Selling Your Birthright For Stew

Flippant choices made from an ungrateful heart can yield profound consequences. This principle is clearly seen in Genesis 25.29-34, in an interaction between Esau and Jacob, the two grandsons of Abraham from his son, Isaac. One day, Esau came home from an exhausting hunting expedition. As he approached the family tent, he noticed his younger brother fixing a pot of red stew. Utterly famished, Esau asked Jacob to give him a bowl of the stew. Jacob promptly demanded his brother’s birthright (the right to lead their family) in exchange for the food. Esau, with barely a moment’s hesitation, sold his special inheritance for a single meal.

In Hebrews 12.16-17, Esau’s mistake is used to portray the foolishness of giving up a priceless blessing for something absurdly inferior. Exchanging our eternal inheritance with God for a cheap, temporary thrill is unholy and an appalling waste of precious life. From these two passages, we can identify a few points that prove helpful in our spiritual lives.

1) We must firmly anchor our commitment to holiness before great temptations arise.

Because of Esau’s ravenous hunger and physical exhaustion, he entered a vulnerable time, when it was difficult to think clearly or speak rationally (“I am about to die…”). In times of physical, emotional, or mental weakness, resisting the Devil depends on having cemented our spiritual course prior to temptation. That idea is echoed eloquently by Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte’s fictional heroine, when she confronted a moment of great testing: “I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad – as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times where there is no temptation.”

2) If we do not appreciate God’s plan for the world, we will casually give up our place in it.

We know that unappreciated things will inevitably leave our lives. If we do not care about an item of clothing, we will carelessly lose it, give it away to a relative, or donate it to Goodwill in a closet purge. Likewise, Esau’s poor choice was not merely the result of his ravenous hunger. He gave up his birthright primarily because he “despised” it (Genesis 25.34). In other words, he did not understand its value and easily lost it to his brother who did see its importance. In a similar way, if we fail to understand and appreciate the importance of godly unity, we will casually trade our harmonious relationships for bitter arguments and division (Hebrews 12.15). If we fail to understand the importance of sexual purity, we will fall to the world’s temptations of pornography or illicit sexual relationships (Hebrews 12.16).

Like Esau, we all will face spiritual choices that offer an exchange of the valuable for the worthless. Will we trade our eternity for momentary rushes of adrenaline or relief? Or will we stand firmly on the promises of God, no matter what situation presents itself?                                                                                                              Nathan