Genesis 27:32–33

But Esau was all the more guilty. He was born of the heir of promise, in answer to prayer and in line with prophecy. Being born first gave him whatever advantage it could over Jacob. Was he not brought up just as much as Jacob, within the familiar sound of God's word and ways, as far as we know? But he was tested in a way that should have been easy for a hunter. He had resources at hand which had never failed, and which it would be monstrous to think could fail him in urgent need. Yet he deliberately sold his own birthright "for a single meal" (Heb. 12:16), and so earned from the Holy Spirit the terrible stigma of a "profane person."

But he found that it was he who was too late. Isaac was shocked when Esau told him who he was (vv. 32-33). At first he asks who had already come, but of course he knew the answer. He tells Esau he has blessed the first one who came, and adds firmly that "he shall be blessed." In this way God had overruled Jacob's inexcusable deceit, so that the blessing went to the younger son, as God had decreed.

Though a set-apart and filled vessel, he would have served the wish of his own fond heart in the use of the treasure he carried; but God took him out of his own hand, and used him as the oracle of His settled, sovereign purpose... We know that "that which is born of the flesh is flesh." As an old writer says, "The water that is foul in the well will not be clean in the bucket."

But God's purpose must stand, and He will do all His pleasure. Faith knows this, and in the power of that knowledge can wait for God's time. Nature never can do this, but must set about gaining its own ends by its own inventions. These are the two great points brought out in Jacob's history. On one side stands God's purpose of grace. On the other stands nature, plotting and scheming to reach what that purpose would have brought about without fail, with no plot or scheme at all... God did not need the help of Rebekah's cunning and Jacob's gross deceit to carry out His purpose.

How a single act may reveal a man's character, as with Esau here. For a bit of food he sold his birthright, and the act marked him as a profane person, one who habitually left God out of his thoughts. Yet he could desire the blessing, and sought it earnestly after he had lost it — just as Balaam could want to die the death of the righteous while he had no thought of living their life. So he found no place for repentance, because it had to do only with the lost blessing, and involved no judgment of his ways before God. He valued the gain of godliness without the godliness.

I do not care what you take up in His place; if you slip away from Christ you may be tomorrow in the position of the rejected Esau. He is a picture of those who will one day cry to be let in. Their tears will be as useless as Esau's beside the bed of his dying father. He came too late. So when once God has risen up and shut the door they will find no place of repentance.

I have no doubt that the thought of God's coming in to thwart his flesh had much to do with Isaac's trembling.

His eye is opened. He discovers what he had been doing, and how Jacob had got the blessing he had prepared for Esau. It confronts him to his face: he had been resisting God, and could not win. His soul seems to wake as from sleep. The moral sense of the place he was filling startles him. He trembles inside. The flesh he had been feeding could not support him at such a moment.

How did such a clumsy trick deceive Isaac? He knew the voice. Were the neck and wrists, covered with the skin of a young goat, a surer test than the voice? The trick fooled Isaac as it would never have fooled a man of the world with common sense. How did that happen? He was not in communion with God, and the crudest means can deceive a believer who is out of communion. His thoughts were fleshly; his soul loved venison, and the tasty food blinded his mind.

But God will subdue nature, unjudged nature, in Isaac too. And more than this — so perfect and complete are God's ways! That very indulgence had twisted Isaac's mind and judgement. God will use it as the direct instrument to discipline him. God allows him to be deceived. The tasty food turned his mind away from sound judgement, and the same tasty food forces him, without knowing it, to act according to the will of God.

But we rejoice at the turning point of grace in Isaac's soul. He bowed to God's overturning of his effort to please the son who had catered to his appetite. He had forgotten the already declared will of the Lord about Jacob. When God's overruling broke in on him, he did not attack his wife and younger son. He bowed in self-judgment and trembled with a very great trembling. In faith he sealed what his lips had said without knowing, yet under God: "Yes, and he shall be blessed." He felt that, however others were to blame, the error was his own. God was only securing now what He had said before the sons were born. Faith now worked, no longer hindered by the flesh which had lately darkened his eyes. And so says the Spirit in Hebrews 11. It was not in line with his natural leanings, but against them.

Jacob deserved to lose the blessing. By his mean, lying conduct he forfeited the place given by promise. Where would he have been, and the nation named after him, if grace had not covered his sin at the very start?

Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of stew. He despised it. Present ease and relief were everything to him at that moment... Though he longed for his father's blessing, seeking it with tears, he could never regain what he had lost. He had forfeited it, and Isaac acknowledged that when he said of Jacob, "Yes, and he shall be blessed." ... But there was no word of confession of what he had done. He showed no penitent spirit.