When someone decides to live life by taking from others, in the end the person from whom they take the most is themselves.
In order to pull off the deception of Isaac his father, Jacob and Rebekah contrived to override all five of the old man’s senses. The goat would be spiced to disguise it as wild meat. The man’s sense of touch would be tricked with the skins on his arms. To fool the subtle difference in smell between an outdoor son and a tent-dweller, “Rebekah took the choice clothes of her elder son Esau…and put them on Jacob” (Gen 27:15). Isaac’s sight was the easiest to overcome, but the supercentenarian—how often do you get to use that word?—had used his ears to compensate for his loss of sight. Thus, after all their efforts, Isaac still exclaims, “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” Again he asks, “Are you really my son Esau?” and Jacob unabashedly responds, “I am.” Lies are lethal. They may not kill the body, but they certainly kill the soul. And they kill relationships, too. In attempting to steal the blessing, Jacob lost his brother. The Lord Jesus declared that the devil, “when he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it” (Jn 8:44). That question as to who Jacob “really” was would haunt him until the night that God asked, “What is your name?” Finally, he said, “Jacob” (32:27), the trickster. Amazingly, the moment he was honest with God, the transformation in his life began. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The punchline here is this: In attempting to trick his father, it was Jacob who was tricked. When we attempt to take from others, we rob the most from ourselves. Job, in describing the wicked, wrote: “He is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walks into a snare. The net takes him by the heel, and a snare lays hold of him” (Job 18:8-9). Trapped by our own trickery!