To Encourage You

Hebrews 12:15-17 “See to it that no one . . . is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears.”

There are some inevitable tradeoffs in life.  We have to make choices between options, and those choices can have a great impact on our lives.  Jesus told us that “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other” (Matthew 6:24). There’s no middle ground, spiritually speaking, just as there is often no middle ground in the mundane choices of life.  And so, God has given us the example of Esau in the verses above.  It’s pointing to the following account from Genesis 25:29-34: “Once when Jacob was cooking stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was exhausted. And Esau said to Jacob, ‘Let me eat some of that red stew, for I am exhausted!’ (Therefore his name was called Edom.)Jacob said, ‘Sell me your birthright now.’ Esau said, ‘I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?’Jacob said, ‘Swear to me now.’ So he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.”

Notice that word “despised,” the same word that Jesus used in Matthew 6 above.  It’s a matter of making value judgments. Esau placed his highest value on temporal things. He, and those who are like him, see this life in terms of getting all they can get while they can get it.  It’s the opposite of short-term pain for long-term gain, but it’s an eternally fatal mistake.  Esau squandered his birthright as well as his eternity for a bowl of stew.  Judas sold his soul for thirty pieces of silver.  Many people today are choosing sexual and other “fleeting pleasures of sin,” as Hebrews 11: 25 puts it, in exchange for a life of following Christ and the eternal life that He promised.  Jesus warned of this mindset with the following words from Mark 8:36-37: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?”

It will be the greatest tragedy anyone ever faces to suddenly realize that all they’ve lived for will be gone in a moment, and in the process, they’ve squandered everything of eternal value, with absolutely no remedy.   “The path of life . . . fullness of joy. . . and pleasures forevermore” (Psalms 16:11) that could have been theirs if they had placed their faith in Christ, has been lost for all eternity.  Imagine the eternal woe of those who will realize that they could have lived for all eternity with the blessings that will be showered on those who dwell at God’s right hand.  But they traded it all for a trifle, like Esau did, for a single meal. 

May God keep us from following the path of Esau who deceived himself into thinking he knew what was best for himself as he sold his soul for a bowl of stew.