The Spiritual Sense of “Hearing” - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2024

Isaac said to Jacob, "Please come near, that I may feel you, my son, whether you are really my son Esau or not." So Jacob went near to Isaac his father, and he felt him and said, "The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau." And he did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands; so he blessed him.
Genesis 27:21-23 NKJV

The Spiritual Sense of "Hearing"
Isaac believed the end of his life was near. He was at least 100 years old (as we calculate from Genesis 25:26 and 26:34), and he desired to bless Esau, his elder son. Compounding the many troubled relationships in this family, Isaac's own limitations are plain in this chapter. Nearly all his senses failed him when Jacob came deceitfully to take the blessing. Besides his blindness, Isaac's sense of taste did not discern between Esau's game and a savory meal of goat. His sense of touch did not perceive the goat skins Jacob wore. His sense of smell incorrectly determined that the son standing before him had been hunting in the field. And he could not recognize Jacob's lie when he asked, "Are you really my son Esau?" and Jacob replied, "I am."

Yet one sense had not failed. His hearing remained acute enough for him to think, "The voice is Jacob's voice." Recent neurological studies, such as one conducted in Vancouver, Canada, and published in 2020, support the idea that hearing is the last sense to go when death is near. In reality, Isaac was not as close to death as he thought (Gen. 35:28), yet here he certainly should have relied on his hearing and disregarded his other senses.

This presents an important spiritual lesson. In the Scriptures, hearing is the conduit for God's words to reach our hearts: "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Rom. 10:17). When we make decisions, we must rely on what we have heard from God through the Bible, even if all our other senses urge us to do otherwise.

-- Stephen Campbell