Why Is a Kid Goat Better Than a Deer? | Rev. Jeremy F. Simons

Welcome to our service this morning, which is about why a kid goat is better than a deer.

Or is it?

And we have the familiar story from Genesis chapter 27 about Isaac, Jacob, and Esau.

Genesis 27 · chapter mention

Now it came to pass when Isaac was old, and his eyes were so dim that he could not see, that he called Esau his older son, and said to him, My son, and he answered, Here I am, and he said, Behold, now I am old.

I do not know the day of my death.

Now therefore, please take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me, and make me savory food such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die.

Now Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to Esau, his son, and Esau went to the field to hunt game and to bring it.

So Rebekah then spoke to Jacob and said, Indeed, I heard your father speak to Esau, your brother, saying, Bring me game, make savory food for me, that I may eat it and bless you in the presence of the Lord before my death.

Now therefore, my son, obey my voice according to what I command you.

Go now to the flock and bring me from there two choice kids from the goats, and I will make savory food from them for your father, such as he loves, and you shall take it to your father, that he may eat it, and that he may bless you before his death.

And Jacob said to Rebekah, his mother, Look, Esau, my brother, is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man.

Perhaps my brother, my father, will feel me, and I shall seem to him to be a deceiver, and I shall bring a curse on myself, and not a blessing.

But his mother said to him, Let your curse be on me, my son, obey my voice and go, and get them for me.

And he went and got them and brought them to his mother, and his mother made savory food such as his father loved.

And we read another passage from the Arcana Celestia, number 6413, which is about deer, which is what Esau was hunting.

And this one is about Naphtali.

It says, when Jacob blessed Naphtali, he said, Naphtali is a deer let loose.

And what it says is that this means the freedom that natural affection possesses.

This is clear from the meaning of a deer as natural affection, from the meaning of let loose as freedom.

For when a deer that has been captured is let loose, it has freedom.

Freedom from a state of temptation is compared to a deer let loose, because a deer is a woodland creature that loves more than all others to be free.

And the natural, too, is like this, for it loves to engage in what delights its affections, and therefore to feel free, because freedom is the hallmark of affection.

And the reason a deer means natural affection is it is one of the beasts that serve to mean the affections, among those which can be used for food and are useful creatures, such as lambs, sheep, she goats, kids, he-goats, as well as bulls, young bulls, and also cows.

Yet these beasts also serve to mean spiritual affections, because burnt offerings and sacrifices were made from them, whereas deer, because they were not put to that use, served to mean only natural affections.

And then we read from the Divine Providence number 211 about the fact that the Lord works secretly in our lives.

Divine Providence works secretly.

And it says that the reason divine providence acts so secretly that scarcely anyone knows of its existence is to prevent mankind from perishing.

For a person's native character, which is his will, never acts in accord with divine providence.

A person's native character harbors an innate hostility to that providence.

And if a person were to be conscious of this, he'd be angered.

He'd be enraged at God, and he would perish.

So for this reason, the Lord, by his divine providence, continually leads a person in freedom, and the freedom appears to a person no otherwise than his own.

Amen.

Here are the lessons.

Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.

Amen.

So the story we read today is probably familiar to most of you.

You've heard it many times.

And when we talk about it, we talk about the fact that Isaac loved Esau, and Rebekah loved Jacob, and that that's what's behind what's going on in that story.

But today we're going to mention something a little different, which also helps to explain what this story is really about for each one of us.

And that is about what it was that Isaac wanted.

What did Isaac want?

What he wanted was venison.

He wanted a deer.

He sent his son off to catch a deer and to make savory food such as he loved.

It was his favorite food.

Okay, so that's what's going on in the story is Isaac wants venison.

But Rebecca does not want Isaac to get that venison.

She does not want Isaac to get that venison.

Now, deer are unique because they're the only wild mammal or the only mammal that the children of Israel were allowed to eat that weren't part of their flocks and herds.

The children of Israel were allowed to eat deer.

They were also allowed to eat sheep and cattle, cows and calves, and also goats.

And so we have goats, we have calves, and we have sheep.

And these were the animals that basically they were allowed to eat.

Now, an interesting thing about this is that all of these animals were used for sacrifices, but deer were not allowed to be used for sacrifices.

They were not a holy animal.

They were a good animal, they were allowed to eat them.

There were lots of things they weren't allowed to eat.

They were good animals, but they could not be used for sacrifices.

And that is why.

And so Esau goes off and takes his bow and uh tools and uh his weapons, and they stand for the things in our lives that we know.

Okay, you set off in life and you know things.

And what you're trying to do in life, and I think we're all trying to do this, most people are trying to do this, is to be a decent person, to be a good person, to be a better person, to improve in our life.

And we have the tools to do it.

And that's what Isaac wants, is to become a better person.

And so he thinks he knows how to do it, and he sends Esau off to help him become a better person.

But his goal, his solution there is all wrong.

Solution is all wrong.

Because what a deer stands for is uh our natural affections and especially our desire to be free.

Everybody wants to be free, everybody wants to do the things they want to do.

So, how are you gonna get better in your life?

Well, you know stuff about being better, so you'll just be better.

If it seems better, you'll do it, you'll become a better person.

We all know how to do that.

Nobody needs to teach us that.

In fact, we resist it when people try to tell us what to do.

That's the deer.

The deer does not want to be confined.

Bernatha is loaded with deer.

But try catching those deer and putting them in a pen.

They don't like being in a pen.

All these animals, they don't care if they're in pens.

All these animals are restrained in various ways in their flocks and herds, and they're kept in pens, and they're perfectly happy.

But deer don't do well if they're put in pens.

And there's the deer in each one of us.

Do you like being confined?

Do you like being told what to do?

People don't like being told what to do.

And so, given our own will, given our own freedom, would we go to school?

Maybe we'd go to school.

Would we go to church?

Maybe we would we work hard at a business?

Maybe we would.

But the freedom in us wants to do what we want to do.

We all like to do what we want to do.

And that quality prevents them from being like a holy, prevents them from standing for a spiritual affection.

So Rebecca's faced with this issue, she does not want Isaac to be ruled by that.

She wants him to be ruled by something better.

She wants him to be ruled by the Lord.

She wants him to be ruled by what is true.

And so she says, Well, what am I gonna do?

And she says, I know.

I'm gonna fool him.

We're gonna fool him so that he'll actually be being led by the Lord, but he'll think that he is being led by himself, by what he wants.

So she sends Jacob and sends him to get two kids of the goats.

And the kids of the goats stand for the love of what is true.

They stand for innocence.

They especially stands for the kind of innocence you can see.

You know, when you see when you look at a baby, you can see that innocence on their faces, kind of an external kind of innocence.

And that's what this stands for.

And she's gonna dress it up to make it seem like it's venison.

It's not venison, it's goat.

But they're gonna she's gonna make it, and she's gonna dress up Jacob so he seems to be like Esau.

He wasn't Esau, he was Jacob.

And it works.

And it works.

But Jacob is concerned about the deception, as we all are.

Why is he why is he lying to his father?

Does that seem right at all?

And yet we do this all the time.

Our whole system is based on just this kind of deception.

That is, here we start, students start school in a few weeks.

The teachers don't come out and say, okay, you're not gonna like, you're not gonna like a lot of the things I'm gonna ask you to do it, but you have to do them.

You have to do them.

You might not like it, but you have to do it.

What kind of mood is that gonna put the students in?

Instead, we say, we are gonna have a great year.

When you're hiring somebody for a job, you don't hire them and say, oh, I don't know, you're you might hate this job.

You're gonna say, no, this is a great job.

This is a great job, and you'll love it.

The truth is, you take on a new job.

There's lots of things you don't like.

You you go to school, there's so many things you could.

I mean, who wants to sit all day and listen to people talk at them?

Lots of things you're not gonna like, but they never tell you that.

They always say, This is gonna be wonderful.

So are they lying?

They're not really lying because at the end of the school year, when the students get up and talk about what their education was like, they say, it was great.

We had the best time, my class was so funny, the teachers were entertaining, we learned useful things, and it was wonderful.

So even though they experienced hard times, it wasn't a lie.

It wasn't a lie.

And this is what becoming a better person is like.

You know, the deer in you thinks that following the Lord's commandments is boring.

Being a good person, it's just boring.

It's so much more fun to do what you want.

So the the image of freedom is the deer, and it's not a bad thing.

I mean, you you everybody wants to be free.

But the truth is that to be a good person, you need to be more like these animals that are okay with being told what to do, that are okay with being penned up, which are okay with being directed all the time.

And in the end, you're gonna be, you're gonna have that deer-like happiness of heaven.

And so what's going on in this story is that Rebecca knows that Isaac, who can't see, he's kind of blind, he can't see what the best thing is to do in life, that his blindness and his goals aren't going to be satisfied by the venison, but they will be satisfied by these other animals which come from the Lord, which stand for holy things, which are things that that uh lead all of us to living a good life.

And so when the Lord talks to us, the thing in us that hears Him is are these like these animals, which is why we said in our recitation today, my sheep hear my voice.

I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand.

Amen.