Isaac: Decline (27:1-4)
During the twenty-three years he was president of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Dr. William Culbertson frequently asked at the close of his public prayers, “Lord, help us to end well.” God answered his prayer, and Dr. Culbertson did end his race in victory, but that isn’t true of every believer.
A good beginning doesn’t guarantee a good ending. That’s one of the repeated lessons taught in Scripture, and it’s tragically confirmed in the lives of people like Lot, Gideon, Samson, King Saul, King Solomon, Demas, and a host of others. Let’s add Isaac to that list. If ever a man was blessed with a great beginning, it was Isaac. Yet he ended his life under a cloud. Consider some of his sins.
He put himself ahead of the Lord. Isaac was sure he was going to die, and yet his greatest desire was to enjoy a good meal at the hand of his favorite son and cook, Esau (25:28). When Isaac’s father, Abraham, prepared for death, his concern was to get a bride for his son and maintain the covenant promise. When King David came to the end of his life, he made arrangements for the building of the temple, and Paul’s burden before his martyrdom was that Timothy be faithful to preach the Word and guard the faith.
Someone has well said, “The end of life reveals the ends of life.” When sideshow promoter P. T. Barnum was dying, he asked, “What were today’s receipts?” Napoleon cried out on his deathbed, “Army! Head of the army!” Naturalist Henry David Thoreau said only two words: “Moose … Indian.” But Isaac, the man who meditated and prayed in the fields at evening (24:63), and who petitioned God on behalf of his wife (25:21), wanted only one thing: a savory meal of venison. Instead of seeking to heal the family feud that he and his wife had caused by their selfish favoritism, Isaac perpetuated the feud and destroyed his own family.
He disobeyed God’s command. Before the boys were born, God had told Isaac and Rebekah that Jacob, the younger son, was to receive the covenant blessing (vv. 19-23); yet Isaac planned to give the blessing to Esau. Surely Isaac knew that Esau had despised his birthright and sold it to Jacob and that Esau had disqualified himself by marrying heathen women. Had Isaac forgotten that his father had sent a servant five hundred miles to Haran to get him a suitable wife? Did Isaac really think he could fool God and give the blessing to worldly, unbelieving Esau?
He lived by his feelings. Isaac was blind and apparently bedfast (27:19, 31), a condition you would think would make him trust God and seek His help. Instead, Isaac rejected the way of faith and depended on his own senses: taste (vv. 4, 9, 25), touch (v. 21), hearing (v. 22), and smell (v. 27). He took the scientific approach, and it failed him. “There are many plans in a man’s heart, nevertheless, the Lord’s counsel–that will stand” (Prov. 19:21 nkjv).
A character in Ernest Hemingway’s novel Death in the Afternoon is probably expressing Hemingway’s own convictions when he says, “I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.” Most people today would endorse that philosophy and make their decisions solely on the basis of how they feel, not what God says in His Word. “If it feels good, it is good!”
Isaac was a declining believer, living by the natural instead of the supernatural, and trusting his own senses instead of believing and obeying the Word of God. He was blind and bedfast and claimed to be dying, but he still had a good appetite. With a father like that leading the home, is it any wonder that the family fell apart?