himself feel like Esau, who was hairy. He wore Esau’s garments to smell like Esau. He brought food made to taste like the venison Esau was going to bring. He deceived his father. He had some misgivings about this when he said, “I shall seem to him as a deceiver.” Well, he was a deceiver and so were his mother and father. The whole family was scheming to get their own way.
Ironically, Rebekah says, “Don’t worry about this. Your curse will be upon me.” That wasn’t hers to decide. The curse that came was upon the whole family, including Jacob. Jacob ends up fleeing for his life because Esau wanted to kill him. Ironically, Rebekah says to Jacob as he is about to flee, “Therefore, my son, obey my voice; and arise, flee thou to Laban my brother.” That is like fleeing a bear and falling off a cliff. The deceiver was about to be deceived by his Uncle Laban. The trickster was about to be tricked. The liar was about to be lied to. This was something that Jacob endured to some extent his entire life. In fact, when he later became the aging, nearly blind father, his sons lied to him about their brother Joseph, and they used the exact same thing that Jacob had used in his deceit, the kid of a goat, to help with their deception.
My point is that one doing the right thing can always rely on doing it the right way. In short, the truth will win in the end. I don’t know what choice you have today. It may be that you feel that you have to be less than honest in order to accomplish a good end. Let me remind you that both blessing and cursing are wrapped up in the way we treat the truth, the way we treat others, and the way we try to accomplish even the good things in life. Take heart and be encouraged. Sometimes it is a long game in which we are involved, but the truth always wins in the end.