Esau: Faithless and Forsaken (Hebrews 12:16-17)

Hebrews 12:16-17 as a Warning Against Trading Away Eternal Blessings

Hebrews 12, we're going to be finishing up verse 17, so we're going to read together this entire paragraph, which begins at verse 12, down through verse 17. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

Pursue peace with all men and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it, many be defiled, that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal, for you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.

Let's ask the Lord's blessing on our time. Our Father, we pray that You would speak to our hearts and our minds through Your Word. We commit ourselves in this time to You and the meditation of our heart, that You may open our eyes to wonderful things in Your Word and that You would do a work in our hearts as we are brought near to the truth regarding Your love and Your justice, Your grace and Your mercy.

And we pray that You would sanctify Your people by reproving us where we are in sin and encouraging us where we need to be strengthened. We pray that You would be honored and glorified through all that is said and through the meditation of our hearts now.

In Your Word, we pray this in Christ's name, amen. Before we spent two Sundays back in the book of Genesis looking at Esau's life and character, I gave you an outline for verses 16 and 17. But now with the details of that in your recent memory, that is the details of Esau's life in your recent memory, we can go now to Hebrews chapter 12, verses 16 and 17 and see how the author uses the example of Esau as a warning to us.

The Five Imperatives of Hebrews 12:12-17

In verses 12 through 17, we have five imperatives and I'm just going to quickly review them for you. First, we are to strengthen our weaknesses, that's verse 12. And by the way, these imperatives are given to us in light of the explanation of God's discipline that is in verses 4 through 11.

Because we are under affliction, because we live lives of suffering in this world and God uses that to better us as a body, we are to do certain things in response to God's discipline. So, in verse 12, we are to strengthen our weaknesses.

In verse 13, straighten our ways. Then in verse 14, pursue peace and holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And then we are to see to it, verse 15, that no one comes short of the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springs up and defiles many.

And then we are to know, verse 17, that even afterwards Esau, when he desired to inherit the blessing, found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears. So those are the five commands, the five commands to us that we are to obey in light of God's discipline.

Esau's approach is the opposite of the life of faith. The life of faith we saw in Hebrews chapter 11 is one that is willing to see the promises of God and sacrifice anything and everything in the present to secure an eternal and infinite.

Reward.

Esau does the exact opposite. He sacrifices an infinite and eternal reward so that he may secure something in the present. And so we have here in verses 16 and 17, and this is the outline that I told you of earlier, we see Esau's carnality, that is his fleshliness, that he was a man driven by his desires.

We see his contempt, not only for God, but also for the promises of God. And then we see the consequences that he had to deal with in verses 16 and 17. So we are going to go through all of verse 16 and all of verse 17 and look at those three elements of Esau's life, his carnality, his contempt, and then the consequences of it.

Esau's Carnality and Worldliness

Beginning in verse 16, we are told that there should not be among us any immoral or godless person like Esau who sold his own birthright for a single meal. This describes his carnality. I want you to notice two adjectives that are used to describe Esau there.

First, he is an immoral man, that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau. The two words, immoral and godless. The word immoral there is the word pornos from which we get our word pornography.

Every time that it is used in the New Testament, it is used of sexual immorality or to speak of one who is a fornicator, every time that it is used. Now, that raises an issue for us or a question that we kind of have to address about Esau.

And here's the problem. When you go back through the Old Testament narrative of Esau, we looked at the two main events in his life. We didn't look at everything in his life, but we looked at the two main events in his life.

And as you read through the book of Genesis, you will never find any reference to Esau being an immoral person in the terms of being sexually immoral. So why is it then that the author uses the term immoral here to describe Esau when according to Genesis, there's not a hint of immorality in his life?

He's never called a fornicator in the book of Genesis, nor do we ever see him or nor do we ever told that he committed fornication. So how do we deal with that? What does the author intend here by calling him an immoral person?

Let me offer you a few suggestions. First, it is possible here that what the author has in mind is the fact that Esau married more than one woman. He had more than one wife. He did have two wives, didn't he?

He took two wives, both of them Hittite women. And then after Jacob stole the blessing from him, Esau took a third wife from among the descendants of Ishmael, Abraham's first child who was not the child of promise.

So he had at least three wives. So it's been suggested that what the author intends here is that he was immoral because he had more than one wife. But if you're going to call Esau immoral because he had more than one wife, then guess who else is immoral in the Old Testament by that same description?

Abraham and David and Jacob, his brother, because Jacob had more than one wife too,.

Didn't he?

In fact, he had more than two wives, didn't he? In fact, he had more than three wives, didn't he? He had four wives. So he bettered Esau by at least one woman. So if we're going to call Esau immoral because he had three wives, then we would have to call Jacob immoral by the same measure because he had four wives.

Now it might be offered in Jacob's defense that he really did not intend to take Leah as a wife. And that's true. As far as Jacob was concerned, he started off, he just wanted one woman. He was a one-woman man and Rachel.

But then his father-in-law tricked him and he ended up with Leah and then got Rachel. And then that just started this cascading of events, this competition that resulted in Jacob taking yet another wife, Leah's handmaid and then Rachel's handmaid.

And before you know it, he finds it's one thing to win them and it's another to keep him content. He's got four wives and a whole house full of kids. And that caused, of course, a whole cascading effect of a bunch of disaster in Jacob's life.

So I don't think that it is plurality of wives that the author has in view here for calling him immoral. Some people have suggested that the author here calls him immoral because he took pagan wives.

And he did.

We'll turn to this in just a second. But Esau took wives from among the Canaanites, the Hittites, accursed people. But it hardly seems fair to call somebody immoral just because they have poor taste in women if, in fact, he is not a fornicator because a bad judge of character and takes a pagan woman doesn't necessarily make you immoral by that definition, not sexual immorality, if he was faithful to those women.

So what is the author doing here by calling Esau immoral? It's been suggested that this quality in Esau's life, this character defect, is something that is revealed here by the Holy Spirit through the author of Hebrews, but it is not revealed under the Old Covenant in the Old Testament.

That's entirely possible. It is entirely possible by the Spirit of God we have revealed here that Esau was an immoral man even though that is not revealed in the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit is telling us here that Esau was immoral.

It's also possible that only the term godless applies to Esau and not immoral. In other words, that the passage, the verse should be read this way, that there be no immoral or a godless person like Esau.

In other words, it's immoral, there'd be no immoral person among you or a godless person like Esau that we would distinguish between them and that godless refers to Esau but not.

Immoral.

That is entirely possible and the language would allow for that. I would offer to you some combination of a couple of things that have already gone on.

Here.

I would suggest to you, and this is a fifth alternative, that though Esau is not called a fornicator in the book of Genesis, that this is, his actions really, his actions really summarize the heart of an immoral person.

What did Esau do? He traded away eternal blessings for temporary satisfaction, to fulfill a passing desire that would come back again in only a matter of a few hours, and that this is, in fact, the sum and substance of what immorality is.

It might express itself sexually in one person who seeks to gratify his craven desires for something only to have that desire return again very quickly. It might express it that way in one person, but it expresses that immorality expresses itself in Esau in a different way that he was willing to trade away eternal blessings for the satisfaction of a temporary and passing, a fleeting, craven desire.

That really, immorality is a fitting description of Esau because that is, in fact, the sum and substance of what it means to be an immoral person, to simply seek the satisfaction of your desires and to give no thought at all to God.

That leads us to the second description of him, that he is a godless person. The word there is bebelos. It means worldly or godless, irreligious or profane. It is the mindset, it is the lifestyle that leaves God out, that does not factor in eternal truth or righteous standards or anything to do with God.

In other words, in making the decisions of life, in planning your purposes, the substance of it is this worldliness. It just leaves God out of the equation entirely and is willing and able to plan life and go about the day-to-day activities without valuing the thing that is most valuable.

And that certainly would describe Esau. We saw that in that he traded away his birthright for a bowl of soup. And the birthright was not just the promise of material prosperity and it wasn't just the promise of the land that God had promised to Abraham, it was God himself.

Yahweh was the crowning jewel of the Abrahamic covenant. What God promised to Abraham was not just land and material blessings. God promised to Abraham, I will be with you. Your descendants will be my people.

I will be your protector.

I will be your eternal reward. That was the sum and substance of the Abrahamic covenant, the Abrahamic promises. And Esau gave no thought at all to God and instead, he traded all of that away for a bowl of soup and he cared little for it.

Genesis 25 verse 34 says, Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew and he ate and drank and rose and went on his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright. He ate, he drank, he belched, he got up, walked away and thought nothing more of that meal.

Nothing more of it. He could care less about it. He was content to satisfy his desires and so without giving any thought to God, he was willing to trade away everything God had promised him for a bowl of soup.

You and I cannot divorce character from conduct and we see in Esau how closely these two things.

Are linked.

The affections of the heart inevitably drive our behavior. Our love, our affections, our passions, our desires, the things that we value in our innermost being, these are the things that always and inevitably express themselves in our day-to-day conduct, in our walking out of our faith, in the decisions that we make, in the sins that we commit, in the things that we trade.

You cannot separate character from conduct. And an immoral person doesn't say no to those desires because there is nothing outside of the desires that means any more to that person than satisfying that desire in the moment.

That is what made Esau a godless and an immoral person. Proverbs 4 .23 says,. You are to watch over your heart with all diligence, for out of this flows all the issues of life. You cannot separate the inner man from the outer man.

You cannot do it. You can mask over and you can hide the outer man for a period of time, but inevitably like a beach ball that you try and hold beneath the surface of the water, it will come up. It has to.

And the more you try and push it under, the more effort it takes and the more it will be a disaster when it finally comes to the surface. Watch over your heart. Don't think that your outward conduct and what other people see is all that matters.

It's not. Guard your heart, for out of it flows all the issues of life. Every aspect of your life, every element of your days, every aspect of your activities all springs out of the heart. Second, Esau's contempt.

Esau's Contempt for God and His Promises

We see his carnality that he traded his birthright for a single meal. This is also an expression of his contempt. It's the expression of his contempt that's mentioned here in this passage. But you remember, we saw other illustrations or other expressions of his contempt for God when we went through that narrative.

For instance, Esau did marry pagan idolatrous and ungodly women. This was an expression of his contempt for God and for the promises of God, and I will.

Tell you why.

He married two Hittite women who were of the Canaanite race. The Canaanites were the descendants of Ham in the book of Genesis from Noah. You remember Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Japheth was the father of Gog and Magog and Tubal and a bunch of descendants that came from Japheth.

Ham was the father of the Canaanites, which inhabited the land that God promised to give to Abraham and to his descendants. It was those Canaanites who were kicked out of that land eventually. And Shem was the father of Abraham's line.

There were other nations that also came from Shem, but certainly Abraham came from Shem as well. That's why we call them anti-Shemites or anti-Semites, anti-Jews, because Abraham was of the line of Shem.

We remember what Ham did with his father Noah and the immorality of that, and Noah placed a curse on Ham and his descendants. And so the Canaanites came from Ham. They were under a curse. And here's the remarkable thing about the incident with Esau.

You have a man here who is due by birth order to inherit the blessings, and after he barters away his birthright for a bowl of soup, he goes out and he marries two women who were under the curse, as if he could have children and descendants who were under that curse and yet God would still bless him.

And the very act of marrying pagan women demonstrated that Esau had no care or concern at all for the blessings of God, that his children would grow up in a godly home, that his children would see the proper worship of Yahweh and be concerned with that.

Esau didn't care about any of that. A godless and immoral person does not care about what goes on within their home. They don't care about whether Yahweh is worshiped or whether God is honored in the midst of that.

They don't care about those things, and Esau didn't. He was willing to go take a couple of idolatrous women as his wives, probably because what he saw with his eyes, he desired to have, and thought that they would fulfill his desires, and so he made that decision, a godless man.

Second, we saw Esau's refusal to admit his own guilt. Remember what happened after Jacob tricked him, deceived him, and got the blessing. Esau said, first, Jacob took away my birthright. Second, now he's taken away my blessing.

What was the problem with that? Jacob didn't take away his birthright. Esau bartered his birthright. And even after Jacob stole Esau's blessings, Esau was blaming Jacob for everything that had happened.

Impenitent, unrepentant, did not recognize that what he had done was wrong, did not recognize that his own sin had contributed to this disaster that was now unfolding in his life. All he could see was Jacob.

He wasn't tricked into it. He wasn't even deceived into it. He said, give me the soup, give me your birthright, all right, well, swear to me. So he swore to it and sat down and ate and got up and walked away.

He wasn't tricked into that. He willingly did it. That's a godless and immoral person. Third, we saw an expression of his contempt and his plan to kill his brother after Jacob did steal the blessings.

Esau set about to kill him. He made plans to take Jacob's life as soon as Isaac was dead. And you see there that he is still a man driven by his lust. This time not his lust for food, this time not his lust for his sexual appetites, but this time his lust for blood, his lust for vengeance and revenge.

He's a man driven by that. All he could see when he sat, when he came in from the field famished, all he could see was a bowl of soup in front of him and everything else disappeared from his view. And he had to have that bowl of soup and he would give anything for it.

And once Jacob stole the blessing from him, all he could see was Jacob on the floor, writhing in his own blood. He was going to kill his brother and he would do anything that he could to make sure that that happened.

And so Jacob fled. Esau was, from beginning to last, a man driven by his passions and his lusts. Esau hated God and nothing made that more evident than his willingness to sell his birthright for a bowl of soup.

Now, to be clear, you and I do not need to verbally, publicly, and in an overt way blaspheme God and His graces in order to demonstrate our contempt for God. We don't need to do that. We don't need to stand up and say, I hate God and I hate everything He stands for and I want nothing to do with Him in order to demonstrate our contempt for God.

You know what we have to do? We just have to value other things more than Him and we demonstrate our contempt for God. In the moment, every decision that I make regarding sin or trading away eternal things for temporary things is, in that moment, a bargain.

It is an exchange whereby I demonstrate what it is that I truly value. To have no concern for His honor is to express contempt for God and to ignore Him who is the most high, the most holy, the most worthy of our adoration and our praise is to show, in fact, our contempt for Him.

The Consequences of Esau's Rejection

Third, we notice Esau's consequences in verse 17. Verse 16 again, see to it that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau who sold his own birthright for a single meal, knowing that even afterwards when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.

This refers to the second event in Esau's life when Jacob stole, through deception, Jacob stole the blessing from Esau. When he desired to inherit the blessing, he desired to get something, it seems that later on in life, Esau came to regret the decision that he made earlier in life.

That's true. But don't be deceived into thinking that regretting something is the same thing as repenting for.

Something.

Esau regretted his decision. He regretted his action, but he didn't repent of his decision, he didn't repent of his action, he didn't repent of the corruption of his own heart, instead he regretted that he had to eat the bitter fruit of that decision that he made some 30 years earlier.

Now the hens were coming home to roost and now the fruit was bearing on the tree, now he had to eat it, now he had to see it, now he had to live with it and that he regretted. But he didn't repent. Repentance and regret are not the same thing.

Regret comes from consequences. See, I'd be willing to bet you that if the consequences of Esau's sin had not been bitter, he never would have regretted it. Evaluate your own life. If the consequences of my action are not bitter, would I really regret them?

What Esau mourned when he sought for it with tears, the blessing, what Esau mourned was not his own sin, it was not the corruption of his heart, it was not his immorality and his godlessness, his profanity, that was not what caused him to mourn.

What he mourned was that he had lost material blessings by bartering those away to Jacob for a bowl of soup. He mourned his loss, not his profaneness, not his godlessness. It wasn't his sin that he lamented, it was the consequences of his sin that he lamented.

So if the fruit of that decision had not been bitter, probably the regret would not have been present. He wouldn't have cared. But now that he has to eat that bitter fruit, now that he has to sleep in the bed in which he made, he was not happy with that.

He came to regret his earlier decision. Repentance is a turning from sin and Esau doubled down in his sin. Rather than recognizing that it was his own immoral heart, it was his own craven desires that had led to him bartering away his birthright, rather than recognizing that, instead Esau just doubled down on it, blamed Jacob for it, and tried to steal the blessing some other.

Way.

And of course God thwarted that. And it says he was rejected. Now who rejected Esau? Who rejected Esau? Verse 17, even afterwards when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected. And the one who rejected Esau was God himself.

Now earlier, Esau had rejected God. So now God has just simply allowed Esau to live with the consequences of this. And now when it came time for Isaac to try and give the blessing to Esau, instead that blessing was taken from Esau and given to Jacob.

Now Esau has to deal with the consequences of that. Now he gets to reap the bitter fruit of it. But he was rejected by God. Matthew Henry says this, Esau in his great wickedness had made the bargain and God in his righteous judgment ratified and confirmed it and would not suffer Isaac to reverse it.

He found no place for repentance in his heart and so when he wept, he wept not over desiring to repent as the English translation may suggest, you read that verse 17, he was rejected for he found no place for repentance though he sought for it with tears.

What did he seek for with tears? Repentance? That wasn't it. The seeking for it, the it could refer back to either one of two things, number one the blessing or number two the repentance. But it wasn't repentance that he sought for with tears.

We noticed this last week when we read the narrative together, what was Esau weeping.

Over?

Oh father, do you not have at least one blessing for me? Please just give me a blessing too. Can't I have a blessing? Is there nothing left you can give me? And he's weeping over that. He's not weeping and saying, oh father, I have sinned and I profaned God, I'm an immoral and godless person and the desires of my heart that traded away the blessing to Jacob and I've gotten now exactly what it is that I have deserved all these years and now I finally have to bear the bitter fruit of it.

That is difficult but even more difficult than that is the fact that I've sinned against God and I've sinned against my family by bartering away those blessings. That was not what Esau said. Esau just simply said, I want the blessing and he was begging with tears for the blessing.

But there was no place for repentance in his heart. He was crying for the blessings and not for repentance. So what is the lesson therefore from the life of Esau? We looked at his carnality, we looked at his contempt, those two things always go together and now they bear the bitter fruit of the consequences.

What is the lesson then in the life of Esau? In the context of the Christians who would have originally have received this letter, remember that they were suffering affliction and suffering and hostility from the world and we have to keep that in the back of our mind because that's the context in which this was written and those are the people to whom this letter was addressed.

They had suffered a great conflict of suffering. They had become a reproach and they had had their property seized. In their context, they were handling affliction and suffering and hostility, which the author says in verses 4 through 11, that that is the discipline of God, that God is using all of those negative things that we would consider negative things to train them and to equip them and to mold them and shape them into the people that their father wanted them to.

Be.

But in the midst of hostility and in the midst of trials and afflictions, there is always the temptation to compromise something for the sake of temporary ease. Always the temptation. There's always the temptation that if you just compromise your theology, if you just go along to get along, if you just adopt the spirit of the age and parrot the world's thinkings and mimic the world's priorities, in fact, if you just become just like the world, guess.

What?

The world will love you because you're of the world. But when you are chosen out of the world, the world hates you because you're like Christ. So there's always the temptation in the midst of affliction that if we could just compromise something that the world will not hate us as much as the world otherwise would.

If we stand strong and if we stay faithful, we will have to endure the hostility of the.

World.

So we are always tempted to trade our eternal blessings for a bowl of the world's soup. We can take the soup, we can compromise, and then it will be easier for us. And here's what the author is saying, do not let the comforts of the world beguile you.

Do not be brought in by that. That is a fool's bargain. You're trading away something of inestimable value, your confidence that you are commanded to hold fast to, you are trading that away for something that is nothing.

It is passing. This world is passing away and all its lusts, but the one who does the will of God abides.

Forever.

That's the promise of Scripture. Now one thing that I promised that I would deal with from this passage, I promised you this weeks ago, so I could probably not even do this and most of you would not even remember it, but if you listen to the recordings, you would come back and say, hey, I feel like I got cheated.

I promised you that I would deal with the statement in Scripture where it says, Jacob, I've loved and Esau, I've hated. What do we deal with that? Because you can't really frame the life of Jacob and his blessings and trading that away in the sovereignty of God.

You can't really frame those things and deal with that without really addressing that what is for some people a very perplexing statement, Jacob, I have loved and Esau, I have hated. That is mentioned twice in Scripture, once in Malachi chapter 1 and once in Romans chapter 9.

Malachi chapter 1 verses 2 and 3, Malachi, a prophet to Israel speaking to the nation and he is quizzing the nation, he is asking a series of questions intended to demonstrate that they had been unfaithful to their God and to the covenant that God made with Jacob.

So he says in Malachi chapter 1, I have loved you, says the Lord, but you say, how have you loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother, declares the Lord? Yet I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau and I have made his mountains a desolation and appointed his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness.

Now Paul quotes that in Romans chapter 9 to defend the absolute sovereignty of God over all things, particularly regarding God's sovereignty in salvation, whom He chooses and whom He passes over, whom He hardens and whom He shows mercy to.

Paul uses that in Romans chapter 9 to demonstrate that before Jacob and Esau had ever done anything, good or bad, when still in their mother's womb, God had made a choice and it was Jacob over Esau. So, Paul says, quotes that in Romans 9 verse 13, just as it is written, Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated.

Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated. And what does that mean? I have read this over, I've meditated upon it all week, I think it means that God loved Jacob and God hated Esau. Now that is not the most profound thing you're going to hear all week, but I do think I've nailed it with that interpretation.

That's hard for some people to stomach. That God would hate Esau? Isn't He a God of love? And only love? What do we do with a statement that says God hated Esau? You can't explain away the plain sense of that word, that God hated Esau.

Some people say, well God hates the sin, but loves the sinner. God doesn't throw sin into hell. God throws sinners into hell. Those two quotations don't say that God hated Esau's sin, but loved Esau. Those two phrases say that God hated Esau.

What do we do with that? To make it even more complicated, let me be the first one to tell you if you don't know this already, this is not the only place in Scripture where you read something like that.

For instance, Psalm 5, verses 4 through 6,. "'For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness. No evil dwells with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all who do iniquity.

You destroy those who speak falsely. The Lord abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit.'". Psalm 7, verse 11,. "'God is a righteous judge and a God who has indignation every day. If a man does not repent," listen, here's what God does, "'he will sharpen his sword.

He has bent his bow. He has made it ready. He has also prepared for himself deadly weapons. He makes his arrows fiery shafts.'". Psalm 11, verse 5,. "'The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence, his soul hates.'".

What does that mean? How do we deal with that? There is something, well, let me back up first. You and I have to admit that it is possible that within the infinite nature of God, the incomprehensible divine being, that there is something there, there is a part of God that hates the sinner.

It is also possible that at the same time, at the same moment, in the very same God, in His incomprehensible and infinite nature, there is something there that loves the sinner, that God both loves and hates the sinner at the same time in the same circumstances.

When I read of an abortion doctor or one of these people who's trying to transgender the kids and trans the kids, when I read of what's going on in our culture, in our nation, from the people who wield positions of power, there is something in me that loves them in the I want them to come to a knowledge of the truth so that they stop the evil, and there's something in me that hates them.

At the very same time, in the very same moment, in this very same person, if that is true of me, I would submit to you that that is true of God as well. The fact that God hated Esau does not rule out that He showed Esau compassion and tender mercy and even expressed love to Esau.

Esau's descendants ended up lasting for centuries. They occupied the land of Edom. They grew and they prospered, and God blessed Esau with many physical blessings. All of that is true. God shows compassion and goodness to all his works.

The Lord is good to all, Psalm 145 verse 9 says, and his mercies are over all of his works. God was merciful to Esau. In fact, the very fact that Esau did not perish in the moment that he traded that bowl of soup for his birthright, the very fact that Esau in that moment, when he had that first bite of soup, did not right then fall into a massive pit that would open up underneath of his feet and fall into eternal damnation, that was an expression of God's mercy to Esau.

So God showed him mercy. God showed him grace. There is something in God that loves every sinner, and there is something in God that hates the sinner at the very same time. That should serve as a warning to us.

And let's not forget that Esau hated God. Esau hated God and showed his contempt for God in his act of selling the birthright. He hated God and everything God valued, and Esau gave God no regard. He was a profane and contemptible man.

So does God hate Esau? Scripture said that he did hate Esau. And Scripture shows that he showed tremendous mercy, loving kindness, and grace to Esau at the very same time. There's something in the nature of God that hates the sinner.

There's something that's supposed to be expected. But here's the good news. There's something in the nature of God that loves the sinner as well. But here's the difference. The cause for God's hatred of Esau was not in God but rested in Esau alone.

The reason for God's hatred of Esau rested in Esau. The reason for God's love for Jacob was not in Jacob. The reason was in God alone. In other words, Jacob was just as unworthy of God's love as Esau was.

Jacob was just as undeserving of grace as Esau ever was. The real mystery is not why God hated Esau. I'll be honest with you. I have no problem understanding that. The real mystery is why God loved Jacob.