Despising the Birthright

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Genesis 25:29-34

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Well, I'm very thankful you all braved the blizzard to be here this morning. That was quite a letdown, wasn't it?
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We had all our snowsuits ready to go, and there wasn't anything to slide down. Well, we want to complete
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Genesis 25 together this morning. Of course, last week we spoke about God's purpose according to election, and we just rehearsed that within God's word to Rebecca.
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Rebecca, God reveals, there are two nations struggling within her womb, and that he has a purpose, his purpose according to election.
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As Paul goes on to say, it's before either of these boys are born, before either of them had done anything, whether good or evil, that God had a purpose according to election.
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It came in this word to Rebecca, the older shall serve the younger. So we read not only this, but when
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Rebecca also had conceived by one man, even by our father Isaac, for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, so that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him who calls, it was said to her, the older shall serve the younger.
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As it is written, Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated. This morning we're moving on to verses 29 through 34.
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We're going to start in verse 24. There's one thing I want to pick up on before we move forward, and that is we see and will see this broken family dynamic.
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It emerges here in chapter 25, and as we continue across the next several chapters, we're going to see just how dysfunctional the family of Isaac and Rebecca is, and I think that's very important.
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In fact, we'll see that same dysfunction, that same broken family dynamic when we move forward to the family of Jacob.
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So we read, beginning in verse 24, when her days were fulfilled for her to give birth, indeed there were twins in her womb, and the first came out red.
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He was like a hairy garment all over, so they called his name Esau. Afterward, his brother came out, and his hand took hold of Esau's heel, so his name was called
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Jacob. Isaac was 60 years old when she bore them, so the boys grew. And Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, but Jacob was a mild man, dwelling in tents.
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And Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebecca loved
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Jacob. So there's a little hint, the opening of this broken family dynamic. The first thing we see, of course, is the differences between Esau and Jacob.
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We discussed that last week. But therein, we see the disunity between these two brothers.
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They hold precious little in common in terms of their temperament and their personality. We also see not only a disunity between Jacob and Esau, we see a disunity between which parent is close to which child.
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Rebecca prefers Jacob, she has a favorite, and she shows it toward Jacob. Isaac has a favorite as well, he shows it toward Esau.
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And therefore, not only is there disunity between the brothers, disunity between parental affection, there's also therefore disunity in the marriage.
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Isaac and Rebecca are clearly somewhat distant in this narrative. And as we move forward to chapter 27, we'll see
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Rebecca's even willing to deceive her husband, to help her favorite son, who she feels a lot closer to, to go against the brother that she doesn't care for, and deceive her own husband.
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So there's just dysfunction all over this family. Now one thing to take away from here is the danger of favoritism in the home.
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It's just a passing point that's worth making, because we have a lot of families with more than one child.
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Now I don't know about all of you, if you're children, I know I happen to be the favorite child in my home, understandably.
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But favoritism is a very sinful thing. Favoritism in the church is a sinful thing.
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According to James 2 .9, if you show partiality, you commit sin. And in James 2, he's connecting that to the command to love your neighbor as yourself.
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And so the neighbor is not always the neighbor. Sometimes the neighbor is the sibling.
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Sometimes the neighbor is the child. You're to love them all without partiality, for James 2 .9,
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to show partiality is to commit sin. So if favoritism is a sin in the church, where we're all brothers and sisters, favoritism is still a sin even in the home.
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Parents welcome sinfulness into their family dynamic when they're not careful to avoid partiality, careful to avoid favoritism.
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Why? Because they enable or breed jealousy and aggressive behavior and bitterness, if not against the parent, then against the one that they love.
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We'll see this with Joseph, when his father trots him around in this beautiful multicolored robe, and he's just thrilled, he's so delighted, but how do all the brothers feel about that?
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And even Joseph, I mean, frankly, seems kind of like a snot, doesn't he? Isn't this wonderful, brothers?
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I even had a dream that I'm better than all of you. And so we see this broken family dynamic even there.
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We see it between Cain and Abel. We'll see it between Joseph and his brothers. We see it here between Jacob and Esau.
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They really have no close relationship whatsoever, and it must have something to do with the way that Isaac regards
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Esau and Rebecca regards Jacob. One wonders how much Jacob's ego was wrongly puffed up, because his mother always entitled him, always gave him privileges, and always enabled his behavior.
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And Isaac, really, it's like father like son, as far as Isaac and Esau are concerned.
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Isaac is driven by the dinner plate. What do we read in verse 28? Isaac loved
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Esau because he ate of his game. So his affection is as fickle as dinner.
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And as we'll see in our chapter this morning, in our passage this morning, so Esau, his love, his loyalty, is as fickle as his appetite.
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But in the midst of all this dysfunction, God's grace is still at work, and so here we have a note of hope, don't we, that God's able to work in dysfunctional homes.
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God is able to redeem broken family dynamics. It's one of the great moments in the account of Jacob's life when he's reconciled with his brother
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Esau. It's almost something unimaginable here, and when we get to chapter 27,
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Esau's ready to pull a cane. He's ready to kill his brother. And so that reconciliation is a triumph of God's grace in not only
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Jacob's life, but really even in Esau's life. And so God is willing to show grace to us, not because of our family failures, but despite them.
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Despite our dysfunction, God is willing to show us grace. So that's just a little application.
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Parents don't show favoritism. Don't be like Isaac and Rebekah. And now with verses 29 and following, we come to the birthright.
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Jacob cooked a stew, and Esau came in from the field, and he was weary. And Esau said to Jacob, please, feed me with that same red stew, for I'm weary.
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And therefore his name was called Edom, another play on the word red. But Jacob said, sell me your birthright as of this day.
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Now the birthright, of course, was the honor given to the firstborn son. And so this is a very important factor of ancient
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Near Eastern culture, still in a lot of cultures today, this issue of primogeniture, that which belongs to the firstborn son.
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He becomes the effective replacement head of the household, the leader of the family, leader of the clan, the heir of the father's estate, the one who will take up the father's estate.
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And he receives a double portion. He receives a double portion of the inheritance, of whatever is distributed.
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So the other brothers, they have to fend for themselves. They have their single portion and carve out their own way in the world.
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But the first son takes the place of the father, takes the estate and the position within the larger family.
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Now the birthright is different from the blessing. It's important to point out.
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Jacob not only takes the birthright from Esau, but he'll later twist in chapter 27 the blessing away from his brother as well.
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And we see that in Genesis 27, 36. This is Esau's complaint. He took my birthright and now he's taken my blessing.
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So the birthright and the blessing are two distinct things. A father would give a blessing irregardless of birthright.
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We go on to see a father blessing all of his sons, right? You think of Jacob blessing his sons.
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But of course, the blessing here would have been extravagant, would have been something highly desirable if you were the firstborn son.
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You would probably get a very extravagant blessing as well. And that's why Jacob not only wants the birthright, he also wants the blessing.
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The blessing is not only a sense of the father's will and desire, sort of a last will and testament for the son, but was also viewed as sort of prophetic.
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It was a declaration of what God would do, as though God was speaking through the father as he gave that final blessing to his son.
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With Esau, beginning in verses 32 through 34, we see the birthright despised.
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Look, I'm about to die. What is this birthright to me? You know, you can't help but think of one of those
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Snickers commercials, you know, you're not yourself when you're hungry. He's just coming from the field and he's like, I'm going to die.
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I don't care about it. I just need to stew. Well, he came out from the field, he has full mental faculty, he's able to kind of address the situation.
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It doesn't seem like he's actually on death's door. What's emphasized here is not so much his appetite as his disdain.
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I'm so hungry, I'm sure he was very hungry, I'm so hungry that I'd even give this birthright.
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And the shock of that is this birthright means that little to me. That's the emphasis here, not the hunger, but the contempt he shows for the birthright.
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What use is it to me? Almost sounds like something that he had as a thought over time, year by year, what use is this birthright to me?
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This is it? A land that's not even our own? This is my birthright? Whoop -diddy -doo.
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And so, no wonder it comes out of his mouth, it was in his heart, for out of the mouth the heart speaks.
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And so he swore to him. He swore to him, we read, sold his birthright to Jacob, sold it for soup.
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Verse 34, Jacob gave Esau bread and a stew of lentils and he ate, he drank, he arose, he went his way.
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There's a sort of staccato to the narrative here, very short little moments of action and that's common in Hebrew narrative, after the main point is made, you just sort of get a summary with quick verbs, however here
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I think it's really showing just how cold the affection is between Jacob and Esau. It's not like, oh great, well let's sit down and have this great meal together and it's just sort of, you know, he slurps it down and he goes his way and there's really no brotherly interaction here.
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And then we have the summary of this whole account, thus Esau despised his birthright.
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In this way Esau despised, hated his birthright. Now there's some interesting things here going on in the text in verses 32 through 34.
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Not only do we have him bursting down the tent door, claiming extravagantly, I'm about to die, but we have in our background
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Esau, the skillful hunter, the man of the field, really what would be characteristically a wild man.
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We have in our translation in verse 27 this contrast between Esau, the skillful hunter, a man of the field,
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Jacob, a mild man. Mild here is interesting, it comes from a root that certainly means mild or quiet, that's fine, but the root has the idea of someone who's self -controlled.
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It goes on to mean something like civilized, you know, not wild like those other tribes, those other barbarians, but civilized, self -controlled, dignified.
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That would be the sense here of Jacob. And the language is something that would be used of shepherds.
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We don't think of shepherds as those who are dignified, but to the ancient Israelite mind, a man of the field, a man who's running around chasing after animals is somewhat wild compared to the pastoral life, which is dignified.
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It's quiet, it's organized. You have to have a whole system for the cattle that you're caring for.
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And so a shepherd would have been seen as somewhat more civilized than a hunter. That would have been a little more wild and certainly uncommon to the
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Israelites. And so we have this contrast between the hunter, the wild man, and the dignified, civilized
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Jacob. And yet the tables are going to turn. First of all, we should point out also the only other hunter we've seen so far in Genesis was
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Nimrod, the godless city builder. And so, you know,
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O for two if you're a hunter as far as biblical encouragement, I suppose, in the book of Genesis.
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So far, the hunters haven't been very promising. But Jacob is actually going to become the hunter in these verses.
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So there's wordplay here. The first thing we read is that Jacob is cooking. The verb is tzid in Hebrew, and it echoes the noun hunter, which would be tzayid.
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That would have been something that would have been echoed or recognized. It's ironic within the literature.
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And it's deliberate. We have a hunter coming in from the field, and what is Jacob doing? He's hunting too.
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He's cooking. He's laying out a snare for the hunter.
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And so it's very deliberate. I know some of you are reading. We could put it this way. Esau is now the most dangerous game.
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Jacob is hunting Esau. The soundplay from these two words merged to mean he's setting a trap.
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He's laying out a snare by cooking. And this is reinforced by another very rare term that when we read, it's translated
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Jacob gave Esau the stew. It's a very rare verb that in later
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Hebrew, it only ever means to feed pasture, to feed cattle. And so again,
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Esau is typified as sort of an animal, a wild animal that's now been brought into this trap, and he's being fed like an animal.
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And so again, you have this contrast between the very mild Jacob, who's actually very scheming and very wily, and he's laid out this snare for his brother who comes in like a ravenous beast, controlled by his appetite, controlled and driven by his hunger.
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And he sells it. He gets caught up in Jacob's snare. He sells not only the material benefits, the family privilege that attended this birthright, but all of the covenantal dynamics that belong to it because of who his father was,
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Isaac. And so that which belongs to Isaac because of the
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God of Abraham and Isaac, he's willing to forgo. So he despised his birthright.
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He ate, drank, arose, and went his way. If we ever needed an illustration, as we opened up last week, of the sovereignty of God, but also the responsibility of man, we have it here.
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Remember, we emphasized last week that the utter sovereignty of God, which in no way responds or reacts to the way and will and works of man, it's by His sovereign decree,
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Him working out what pleases Him in His great desire to glorify Himself and magnify
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His name. That great sovereignty never robs human responsibility, never gives man an excuse.
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And we see that even here. It's not that Esau has a heart of gold, if we put this narrative in the
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Hallmark movie frame, and, oh, it's just that unfortunately God's out to get him, and even though he wants to do the right thing, he just can't.
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God's made him this way. We don't see that at all, do we? We have divine sovereignty, the electing grace of God, God telling
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Rebekah the older is going to serve the younger before they've even been born so that His purpose according to election might stand.
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But at the same time, look how selfish, look how foolish, look how hardened
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Esau is when he makes this choice. He's making this choice.
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And why does he make this choice? It's a free choice. Why does he make it?
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Because his will, his will, his free choice is in bondage to a sinful nature because his
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God is his belly, and that's why he makes this foolish, cynical, treacherous choice.
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God's sovereignty is never an excuse for man's responsibility. We see not only
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God's sovereignty, but we see Esau's God -despising, promise -rejecting choice.
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We don't have a lot of commentary here for Jacob. All of the emphasis in the narrative is on Esau, but we should highlight what we will highlight as we move forward.
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Jacob's not a prize either. Jacob doesn't come out unscathed. We see that he's somewhat of a wretch as well.
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He's clearly not on the right. He's manipulative. He has a cruel nature. He really doesn't care about his brother.
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It certainly doesn't show him brotherly kindness. He realizes a meal is a means to get what he wants out of his family rather than caring for his family as he ought.
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He also shows us, and this is the foil of the narrative, just how flimsy Esau's desire for the inheritance is.
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This is a real ripoff. When we think about the possession of Abraham, that he's going to be a blessing for the world, that name will never perish.
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That's what Esau is willing to trade away. Not just trade away, throw away, really. It's a ripoff.
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If we think of some of the great ripoffs of history, some of you children, you're at a place in your homeschooling where you're doing sort of U .S.
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history, and you get to the 19th century, and the U .S. had some real ripoffs, the
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Louisiana Purchase. All right, we basically took the whole middle of our country for about just under three cents an acre.
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That's a ripoff. Or when we purchased the Alaskan Territory, it was actually about two cents an acre.
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We got all of Alaska from Russia, and then about 30 years later, the Klondike Gold Rush was like, hey, all right, this place is full of gold.
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That was a ripoff. My favorite ripoff, I think, of all time, 1975, a business executive named
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Gary Dahl. I wonder if any of you have one of these at home. He had the brilliant idea of taking rocks from a beach in Mexico and putting them in a cardboard box and selling them as pet rocks.
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Four dollars a pop, and he sold millions. The guy sold rocks and made millions.
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That's a ripoff. That's a ripoff. You can go pick up a rock for free, but somehow people were spending four dollars to get a pet rock.
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But this is a much greater ripoff than that. The blessing of God upon Abraham for Stu.
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It's shocking. It's scandalous. And you realize the nature of sin here.
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Sin makes Stu more real than some promise that doesn't seem real.
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Sin makes Stu more desirable than the ways of God, which seems so difficult.
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Sin reduces you to delivering something of immense value, inestimable value, so that you can pander for crumbs.
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That's what sin does. Sin is the greatest ripoff there's ever been. Maybe the second greatest ripoff there's ever been, if we go back to Adam, and we ought to be thinking of Adam when we're reading these verses.
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Because just like Adam, Esau is throwing away the entirety of a future paradise with God's presence in a land that will belong to him for some food.
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Just like Adam. We're meant to see this echo of Adam's sin for something so foolish, something so pitiful and paltry and passing.
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You're going to eat fruit and expel it, and was it worth trading paradise for? Was it worth severing communion with God over?
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And that's what Esau is willing to do. It shows the sinfulness of his mindset before he ever took a bite.
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He had contempt, not so much for the birthright, but for the God of the birthright.
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God's covenant with Abraham to bless the nations of the world is the only beam of light in this fallen world at the time.
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There is no other area of God's grace at work, when we talk about God's redemptive grace, at work in this dark and fallen world.
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From Genesis 3 and following, the only beam of light is the promise of Genesis 3 .15,
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which begins to flower with the call of Abraham in Genesis 12. So in the midst of pitch black darkness, there's a solid beam of light, and that beam of light is
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God's covenant with Abraham. And Esau would rather dwell in the darkness.
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Esau wants nothing to do with what is the most unimaginably greatest privilege possible, to be the firstborn recipient of this unique relationship to God's promise and blessing, and he throws it away like Adam, the firstborn who throws away this unique relationship with God.
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He throws it away for a meal. As much as we can say about Jacob's scheming, his deceit, he's a twister, he's a sinful man, and God's going to sanctify and straighten him out.
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But as much as we can say about him in the negative, we can at least say this, he desired the birthright.
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Esau despised it, Jacob desired it. It was sinful how he sought to obtain it, but somehow beneath his twisted mindset and his sinful activity, there's this little sprout of faith.
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I want that because I do believe that's a blessing. I do want to have this unique relationship with God.
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I don't want to be shut out of that. I don't want my brother to get it, and I'm cast out. I believe what my grandfather has told me about the land.
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I believe what he has done, and I want that for myself. He desires the inheritance.
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In other words, as much as he's a sinner, Jacob believes the promise of God. But Esau is a worldly man.
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His fixation is on his stomach, on the things of the earth, more than the covenantal lineage of his family.
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And we see this play out in the rest of his life. He goes on to marry two Hittite women. He's not like Abraham at all, who takes great pains to make sure that Isaac marries someone who will be equally yoked with.
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He goes to live in Edom. He doesn't stay in the promised land, which he could have.
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It meant too little to him. He had no desire whatsoever for Isaac's inheritance, and therefore, he had no desire whatsoever for the
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God of Isaac. He had contempt for it all. And that brings us to our last section, our main focus this morning, which is taking this passage as we're meant to, according to the
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New Testament. This passage is meant to be a warning to the profane, a warning to the profane.
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We pick that up in Hebrews 12, where this passage is quoted. Remember the context of Hebrews 12?
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In Hebrews 12, the writer of Hebrews has been talking about the suffering of the church, the hostility, apparently persecution that was causing some to want to depart from the faith, to apostatize, most likely back to Judaism, seems to be the context.
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Judaism was a religio licita, a legal religion within Rome.
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Christianity was not, not until Constantine. And so, for Jewish Christians, Jewish followers of Jesus, the heat was getting hot in the kitchen, can't we just go back to Judaism?
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We'll serve God in this way, we'll have a good conscience, we're serving God in our own way, we'll show devotion to Jesus, but we're going to stop identifying ourselves as Christians because we don't like the persecution that's coming against us.
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And in the context, the writer of Hebrews is saying there is no going back. You cannot go back, you cannot depart from the faith.
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You cannot go back to Mount Sinai and think that this is the way you'll find salvation with God. And so there's both warning, but also encouragement.
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There's tremendous warning, Hebrews 6, and yet the writer can hope better things concerning the church.
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And in Hebrews 12, we have the same context, now some instruction. Realize that the suffering you're experiencing is the chastising hand of God, and the chastening is never pleasant in the moment, but it bears fruit.
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And so there's an encouragement. Don't lose heart because God is training you by His chastening unto righteousness.
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And so we pick up in verse 12. Therefore, strengthen the hands which hang down and the feeble knees.
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Make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather healed.
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And pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the
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Lord. Looking carefully, lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springs up, causing trouble, and by this many become defiled.
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Lest there be a fornicator or a profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright.
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Esau is called a fornicator. We could translate that as an immoral man.
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A fornicator would make sense in a given context, but when it's used as a general term, the idea is immoral, just generally immoral, not the specific act of fornication.
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And he's called a profane man. It's an interesting word, profane. We take that as someone who's needlessly vulgar, rough.
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It comes from the Latin phenom, which is a way of talking about a holy space, a holy place, an altar, and the preposition pro, which means before.
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So profanum, profane, before the sacred space, outside of the sacred space.
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So in other words, you're not acting with reverence like you would in the sacred space, you're acting like you're outside of it.
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Anything goes. So he's profane. He's not living accountably, he's not living quorum deo, before the face of God.
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He's profane. He was aware of the glorious promise made to Abraham, but that promise was pale to him.
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That promise was tense in a land that didn't belong to them, and it was not worth waiting his whole life not to see, like his now departed grandfather.
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What good did that do for you, grandpa? You died in a tent.
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What good was that? And yeah, my father, he's getting up there, he's going to do the same.
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Well, you know what? Not me. Why would I make these kinds of hard choices for my life?
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Why would I throw away what I could get out of this world and really make something of myself, have a good life, and provide?
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The promise was pale compared to his immediate desire, as God was his belly. He let his appetite entice him and draw him away from life and God's presence.
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This isn't a moral man. This is the definition of a profane man. As Calvin says, the profane are those in whom the love of the world so holds sway that they forget heaven as men carried away by ambition, addicted to money and riches, given over to gluttony, entangled with all kinds of pleasure, and they give the kingdom of Christ either no place or the very last place in their thought.
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That is his definition of the profane. And so we're called here, in light of Esau's example, to look carefully lest any one of us fall short of the grace of God.
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Verse 16, lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright.
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The writer of Hebrews is saying to the church, to apparent believers, don't give away your birthright for some passing of sin.
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This is a warning to the profane within the church. And of course, we confess that those who have genuine faith, true faith, ultimately cannot lose their salvation.
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But we must never think that we can ignore a warning given to the church, which is meant to clarify whether we are in the faith.
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Who is this warning for if it's not for the church? It's who it's written to. This is a warning for the church.
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This is a warning for us. When we actually heed the warning, we prove that we have genuine faith.
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This is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, let him who thinks he stands, take heed.
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Let him who thinks, he's under the impression, he's sure, he has confidence that he's standing, let that man take heed, lest he fall.
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So how do we take heed in light of Esau's example? I want to give five ways
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I think we can take heed. So the first, beware of the muckrake, beware of the muckrake.
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This is one of my favorite images from Pilgrim's Progress. Some of you have used a muckrake without knowing what a muckrake is.
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A muckrake is a rake you use to spread manure. You'd use it to scatter it around the fields in order to cultivate the soil.
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And so the muckrake would be at the end of that cart full of dung, and you would rake it off and rake it around, and the whole time you're trying to get that rake to spread this foul heap of stuff.
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And John Bunyan, of course, in Pilgrim's Progress, the second part, he speaks of this muckrake.
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And it's from John Bunyan, interestingly, that the term muckrake enters really into English vocabulary as a metaphor.
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And so investigative journalists are called muckrakers, right, because they have to dig out the dirty details of a situation or of a certain person.
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Now, the reason I say the first point is to beware of the muckrake is this. Esau's decision was impulsive, right?
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He burst down the door and he's like, give me the stew. I don't care about my birthright, give me the stew.
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It's a completely impulsive decision. But one of the things you realize in the Christian life is impulsive decisions are never truly that impulsive.
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They always have roots that have developed over a long time. And by the time you get to make things that impulsively, you've laid down thousands of small negotiations that have brought you to that point.
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A man doesn't wake up one morning and say, after 13 years of fidelity to my wife, today I'm going to commit adultery against her.
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He has to make thousands of little adjustments and compromises until he gets to the point where what seems impulsive externally is actually the natural progression of the way he's been living.
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And that could be true of any sin that may seem impulsive to us. And so there's years of training and there's a continual practice of disregarding the means of grace or the things of the
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Lord. And that means that for Esau, what seems so impulsive actually was not all that impulsive at all.
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It had begun a long time earlier when Esau, unlike Jacob, was disregarding the things he was hearing, was showing little interest or concern for that which belonged to his family by way of God's promise.
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In other words, his mind was fixed upon the things of the earth. He was muckraking and he wouldn't look up.
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And that impulsive decision came after a long way of living with his eyes to the ground and his rake in the muck.
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This is what Christiana says. This is in the House of Interpreter. She's taken into a room, we read, where there was a man that could look no way but down with a muckrake in his hand.
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And there also stood one over his head with a celestial crown in his hand and offered him that crown for the muckrake.
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But the man never looked up and he didn't give any regard. He raked to himself straws and the small sticks of dust on the floor.
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And Christiana said, I persuade myself that I know something of the meaning of this for this is a figure of a man of the world.
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Genesis 25, a man of the field. Interpreter, you've said right.
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This muckrake shows his carnal mind. And you would see him, he'd rather rake up the dust of the floor than to what calls to him from above with a celestial crown in his hand.
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He'd rather lap up a bowl of stew than look up to God's crowning covenant and a future of glory.
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This is to show that heaven is but a fable to some. The promise to Abraham is but a fable to Esau.
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And that things here are counted as only things substantial, real, like stew.
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Now it was also shown to you that the man could look no way but down. It's to let you know that earthly things, when they have power upon men's minds, carry their hearts away from God.
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And then Christiana said, oh, deliver me from the muckrake. That ought to be the Christian's prayer, lest we be profane and immoral like Esau and despise our birthright as the secondborn of God.
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Deliver us from the muckrake, which means examining ourselves. What is causing me to look downward?
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What's causing my affections and my interest to drift away from the things of the Lord? The call to Christians is,
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Colossians, to set your heart on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, not on earthly things.
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A believer with a stomach for the world, a believer with his head to the muck, will sell his birthright for stew.
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So first point, beware of the muckrake. Second point, check your appetite.
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Check your appetite. We're creatures of flesh.
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We're living in a fallen world. God's work of sanctification is still underway within our lives.
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We're being gloriously conformed to the image of our Savior, but only by degree of glory to the next degree of glory, and through seasons and trials and many hardships that we endure.
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And that's just to say we all have fleshly appetites, and we need to check those appetites.
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James 1 talks about this appetite, this desire, and he frames it as a birth cycle.
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This is beginning in verse 14 of James 1. See how it's a birth cycle. Each one is tempted.
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When he's drawn away, by the way, in the Greek, that's the word for snare, just like we're seeing in our passage, dragged away by the nets, as it were.
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Each one is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. And then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin.
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And sin, when it is full grown, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.
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So do you see the birth cycle of sin? It's spoken of an act of consummation leading to conception, leading to birth, leading to death, right?
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The enticement, the conception, the birth, and then it becomes full grown, and then it brings forth death.
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That's the birth cycle of sin. Where does it begin? Each one is tempted when he's drawn away by his own desire.
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It begins with desire. There's a danger when we're not checking our desire, our appetite.
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There's a show, I don't know if it's still on, I don't know how old it is. You can see interesting clips of it here and there.
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It's called My 600 -Pound Life. And it's usually sort of little video accounts of people who are undergoing bariatric surgery.
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They're morbidly obese, they'll die within a few years if they don't take drastic measures. And so they go fly out to some center and they undergo, you know, pre -op.
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And the idea is we're going to do bariatric surgery, reduce the size of your stomach, and then you have to gain control of your appetite and you'll be able to lose all sorts of weight.
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And it's interesting to get into the psychology of people who have grown accustomed to eating, you know, 9 ,000 calories a day, every day.
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And when they, you know, it seems so obvious to us that they're just in this downward spiral. They're unable to care for themselves in any capacity.
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And they're also surrounded by enablers that keep on door -dashing, you know, to them. But there's always that moment of reckoning when they go see the surgeon and the surgeon won't dare do anything until they already show some progress in losing.
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Show me that you'd be able to actually keep up with the bariatric diet. I'm not going to put you under the knife if you're going to be continuing these habits.
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But there's always this confrontation and usually it goes something like this. You're 30 years old.
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You'll be dead within three years. You are killing yourself with food. You're killing, your appetite is killing you.
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In a spiritual sense, that's true of the Christian. Your appetite, your fleshly appetite, it's killing you.
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You're hurting yourself. You're hurting those around you. Your whole family is in dysfunction because of your appetite.
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People can't care for you. You're closed off. You're isolated now. You can't even leave.
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You can't interact. Your appetite is killing you. Esau, in a profound way, was killing himself with food here in Genesis 25.
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He has no ability to control his appetite. It's so clear in the Hebrew. I sometimes hate that we have to fill things in to make sense in English.
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He bursts in the door and he can't even put words. He's so hungry. So where we have, and he said, give me the red stew, the
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Hebrew is broken deliberately there. It's like, give me the red. Give me that red stuff. That's how it is.
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You have to supply stuff. It's just give me the red. Jake, I'm starving. Give me that red. Give me that red.
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It's completely uncontrolled. He is not able to control his appetite, to think through the ramifications of what he's willing to lose.
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And so for the Christian, if we claim to be in Christ, we have to check our appetite. Put to death that which is earthly within us, that appetite of the flesh, which creates a birth cycle of sin, and sin brings forth death.
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Christians must be careful not to kill themselves with their desires. They must put to death whatever is in them.
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Therefore, put to death whatever is in you that is worldly, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire, greed, which is idolatry.
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And the vice lists go on throughout the New Testament. The apostles were supremely aware that these very desires, these very issues were killing
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Christians by which some have departed the faith. We know that those who practice such things have no inheritance in the kingdom.
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Thomas Brooks, on a sermon from Hebrews 12 on verse 14, the holiness without which no one will see the
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Lord, he has a whole section on putting sin to death. And I love the imagery he uses here, and I think it's very practical.
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I'll just share this. He says, do not defer, do not delay the work of spiritual mortification, that is putting sin to death.
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Do not think that you can both fight and overcome in one day. Do not think that your golden and silver idols will lay down their weapons, yield the field, lie at your feet, and let you trample them to death without ever striking a blow.
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Oh, remember that besetting sins will do all that they can to keep their ground. And therefore, you must arise with all of your strength against them and crush them to powder and burn their ashes.
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Notice this imagery, while Saul lived, remember King Saul, while Saul lived and kept the throne, he was in strength,
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David was little, and he was kept exceedingly weak and low. But once Saul was dethroned and he was slain,
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David quickly grew mighty. Just so, all the while, a darling sin, a darling sin, that sin that you just, you keep going back.
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It's that sin that's at the forefront of your mind every Sunday before you walk up here. It's the darling sin.
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That darling sin lives and keeps the throne in your heart. And as long as it keeps the throne in your heart, grace and holiness are kept exceedingly weak and low, but when your darling sin is dethroned and slain by the power and sword of the
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Spirit, grace and holiness become mighty in your life. So kill your darling sin.
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He goes on to say, killing your darling sin is like slaying Goliath, and when
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Goliath is slain, all the other Philistines scatter. They're easily routed, and he says, if you can kill that habitual sin, that sin that is a chain to you, the lesser sins will soon fall over.
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Doesn't happen in one day, doesn't happen without a fight. Check your appetite. Third, value what is truly valuable.
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Value what is truly valuable. That's the problem with Esau. He has no compass, no bearing on what is of true value and what is of no value.
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As we've always said with sin, sin makes that which has little value seem like it's the greatest value, and that which has the greatest value seem like it has cheap value.
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You see this all the time on Antiques Roadshow, right? There's some ancient
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Qing Dynasty vase that somehow was picked up at, you know, some flea market in China, and it was picked up, and the collectors have it there at the
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Antiques Roadshow. Yeah, you know, this has been kicking around the house, we decided, you know, hey, we don't really know anything about this, let's just see, you know, take a shot, and the collectors begin to drool, and their eyes widen, and they realize that this is some rare masterpiece that belonged to the imperial household.
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Do you mind if I can ask, how much did you pay for it? Oh, yeah, well, I think it was like $8 maybe, and I think
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I traded a baseball card for it. Well, I'm pleased to say that a conservative estimate at auction would be $120 ,000, you know, and I was like ready to faint.
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I never imagined, it's usually, I could never imagine, I just, this was on the kitchen counter, we just put jelly beans in it, and that's the funny thing, right, that they had no idea that something was so valuable, it was just there, it was just taken for granted, and if we're going to avoid being like Esau, if we're going to not have our head to the ground in the muck, if we're going to check our appetites, we need to make sure we have the right sense of what is valuable, and value what
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God says is valuable. We need to have God's sense of the values of life and the values of this world, rather than our own fleshly appetites sense of what is valuable.
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When we value what God values in life, we count blessings, we count blessings according to what
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God counts as a blessing, which is almost always directly opposed to what the world considers a blessing.
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The things that God says are a blessing, the world says, oh, that's horrible, why would you want to do that? Why would you want to put yourself through that?
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That's the most undesirable thing imaginable, oh, God says it's a blessing, actually. By the same token, what the world counts as a great blessing, as a great thing,
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God says it's not, it's not valuable. Even if it's somehow ethically neutral, which rarely it is, it becomes something immoral because attention and desire is fixated upon it.
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So you must have the right value of the things in your life. And part of how you get the right value of the things in your life is you compare them with the life to come, and that's something that Esau could not do.
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He could not be like his grandfather and look for the city whose builder and maker is
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God. His head is to the muck, he's not checking his appetite at all, and he has no ability therefore to value what is truly valuable.
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Jacob is deceitful as he is, he knows what's valuable. I have to find a way to secure this birthright because this is valuable.
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I need this. And so we draw close to God through his word and we grapple in his word with things that are difficult but are called and pointed out as of tremendous value, and they're often elusive.
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And the word also exposes us to those things which are truly cheap, but the world is pandering after them, chasing after them, and we ask how many in Esau in our day have thrown away something of unimaginable worth?
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How many preachers in our day have thrown away their birthright for some passing moment in the flood?
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This is real. What do you value? What do you value?
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What is valuable? What is worth seeking patiently and with perseverance?
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And what is just a passing pleasure of this world? Beloved, John writes in 1
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John 3, 2, now we are children of God, but it has not yet been revealed that we shall be. In other words, yeah, it doesn't always seem as real as what the culture has of what the world seems to offer to us.
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It's not as real as the stew in the eyes of an Esau. But Jacob knows, even though I can't see it, even though it's nothing obtainable yet, even though my fathers have longed after it and not received it, it's of great value.
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I need it. Esau can't see past what seems real to him. The Christian cannot live in that way.
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The Christian must know what is valuable. We are children of God, but what will be has not been revealed yet, and so we're living by faith for what
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God will reveal in us. And Paul takes this up in Romans 8. He says, whatever trials, whatever hardships you have to endure as you're waiting, they're not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
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It's not worth comparing. The value gap is so immense, don't even begin to compare.
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That's what Paul is saying. If you know that the life to come is of greater value, don't even begin to compare the things of this life.
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When you're living with that kind of hope, you will not show contempt for your birthright.
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You will not show disdain for the things of the Lord. You'll be living with hope and with gratefulness. You'll be standing on the promises of God because you're valuing what is truly valuable according to God's metric.
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And therefore, as John writes earlier in that epistle, if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
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For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, it's a working description of Esau.
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It's not of the Father, it's of the world, and the world is passing away. And the lust of it is passing away, but he who does the will of God abides forever.
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And so the third point, value what is truly valuable. Fourth, count your blessings.
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Count your blessings. For the Christian from Esau's episode, there's a call here to never take for granted what is given to us as our inheritance.
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To never take for granted or treat with disregard that which has come to us in and through Christ.
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And we do that in part because we know we must give account for these blessings. And so we count them.
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We count our blessings as those who must give account. And the whole point is, we don't despise the riches of God or His goodness to us.
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Now for someone who is like Esau, they show contempt for the privileges they have. There's lots of other people that are not born into these privileges, but Esau is and he shows contempt for it.
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And people like Esau, in thousands of small ways, they show contempt and they're ultimately led to abandon the only hope that they have, a hope that they were raised in.
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All because they don't count their blessings, the blessings which are meant to lead them to repentance.
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And that's what Paul says in Romans 2, 4, isn't it? Or do you despise the riches of His goodness? Not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?
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If Esau could have just counted his blessings, taken a step back in his life and witnessed the goodness of God, he ought to have been led to repentance.
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God had established the importance of being in the line chosen to inherit the promise of salvation.
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Out of the whole known world, there's this laser beam of a lineage leading to Christ and Esau was the direct recipient on the face of it of all that God was bringing through Abraham and Isaac, but he despised it.
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To possess this divine birthright, to be part of the lineage of the chosen seed would be the greatest blessing available to the world at this time.
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But to Esau's mind and to Esau's affection, it was something worthless. And so Esau did not count his blessings, but rather he despised the riches.
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He despised the riches of God's goodness. He was not led to repentance. When I was looking at Esau in Hebrews, you know,
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Esau only appears in a few places in the New Testament. And of course, Hebrews 12 is a well -known passage.
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What I did not know was that Esau is also mentioned in Hebrews 11.
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Not for his own sake, but for the sake of his father, Isaac. And it struck me. This is
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Hebrews 11 20. Remember, Hebrews 11 is the gallery of the faith. By faith, by faith, by faith.
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Here we have, by faith, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come.
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By faith, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come.
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Esau was in this home hearing all of these things all of the time. Esau had the promise of God rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed and celebrated and celebrated and celebrated by everyone around him, by his grandfather, by the other relatives within the household, the children of Keturah, by Isaac and all the household servants.
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When they went to the altar and the testimonies of God were being revealed, he knew the word of God through his grandfather, who up until the age of 15 would take
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Esau upon his lap and say, I want to tell you again what happened to me when God called me out of Ur of the
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Chaldeans. Oh, Esau, walk with the Lord God Almighty. He knew the testimonies of what
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God had done throughout his family. He knew of the miraculous birth. His own father told him of how
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Abraham had laid him on the altar and the angel stopped the knife from plunging him.
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God is with this family, Esau. God has done miraculous things. God has changed our lives.
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He's the God of the whole world and the world is going to be our inheritance. Esau, my firstborn, you're going to bless the nations of the world.
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Esau, you, you are going to be a blessing to every human being in the world. The world, Esau, had company with those who were walking closely with God, but when his hardened, cynical, worldly heart met with some immediate earthly desire, he despised the riches of God's goodness.
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Why would I live like this? Why would I dwell in tents? Why would I live in weakness? I'm not going to lay down my life to stay in a land that doesn't belong to me.
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What am I actually inheriting but a waste, a waste of a life? I'm a mighty man.
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I'm a go -getter. I can build and go and do. I want to make something of myself. I don't want to take up the family trade of being a goat herder in the desert and living out long years.
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I'm content to carve out my own way in life and if I'm ready to come back, then
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I'll come back. I'll come back into the land and maybe then I'll worship Yahweh with the rest, but for now,
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I'm going my own way. And so it is with the Esau today. So it is with you if you have a hardened heart, a cynical heart to the things of God.
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Week by week, if not day by day, you have the promises rehearsed and rehearsed and celebrated by those around you.
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You know the Word through perhaps your parents, maybe even your grandparents, through your brothers and sisters here.
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You know the testimonies of what God has done for so many people here, testimonies of life -changing works of God's grace.
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You keep company with those who are walking with God, but when your hardened, cynical heart meets with earthly desire, you despise the riches of God's goodness to you.
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You despise it. Why would I live like this, you say?
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Why would I live against the way of the world? Why would I make such difficult sacrifices to being accepted in this life and having a good life, a successful life?
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Maybe if I do that, I'll be of better value. I'll be able to do great things for God, and I'll come back and I'll settle down,
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I'll find my own way, but I'm not going to lay my life down to follow the pattern that my parents are.
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I'm not going to be living like them. I'm not going to welcome the hardship and the difficulty into my home.
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When I'm ready, I can always come back. Later on, after I've done and made my way and pursued things, then
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I'll come back and maybe then I'll call upon the name of the Lord. But you despise the riches and you don't know that they're meant to lead you to repentance.
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And so fifth and last, don't imitate Esau. Do not imitate
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Esau. Do not despise your birthright, because as we go on to read in Hebrews when he finally wanted the blessing, when he was finally actually seeking the blessing, it was too late.
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We read, you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected.
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He found no place for repentance, even though he diligently sought it with tears.
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Just because Esau sought it with tears does not mean he was sincere. It doesn't even mean he had genuine remorse, because we read he found no place for repentance.
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In other words, we have sort of a commentary here. He had worldly sorrow. He did not have godly sorrow.
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He bitterly regretted, perhaps, his decision because of the consequences of his decision, but he did not repent.
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He did not lower himself before God. He only wept over the consequences of what he was forfeiting.
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In other words, Esau wanted God's blessing, but he did not want
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God, because he goes back to Edom and he marries pagan women, and there's boys and girls that will grow up because of the patterns they've seen, and they think because they've been able to so carefully and manipulatively straddle seeming like a
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Christian while having nothing like a Christian life, they think that somehow they can always keep that door cracked open for them to come back to, that they always have some level of control.
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It's rare, admittedly rare, that anyone would have this kind of control over their sin. I know when
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I'm getting in the water that's too hot. I'll be able to pull myself back if I'm really going too deep.
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Don't worry about me. I've always had this kind of sense and ability. What they want is
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God's blessing. Oh, I want to have a happy home and children. I want these things that God is calling a blessing, but I'm going to do it my own way.
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In other words, I want God's blessing, but I don't want God, and those same boys and girls, when they become men and women like Esau, they'll only ever be sorry for the consequences of their sin, not for the sin itself, and so Christians, if this is a warning to us, what must we do?
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We must ask God to break our hearts with sorrow for sin, if we lack sorrow for our sin.
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God, I don't want to be like Esau. I don't want to despise the riches of your goodness toward me, and Lord, if I'm feeling like my sin is something slight and easily forgiven, break my heart with sorrow for it.
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As the Puritans would say, help me repent of my repentance. When you go forward in Genesis 27, you see
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Isaac explaining to Esau that the blessing was not given to Jacob. What can I do for you, my son?
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We read there that Esau desperately begs, have you but one blessing, Father? Bless me also, bless me also, and we read
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Esau lifted his voice and wept, and it's just this image of that rejection, isn't it?
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It's an image, an echo of that last day for anyone who's like Esau here this morning, that when they finally come to give account, they'll raise up their voice and they'll weep and they'll say, bless me, have you no other blessing?
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Bless me. Do not imitate Esau. Do not despise your birthright.
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Come you children, Psalm 34, listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Who is the man who desires life and loves many days that he may see good?
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Keep your tongue from evil, your lips from speaking deceit, depart from evil, do good, seek peace and pursue it.
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The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, his ears are open to their cry, but the face of the
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Lord is against those who do evil and he cuts off their remembrance from the earth.
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God's face is against Esau. Don't imitate
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Esau. Has God brought you some conviction, some insight into your sinful state before him?
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Are you looking at the psalm which opens up, as all the psalms do inevitably, the way of the wicked and the way of the righteous, wondering how you could possibly be considered righteous in his perfect sight?
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Look at the contrast. Psalm 34 doesn't leave you hanging. You say, I can't meet that bar,
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I can't do good, I can't pursue peace, I can't avoid these sinful ways that are harbored within me. How can
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I be counted righteous? How can Jacob be counted righteous? How can Jacob be considered the object of God's love?
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Look at this. The righteous cry out and the Lord hears and he delivers them out of all of their troubles.
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The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart. He saves those who have a contrite spirit.
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We don't detect any of that with Esau. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the
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Lord delivers him out of them all. The Lord redeems the soul of his servants and none of those who trust in him shall be condemned.
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So what do you do that you may be counted righteous, that you may be like Jacob and value that which is valuable and seek after God's way even as he sanctifies you from the sin?
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What do you do? You cry out to him. Why? The righteous cry out. Those who cry out are those who go home justified.
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Those who beat their breasts and say, God, be merciful to me, a sinner, are those who go home justified.
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Do you have no sorrow in your heart, your cynical hardened heart, meeting your earthly desires, a sorrow over God's goodness to you and his patience with you and his forbearance which he will not show forever?
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Do you think you can come back? We learn with Esau it's always too late for those who think they can come back.
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Today is the day of salvation, is the constant testimony of scripture.
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Do not delay is the call of God. Do not imitate
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Esau is the warning of our passage. Do not despise your birthright.
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Brothers and sisters, do not despise your birthright, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
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Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word.
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We thank you for your faithful warnings. We pray you would break our hearts with sorrow for our sin that like the righteous we may cry out to you and be delivered from all of our troubles, that you would create a pure way within us,
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Lord, a way that abstains from deceit and speaking evil, a way that pursues peace and performs righteousness, that we would be as the
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Savior that we cry out to, the Savior who covers us with his own strong body from the cross to make us righteous as he is righteous, who removes every warp and blemish from our deceitful manipulative scheming lives, who first put in us a desire for what is truly valuable when thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come.
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Give us grace, Lord, as we sang earlier, that you may truly be enthroned in our hearts. Dethrone the sin which so easily entangles us.
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Help us slay our darling sins. Slay the Goliath which gives the Philistines within our lives so much more force.
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Let us remember that we serve the Almighty King whose power knows no end. Constrain that which is wayward within us,
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Lord, we pray. Bring us to repentance. If there's any in this room,
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Lord, that have that hardened cynical heart of Esau, awaken them, alert them,
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Lord. Give them great despair until they're brought near to comfort in Christ the