Our Deadly Enemy Part 2
Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore
January 29, 2017
Scripture Reading: Titus 1:14
There were at the time that this verse was written, fables--in particular Jewish fables, which the Christian was instructed to pay no attention to. We were warned not to get comfortable with these distortions of truth. Jewish fables or fictions or myths are still very much all around us. Do we still give heed to them?
Esau hates Jacob. Jews hate Israel. The Edomite Jew believes that if all the descendants of Jacob/Israel were no longer alive, then the covenant recipient would have to go back to the one before Jacob, i.e. Esau, because of default. Remember, Esau once was in possession of the covenant and all its blessings, but he despised it. He sold it to his younger twin brother Jacob. And a little later he lost the blessing because Jacob and his mother plotted against him and deceived his father.
It had to be a good deception to fool Jacob’s father, Isaac. For Isaac loved Esau while his wife loved Jacob. Isaac’s eyesight at that time was very bad, so Jacob had to disguise himself as Esau. Fixing the venison wasn’t hard, as his mother helped prepare the meal. But putting goat hairs on his arms and the smooth of his neck and wearing Esau’s goodly raiment convinced Isaac that it had to be Esau because Jacob smelled and felt just like Esau. And the twin boys were so different. Esau was an avid hunter and outdoorsman while Jacob was a shepherd. (Now it is just the opposite—Esau is deceiving Jacob’s descendants that Esau is Jacob.)
Isaac felt the skins of the goat hairs and smelled the raiment that Jacob wore, and that convinced him that Jacob was indeed Esau. It was the only time in the Scriptures that man depended upon his feeling, and he was deceived.
