Read Genesis 27, Esther 3, Psalm 26.
This devotional is about Genesis 27.
God’s will for Isaac’s successor was clear. Before Esau and Jacob were born, the Lord told their mother Rebekah, “…the older will serve the younger” (Gen 25:23e). Later, Esau sold his birthright to Jocob as we read in Genesis 25:27-34. Despite these things, Isaac favored Esau over Jacob (25:28) and was determined to bless Esau, giving him the right to become the patriarch. Isaac was attempting, then, to do this outside of what God had willed, to get his own way regardless of what God wanted and decreed. In other words, he did not have faith in God when it came to his heir; Isaac wanted his own will to be done.
Rebekah and Jacob, likewise, knew what God had said and that Jacob would be the one to carry the blessing of the Abrahamic covenant and become a great nation. Instead of confronting Isaac with this fact or waiting for God to intervene in Isaac’s plan, Rebekah and Jacob hatched a plot of their own to engineer the outcome they wanted.
Isaac, Rebekah, and Jacob, then, were not acting obediently to God’s will. None of them was trusting God’s word and living in obedience to it; they were, to borrow the words of Proverbs 3: “leaning on their own understanding.” God used the disobedience of Rebekah and Jacob to accomplish his will over the desired will of Isaac. But the disobedience of all of them created problems in their family that would be painful for each of them.
How often do we do the same thing? How often do we seek to engineer our own desire instead of seeking to align ourselves with what God has revealed and living in faith and obedience to that? If you’re in the middle of that kind of situation now, let this passage lead you to repentance. Turn to God and trust him. Let him accomplish his will and have faith that it will be best.