Godward Thoughts

The center of attention now shifts from Abraham to Isaac. Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah. For twenty years, they waited for a family that did not come. God blessed Isaac in everything but the thing he wanted most. He and Rebekah knew that God had promised descendants (Genesis 15:5), so Isaac laid hold of the promise and prayed. True prayer lays hold of God’s Word (John 15:7) and seeks to accomplish God’s purposes.

God gave them twin boys who were opposite each other in every way. He also gave them a revelation that the younger one, Jacob, would carry on the messianic line. For that reason, you would think that Isaac would have favored Jacob but the physical won over the spiritual. Esau pictures the man of the world who despises the eternal and lives for the temporal.

It was only a matter of time before the divided home would start to self-destruct, and it all began with Isaac. He knew that God had chosen Jacob, the younger son, to receive the blessing (Genesis 25:23–26); but he announced that he would give it to Esau. It seems that Isaac was more interested in his physical appetite than in spiritual things. He was not the spiritual person he once had been. Rebekah knew what God’s promise was to Jacob, and she should have let God work it out in His own way. “Faith is living without scheming,” and who can hinder the Lord from accomplishing His purposes (Daniel 4:35)? Instead, she made her son a liar and deceived her husband. If Isaac had trusted the Lord instead of his physical senses (Genesis 27:21, 22, 25, 27), he would not have been fooled.Rebekah’s “a few days” (Genesis 27:44) became over twenty years! Despite all her scheming, she never saw her son on earth again.