In this episode of God’s World, God’s Way, Nathan Conkey takes listeners deep into Genesis 27—the dark, complex story of Isaac’s attempted blessing of Esau. Though most Bibles label the chapter “Jacob’s Deception,” the episode exposes a far more troubling reality: Isaac, the patriarch of promise, was himself plotting rebellion against God. Driven by appetite and favoritism, Isaac schemed in secret to bless the son God had rejected, revealing a man whose body and soul had grown blind—physically, morally, and spiritually. His obsession with “delicious food” becomes a symbol of his deeper corruption: a man whose god had become his belly, and whose actions threatened to derail the covenant line of Christ itself.

Against this backdrop, the episode re-examines Jacob and Rebekah’s so-called “deception.” Far from a selfish act of trickery, their intervention emerges as a desperate, faith-driven attempt to prevent Isaac’s blasphemous defiance of God’s revealed will. Drawing on parallels with Sarah, the Hebrew midwives, Rahab, and Zipporah, Nathan argues that faith sometimes demands decisive—and even deceptive—action to preserve God’s covenant purposes. The story is not a moral tale of good versus bad, but a sobering revelation of divine sovereignty working through human weakness, where Rebekah’s courage and Jacob’s obedience avert disaster and ensure that God’s promise, “the elder shall serve the younger,” stands unbroken.