We are given an example of the heart of apostasy in the Old Testament character Esau. We observe his carnality, his contempt, and his consequences from the Old Testament narrative. They serve as a warning to us. An exposition of Hebrews 12:16-17.
Sermon Transcript
We are provided a number of examples in Scripture, some of them exemplary examples of men and women who were above reproach in their lives. Some examples are rather questionable where you kind of wonder, Where were they at spiritually? What exactly became of this person? And some of them are just examples of utter corruption and depravity and evil in every way.
Good examples would include men like Joseph, of whom very little ill is said at all in the record. Some people would even argue that the revealing of his dreams to his brothers was not in itself anything sinful or prideful. And if you rule that out, then there’s virtually nothing said of Joseph that would make you think that he had any problems or faults at all. His record is almost without blemish. Then, of course, there’s Moses, and Paul and Peter and John in the New Testament. Jonathan—Old Testament—Jonathan. Those are men that are noble and admirable. Then you have—and that’s not to say that they’re without sin, by the way. They obviously are sinners, but it’s to say that their record is virtually unblemished in terms of major marks against them. David, if it were not for the sin with Bathsheba and the killing of Uriah, which admittedly is quite an ugly mark on his otherwise prestigious resume, David was a godly man, a man after God’s own heart.
Then there are questionable examples in Scripture. Men like Samson. What do you do with Samson? He’s an intriguing character, isn’t he? Was Samson saved or not, do you think? Think he was? I wouldn’t have wanted to be handcuffed to him when he died. I’m not sure. And Solomon is the same. Now early Solomon is different than later Solomon. Early Solomon is good Solomon. Later Solomon is bad Solomon. When Solomon dies at the end of his life, did he die in faith as a man of God, justified, or did he not? If you follow the record of Ecclesiastes, you see at the end of Ecclesiastes, which was written toward the end of Solomon’s life—you get that commendation, “Live and fear God, and this is the whole duty of man,” and his commendation to remember God in the days of your youth. Well, is that Solomon just saying, “Look, I’ve rolled the dice and I’ve done everything I can to sort of find the best way to live, and here’s what I think is probably the best way to live”? Whether Solomon really longed for and loved that advice or not is a matter of questionable record. I don’t know.
Jepthah? What about Jepthah? Balaam? Everything about Balaam that you see in Scripture is bad, and yet he was a man who’s credited as being a prophet and spoke the word of God. And these are kind of questionable examples.
And then there are men who are just outright evil, men like Pilate and Caiaphas and Judas, and then Judas’s Old Testament counterpart, Esau. Esau is Judas’s Old Testament counterpart. Esau is a man that is held forth to us as an example in every bad way. Nothing good is said about him. And he actually is mentioned here in this introduction to the final warning passage in Hebrews 12 in verses 15–17. Let’s read these verses together.
15 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;
16 that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal.
17 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. (NASB)
Notice that Esau is mentioned in a context that speaks of falling short of the grace of God. That describes an apostate. He is mentioned here in the introduction to this final warning passage in Hebrews. He is, in fact, an example of an apostate. He’s also listed right after the bitter person or the root of bitterness that springs up and defiles many people; he’s mentioned in that context. He is an example of an apostate, one whose mind, affections, whose loves, whose perspective is entirely carnal, entirely fleshly, entirely of this world. That is Esau.
Now the last time we were together we looked at verse 15 and we saw there that there is an exhortation to us to guard against apostasy in our own midst. And we noticed there the essence of apostasy in verse 15—that is, coming short of the grace of God; that describes the essence of what apostasy is. Then we saw there the effect of apostasy: it is a bitter root that springs up and defiles many.
And now we come to the example of apostasy, which is Esau, in verses 16–17. Esau’s actions and his significance were presumably well-known to the original readers of this Epistle. But they’re probably less known to you and I, at least some of us who are here. They’re probably well-known to many of you, but I could assume that there are some people here who would wonder, OK, who is Esau and why is he held forth as an example of an apostate? Why does Scripture regard him as an immoral and godless person? What justifies that?
So here’s what we’re going to do over the course of the next couple of weeks. Today we’re going to observe here in this passage, just briefly in verses 16–17, three things that define or describe Esau. We’re going to notice them here and then we’re going to go back to the account of Jacob and Esau in the book of Genesis and we’re going to do a kind of a biographical sketch of Esau.
Now we did something similar to this back in Hebrews 11 with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But now we get to sort of take a bit of a rabbit trail, as it were. And we’re going to talk about Esau and how different he was from both Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob, his brother. And then with that background, we’re going to observe when we get back to Genesis the three things that we’re going to note here in Hebrews 12. Then with that background, we will come back next time into Hebrews 12 and we’ll take a look at those three things about Esau.
First of all, here’s our outline. If we were going to get to the outline today, this would be it, but this is your outline for like maybe next week. So the rest of this is just going to be a biographical introduction to the person of Esau. First, we notice Esau’s carnality. Look at verse 16: “That there be no immoral or godless person like Esau.” Immoral and godless, driven by his lust, driven by his flesh, a man of sight, a man of sensuality, that is Esau, a carnal person.
Second, we’ll notice Esau’s contempt. That is, he despised his birthright. That’s also in verse 16: “[He] sold his own birthright for a single meal.” His carnality and his contempt for God’s promises, they come together to create this action whereby he sold his entire birthright for a mere meal.
And then third, we’ll notice the consequences in verse 17: “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.” His rejection by God for his act of selling his birthright, by the way, brings up two other related theological issues that we will address at some point in connection with Esau in the next several weeks. One, God’s sovereignty in the whole affair because God said of Jacob and Esau, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Rom. 9:13). This describes His sovereignty over this because God said to Rebekah, “The older will serve the younger” (Rom. 9:12). So God obviously chose Jacob, as Paul says in Romans 9, before either of them had done anything good or evil. And so how is it that God is sovereign and yet the sins of both of these men play out in their lives to accomplish God’s purposes? That is the joining of the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. So that’s one thing.
The second thing is that very—what some people regard as difficult—statement (I don’t regard it as all that difficult) that you find in the book of Malachi and Romans 9: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Rom. 9:13). That’s not his uncle saying that of him. That is not a cousin saying that of him or an enemy. That is God, who says of Jacob and Esau, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” That’s mentioned in the book of Malachi and it’s repeated in the New Testament in Romans 9. So we’re going to wrestle through that, at least in some regard, regarding these two men.
So his carnality, which is his character, his contempt, which is his action (character always expresses itself in actions), and then the consequences of that, which was Esau’s destiny. Now keep that in your mind and we will return here at some point.
Turn back now, please, to Genesis 25. Once you land there, I’m going to give you a little bit of a background and some context here. We covered many of these events when we went through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph in Hebrews 11. And we looked at how the order of those patriarchs is significant. We looked at their lives and the things that were in their lives that the author of Hebrews points to as evidences of the kind of faith he commends in Hebrews 11. We looked at the example of those four men.
So let me offer a little bit of background. If you were to turn back (and don’t do this) to Genesis 12, you’ll see that when Abraham comes on the scene God promised him a son and made a covenant with Abraham. Abraham at that point was somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy-five years old. Ishmael was Abraham’s attempt to fulfill that promise through a handmaid because Abraham had the promise that God had given him of giving him that land in which he was to sojourn, descendants, a lineage, as well as one seed, one through whom all of the nations of the world would be blessed. That was what God promised to Abraham. So Abraham was eighty-six when he tried to fulfill the promises of God in his own way by taking his wife’s handmaid as a wife, a concubine, and having a son through her; that was Ishmael. He was eighty-six then. But then Abraham was promised again—after multiple other reiterations of this promise—Abraham was promised a son at the age of ninety-nine. And finally his son Isaac, the son of promise, was born to Abraham when he was one hundred years old. And Abraham’s wife Sarah, who had been barren up till then, was ninety at the time that Isaac was born.
Now, in case you are new here and you’re wondering, “Does Jim take all of the ages in Scripture as literal, like Methuselah is 969, Abraham is 100, Sarah is 90 when Isaac was born?” the answer to that is yes because those ages pose no problem at all for somebody who holds to a young earth creationist viewpoint as I do and takes Scripture in the sense in which it is. It fits within a Christian context and a Christian theology. And when we think of Abraham being 100 years old, don’t think of somebody that you know that is 100 years old and think, OK, Abraham was that old, and then he lived another 75 years after that, so what must he have looked like and walked like and talked like when he was 175 years old? Ages were not calculated in like dog years or cat years back then, so that’s not how they counted them, but the aging process was different in the early years of creation, and it sped up after the flood. So, yes, Abraham at 175 years old would probably be like me at 80 or 90. Abraham at 100 would be like me today at 50 because it was about half, or double for him. Now, before that, it was different. So, yes, I take these numbers as actual numbers.
So Abraham lived then to be 175 years old. Now, if Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born and he lived to be 175—homeschool kids, help out your parents who went to public school with this one—that means that when Abraham died at 175, Isaac was how old? Seventy-five. We find out later on in the text that when Isaac was 60, that is when his sons Jacob and Esau were born to him. If Jacob and Esau were born when Isaac was 60 and Abraham died when Isaac was 75, then Jacob and Esau would have lived how many years with their grandparents? Fifteen years. And we have every right to presume that Jacob and Esau would have grown up in the same tribe, in the same neighborhood. They would have been very familiar with Abraham. So Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and Esau, they would have lived together for at least fifteen years.
Now, Isaac was the son of promise, not Ishmael, who was Abraham’s firstborn. God’s choice was for Abraham’s lineage to continue through Isaac, and all of the blessings of the covenant and the blessings promised to Abraham, they would continue through Isaac and not through Ishmael, which included the land blessings, the physical blessings, material blessings, as well as the spiritual blessings.
Now, Isaac was 37 years old when his mother Sarah died, and he took a wife three years later at the age of 40. And at the age of 60 is when Rebekah, his wife, had Jacob and Esau. I’m hoping I’m keeping all of the numbers correct, as well as the timeline and the names. So now, Genesis 25:19:
19 Now these are the records of the generations of Isaac, Abraham’s son: Abraham became the father of Isaac;
20 and Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, the sister of Laban the Aramean, to be his wife.
21 Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord answered him and Rebekah his wife conceived. (Gen 25:19–21 NASB)
And again, he was sixty when this happened. So they’ve been married for twenty years, obviously trying to have children. She was barren, unable to conceive. So Isaac begins to pray to the Lord for a child, for his wife to conceive. Why would Isaac be praying for that? Isaac would be praying for that because he knew that the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant, everything God promised to Abraham, would be given to him. And if he has no child, nobody to whom to give those blessings and to pass those things on to, then the promise of God would fail. But Isaac was convinced that God would keep His word, and so he is here praying in accordance with God’s word, “I know that there has to be somebody who comes from my loins. I am the child of promise, and therefore I must be able to have children at some point.” His wife is barren, so he begins to pray for a child in order for God to fulfill His word.
Verses 22–23: “But the children struggled together within her; and she said, ‘If it is so, why then am I this way?’ So she went to inquire of the Lord. The Lord said to her, ‘Two nations are in your womb; and two peoples will be separated from your body; and one people shall be stronger than the other; and the older shall serve the younger.’” She was going to have twins, and these two twins would be the heads of two different nations. Esau became the father of the Edomites in Scripture. Jacob became the father of the Israelites. His name is changed to Israel later in the record, and he becomes the father of those twelve sons who become the twelve tribes of Israel.
Now Rebekah could not foresee how this pregnancy was going to come about. So she inquired of the Lord and the Lord revealed that she was having twins and that in these two twins something would happen which would be unexpected and out of the ordinary, namely, that the older would end up serving the younger. Now, this is the opposite of what would have been expected in that culture. In that culture, what would have been expected was that the one who was born first would end up receiving the inheritance and the blessings and the family lineage and all that encompassed that, and then that anybody else born after him, the younger, would end up serving and being part of that family by serving the older. But here the Lord reveals it’s going to be the opposite. The older one is going to serve the younger one.
Verse 24:
24 When her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.
25 Now the first came forth red, all over like a hairy garment; and they named him Esau.
26 Afterward his brother came forth with his hand holding on to Esau’s heel, so his name was called Jacob [which means a trickster, a tripper, one who supplants or trips somebody else]; and Isaac was sixty years old when she gave birth to them. (Gen. 25:24–26 NASB)
Now, this is the birth order: Esau first and then Jacob. But God had said that the older one would serve the younger. In other words, in terms of the purposes and promises of God, this birth order would be reversed, and it would actually be the older that would serve the younger instead of the younger that would serve the older. Now, this structure of the older one receiving the inheritance and the promises and the blessings and everything, that was known as primogeniture, primo meaning first and genitura, a Latin word, meaning a person’s birth or referring to a person’s birth. This was the practice that was customary in ancient cultures. It was almost universally practiced at the time. And in fact there are places today and cultures today where this is still what is practiced, and that is that the firstborn son would receive the entire estate of what was handed down to him and everybody else that was born into that family would then become servants or contributors to that household. And this estate then would belong in the sole possession of the firstborn son.
Now, if you’re a firstborn child here today, you’re thinking to yourself, we need to get back to the Bible. Why have we ever departed from God’s law and God’s Word and such sound economic principles? If you’re not a firstborn child here today, then you’re thinking to yourself, whew, I’m glad we got rid of that practice and we don’t do that in our culture.
But observe how much different this is than the way we practice it today. And there’s a case to be made that this is a superior way of doing this. Not that I’m going to do this with my kids, but there is a case to be made that this is superior to what we do today. What we do today is we take an inheritance or an estate and we give half to the government because of roads or something. And then the other half we distribute equally amongst all the children and the grandchildren so that everybody gets enough to know that they got something but nobody gets enough to do anything with. In an ancient culture, the firstborn child could receive the training and the discipline and everything that was necessary so that when the entire family business, the entire family estate, was transferred into his possession, he could handle it well. And all of his siblings would also contribute to that, and that wealth could be passed on from generation to generation to generation and only increase in size and expanse over time. See how superior that is? We just take it now and we just divvy it up, everybody gets a little bit, and then it’s gone. Not in those ancient cultures.
Which is why Abraham, who was a very wealthy man, would have handed down his entire state to Isaac, who himself was a very wealthy man. So when he gets ready to give this on to his sons, the firstborn, Esau, would naturally get this. But God had said the older is going to serve the younger. This is going to be flipped on its head with these two boys.
This was a practice regulated by the Mosaic law. I’m going to give you Deuteronomy 21:15–17. Here’s how the law of Moses regulated this practice.
15 If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him sons, if the firstborn son belongs to the unloved,
16 then it shall be in the day he wills what he has to his sons, he cannot make the son of the loved the firstborn before the son of the unloved, who is the firstborn.
17 But he shall acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the unloved, by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the beginning of his strength; to him belongs the right of the firstborn. (NASB)
In other words, if a man has two wives—one of them he really prefers, one of them not so much—but the one that he prefers not so much has the firstborn son, he can’t take the child of the woman that he loves and give him the inheritance and the rights of the firstborn. He has to honor the birth order and give it to the son of the woman whom he doesn’t love as much because that is his firstborn son.
Now, this passage in Deuteronomy does not prescribe polygamy, it doesn’t endorse polygamy, it doesn’t excuse polygamy. It regulates the law of transferring inheritances in a polygamous situation; it’s quite different. So the law provided for a way of passing on wealth from one generation to another.
In the case of Jacob and Esau, the birth order and the blessings would be flipped. Paul uses this as an illustration of God’s sovereignty in Romans 9, which we read at the beginning of the service: “Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac; for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad [listen], so that God’s purpose according to His choice would stand” (vv. 10–11). Before they had done anything good or bad, God chose Jacob, and that’s described in Romans 9, as well as Malachi 1:2. “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Rom. 9:13).
The purpose of God in choosing Jacob over Esau is secured in two events in Jacob’s life. Two events. And here they are. First, Esau sells his birthright to Jacob. Second, Jacob stole the blessing from Esau. These are two separate events. Esau sells the birthright to Jacob, and then second, Jacob steals the blessings from Esau. Those are the two events through which—and they happened years apart—those are the two events through which the predetermined plan and purpose of God in choosing Jacob over Esau would end up fleshing out in time and history to accomplish what God had predetermined should happen.
So let’s look at the first one. Esau sells his birthright. Genesis 25:27. Now, verse 26—where were we at? Yeah, that mentions Isaac being sixty years old when she gave birth to them. Verse 27. Yeah, I’ll catch up. I appreciate the help over here. That was good. Genesis 25:27: “When the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the field, but Jacob was a peaceful man, living in tents.”
Now, the exact age of the men when what is about to unfold happens is a bit hard to determine. Obviously, the men are grown by this point. Later in chapter 26, verse 34, Esau is forty years old when he takes wives, so we can presume that this exchange over the birthright happened when they were probably in their twenties, maybe their early thirties. In other words, these are not teenage boys sitting out in the sandbox playing with their Tonka toys, bartering over things that they know nothing about, where one makes a flippant comment—“Yeah, I promise I’ll give you this if you give me that.” It wasn’t that at all. These were grown men who understood everything concerning the implications of what is about to go down here.
Verse 28:
28 Now Isaac loved Esau, because he had a taste for game, but Rebekah loved Jacob. [Now, obviously, this is dysfunction in the family to some degree here and we talked about that earlier in Hebrews 11.]
29 When Jacob had cooked stew, Esau came in from the field and he was famished;
30 and Esau said to Jacob, “Please let me have a swallow of that red stuff there, for I am famished.” Therefore his name was called Edom [which means “red”].
31 But Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.”
32 Esau said, “Behold, I am about to die; so of what use then is the birthright to me?” (Gen. 25:28–31 NASB)
Now Jacob wanted the birthright. Before we go on to the rest of this exchange, what was the birthright? The birthright for Jacob and Esau—listen carefully—was not just the entire wealth of the family, which is Abraham and Isaac and everything that had been accumulated for multiple generations. It wasn’t just that; it was more than that. For these two brothers, the birthright included the promises given to Abraham back in Genesis 12 that are reiterated in chapters 15 and 17. In fact, when we were in Hebrews 11, we spent two full Sundays just tracing the theme of what God promised to Abraham all the way through the book of Genesis. Two full Sundays, all the way to the end of Genesis 50, with Joseph in Egypt and the promises that he made his brothers make concerning his bones. This promise to Abraham of a land, a nation of descendants after him, as well as all of the physical, material, spiritual blessings, all of that is incorporated in that. It is not just a promise of physical blessings but also the promise of spiritual blessings that is at stake with Jacob and Esau. So everything that belonged to Abraham physically, materially, yes, but all of the promises that concern eternity that belonged to Abraham are also to be handed off to either Jacob or Esau. That is what is at stake.
In fact, if you look up at verse 5 of chapter 25 you see that Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac. So now Isaac possesses everything that Abraham had, including the promises, including the covenant. It’s all coming through Isaac and will go to either Jacob or it will go to Esau. God’s purpose was that the older would serve the younger. In other words, God’s purpose was that Jacob would receive all of those blessings.
The Abrahamic covenant was physical blessings, but it was also immense spiritual blessings, which were far more important. In fact, the crowning jewel of the Abrahamic covenant, the crowning jewel of what God promised to Abraham, was not physical blessings and it wasn’t the land and it wasn’t the nation. The crowning blessing of the Abrahamic covenant was God Himself. God promised Himself to Abraham. Genesis 15:1: “After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, ‘Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; your reward shall be very great.’” Some translations translate that, “I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.” What God promised to Abraham was Himself. He swore Himself to Abraham. That was the crowning jewel of the Abrahamic covenant.
Genesis 17:8: “I will give to you and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.” See, the land came with the promise that God would be their God, that they would be His people, and He would be their God, and they would worship Him, and He would bless them. And there would be this eternal relationship between God and Abraham’s descendants who were his descendants by faith. That was the promise. God promised Himself to Abraham, and it is that over which Esau is bartering, not just an earthly inheritance. It’s not just all the food in the cupboard and the animals and the servants. It’s God Himself who is leveraged by Esau for a bowl of soup. In the covenant, God Himself was the jewel of it, and this is what Esau is dealing with.
Now back to the event. Genesis 25:29:
29 When Jacob had cooked stew, Esau came in from the field and he was famished;
30 and Esau said to Jacob, “Please let me have a swallow of that red stuff there, for I am famished.” Therefore his name was called Edom.
31 But Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.”
32 Esau said, “Behold, I am about to die; so of what use then is the birthright to me?” (Gen. 25:29–32 NASB)
Now, Esau was hungry and he wanted to satiate his hunger. Jacob had prepared a meal.
Whether he was expecting Esau or not, we don’t know, but Jacob had prepared a meal. And I want you to notice two things here in this exchange between Jacob and Esau. Here’s something that was key. Esau was hungry, and the Scripture testifies to that using the word famished twice. So he was hungry. He wasn’t just hungry, he was really hungry. He’s famished, the passage says. But here’s the key. Was this the very last meal that Esau was ever going to eat? No.
You’ve probably felt hunger. Maybe there’s a couple of people here, but I would venture to say that most of us here have not felt hunger in a way where we thought, “If I don’t eat in the next twenty minutes, I genuinely will die.” We may have felt that we would die, but we could wait till the next meal. Right? And here’s the thing. This was a wealthy family. You’re never going to convince me that this was the only food within walking distance. They had servants, they had animals, they had other people around them. This is probably a tribe of people, a tribe of people attached to Abraham and his descendants, probably living in a community. He probably could have walked next door and got food for nothing. But he doesn’t do that.
Instead, he is famished. And look how he describes it here. His description: “Let me have a swallow of that red stuff there, for I am famished.” He saw it and he craved it. Esau felt in that moment that he had to have not just food, he had to have that food. “Just that red stuff there—I want a swallow of that. I’m famished. Give me something to eat.” It was pleasing to the eye of Esau. He saw what he wanted and he desired it and he feels a craving and a lust over it, a hunger for it, and he yields control of himself, his faculties, and his mind to that lust, to that craving, and ends up trading for that his entire birthright.
This is why Scripture in Hebrews 12 refers to him as an immoral and godless man. Because this is the heart of immorality. A craving that you have in the moment that you say, “I am willing to trade anything at this moment for that thing.” And that lust and that craving will make you do the most foolish and irrational things imaginable. And Esau is a man who was given over to those lusts, yielded everything rational, everything logical, everything sensible to satisfy, to satiate, that craving, that desire, that lust. In that one moment, it was all about food. I’m convinced that he could have gotten food nearly anywhere else around him within walking distance. And I’m convinced that he was not going to die if he didn’t have a swallow of that red stuff. But this is the trick with lust. It convinces you that you will die if you don’t satiate that desire. That’s a lie; it’s always a lie. Every single time it is a lie. If you don’t satiate that desire in the moment, you will not die.
And this is what Esau says: “I am about to die; so of what use then is the birthright to me?” That is peak drama queen language if there ever was any in Scripture. “I am about to die.” Was he about to die? He wasn’t about to die, but his lusts convinced him in that moment that if he didn’t satiate them, he would die. That is a lie then; it’s always a lie. Whenever we believe it, it’s always a lie.
If you’ve had young kids then you know what it’s like to hear this same plea at 2:30 in the afternoon. “Son, we’re going to eat dinner at 5:30. You can wait three hours.” “No, if I don’t have something to eat right now, I’m going to die.” And so every day of their life is trying to convince them that they can go three hours without food. That, no, you’re not going to die. We are going to eat just like we do every evening at that time. You’ll get another meal just like you did yesterday, the day before, and the day before that. You can go three more hours without food. But no, in the moment, for people who can only think about what they feel and what they desire in the moment, in the moment they can think about nothing else but satiating that desire. That is exactly where Esau was. If I can’t have this right now, I will perish. And he wouldn’t have perished.
Fleshly lusts become merciless tyrants. Merciless tyrants. They cajole us, they threaten us, they lie to us, and then they enslave us, and they make men and women willing to do the most irrational and foolish things for a moment’s gratification. This is why Paul says in Romans 6 you yield your members as instruments of righteousness to life or of sin, which leads to death. You become the slave of the one you obey. Obey righteousness, you become a slave of righteousness. Obey sin, you become a slave of sin. And the more you yield yourself in obedience to those two things, the more enslaved you become to them.
Esau was a man who was given to yielding himself to every lust and craven desire imaginable over the course of his whole life, so that when the desire for food struck, he felt like he was going to die if he didn’t get some food. Now, he wasn’t about to die, but look at how nonsensical his thinking is. If he was truly about to die—let’s grant the premise of his argument for just a moment—but if Esau was truly about to die without that food, listen, that is when the birthright would mean the most, right? It is at that moment you would not want to exchange the birthright for food. Because if you are about to die, then you know that one of two things is going to happen. Either you are going to die and you are going to get all of the spiritual blessings that are promised to Abraham and his descendants, in which case, if you’re about to die, you don’t want to sacrifice that for a bowl of soup, or God is going to so preserve your life so as to fulfill His word by giving you descendants. And at this point, Esau is not even married. So this birthright should have been of utmost importance to him because he should have seen in the birthright God’s promise to give him everything. And if that is what God is promising to give through that birthright, then that’s when he wouldn’t want to have gotten rid of it at all.
But the fact that he is willing to trade it for a bowl of soup demonstrates that in Esau’s mind—listen, this is key—all he could see were the physical blessings of the promise. In other words, Esau is thinking this: “I feel like I am about to die if I don’t have this soup. Jacob wants to offer me a bowl of soup for my birthright. If I deny the bowl of soup, then I’m going to die and everything that Abraham gave to my father Isaac, all of that is going to be given to Jacob anyway, in which case, all of the blessings promised to me mean nothing to me.” How could he say that? Only if he was thinking solely in terms of the material aspects of the blessings, just the material inheritance. What good does an inheritance of a million dollars do if you’re dead, right?
But what good does eternity and the land and Heaven and God do you if you’re dead? Everything. But all Esau could see was the physical blessings promised. And he realized, or at least he reasoned to himself, “I’m willing to exchange all of that for this bowl of soup because if I die, what good does all the money in the world do me?” That is his carnality. This is why Hebrews 12:16 says, “[Let] there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal.” The word godless means common or worldly or profane. It describes someone with no room in their thinking for God, who leaves God out, whose reasoning and mental math does not include any spiritual verities at all, somebody who thinks only in terms of the moment, only in terms of the immediate. Esau was, in every sense of the word, carnal.
Look at Genesis 25:33: “And Jacob said, ‘First swear to me’; so he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob.” I would love to have been a fly on the wall inside the tent when that happened, when Esau came in and he was hungry. And Jacob, did he prepare it thinking Esau was going to be there? Was he setting a trap? We don’t know. It doesn’t say. But he has a bowl of soup, and Esau says, “I’d like a bowl of soup.” And Jacob says, “All right, sell me your birthright.” When Esau said, “All right,” did Jacob go, “Whoa, whoa, wait. What did you say? Seriously?”
This was not a rash decision by Esau because he realized once Jacob said, “OK, let’s swear to it first. Here’s my piece of paper. ‘I, Esau, devote to Jacob, hereafter called the one who receives this’ (and all the legal language all the way down)—sign here at the bottom. Let’s call in a notary and have them notarize this.” What Esau did was not a rash reasoning on his part. It was, in fact, a determinate, well thought through, intentional act because when Jacob said, “All right, swear to it,” Esau swore to it. So it wasn’t just words that slipped out that Esau then had to live with. It was a decision that Esau made. He did the math in his mind and said, “I’m willing to exchange everything for a bowl of soup.”
So verse 34: “Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew; and he ate and drank, and rose and went on his way.” That next line, verse 34, is one of the most stunning sentences in all of the book of Genesis: “Thus Esau despised his birthright.” That’s his contempt. His carnality—“I will trade you anything for a bowl of soup.” His contempt—he despised his birthright. In other words, this was not an exchange that was just haphazardly worked out through trickery and sleight of hand and deceptive language by Jacob. This was in fact an expression of Esau’s contempt for the promises of God as well as the God of the promises. You see, Scripture says “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Rom. 9:13). Esau hated God. Now, you can understand why God would say that regarding Esau? I can. He hated everything God loved. He hated everything God valued. He hated everything of any worth or significance. He is a profane and reprobate man in every sense of the term. Thus he despised his birthright.
And listen, if you were somebody reading Genesis for the very first time and you saw what God promised Abraham back in chapter 12 and reiterated again in chapter 15 and expanded then in chapter 17 and you’ve been following this whole thing, you think, “Man, what God has given to Abraham is literally everything.” And then he hands it off to Isaac, and Isaac gets all of that cherished possession. You think, “This is incredible.” Isaac’s going to give it to one of two of these boys, and it’s due to Esau. He’s next in line. Esau despised that birthright. You’d have to stop at the end of verse 34 and catch a breath at such a statement—“Thus Esau despised his birthright.”
And here is Esau’s contempt, and herein lies the lessons for us. Let me give you three of them. Number one, Esau showed contempt for the eternal and he preferred the present. He traded eternal blessings, eternal riches, eternal joys for the satiation of one desire in the moment. This is as immoral and profane in thinking and reasoning as it can possibly get. Esau said to himself, “I want that now. I will give anything for it. I have to have it now. I will trade anything to satiate this desire.” That was what was in the back of his mind. And here is the sad irony of the whole thing: Esau would be hungry again in a few hours. So it’s not even a lasting satisfaction because that satisfaction is not going to last, is it?
This is exactly what happens in the heart and the mind of everyone who is addicted to or looks at pornography. They think, “I have to have this now. I will satisfy this desire now.” They give in to it. They trade away spiritual and eternal things for temporary, present, now gratification. And how long does it take before the desires come back? You will never permanently satisfy that lust. Never. Never permanently satisfy that lust.
Notice how different Esau is than his grandfather, Abraham. Abraham is commended for his faith back in Hebrews 11:
8 When he was called, [he] obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.
9 By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise;
10 for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them. (Heb. 11:8–10, 16 NASB)
In other words, Abraham is commended for a faith that was able to see what he could not see with the naked eye. And so he lived by faith, looking forward to something he never realized. He believed that promise and he was not willing to trade anything for it, even the convenience and comfort of permanent dwellings in the land that he was promised. He wasn’t willing to trade anything for that promise.
How different is that than Esau? Abraham saw things you cannot see with the naked eye: a city, a future, a land, the fulfillment of a promise, resurrection, none of which can be seen with the naked eye. And Esau saw only things that can be seen with the naked eye. Abraham lived by faith and not by sight. Esau lived by sight and not by faith. And oh, how the mighty have fallen. This is the grandson of the great Abraham, a man whose faith is renowned, and Esau had no part in it.
Second, Esau showed contempt for the spiritual and desired the physical. He traded something of inestimable spiritual worth for a bowl of soup. The King James Version, back in Hebrews 12, says he sold his birthright for a piece of meat. But the word there is not translated “meat.” It doesn’t mean “meat.” It’s a word used for food or for eating.
So it wasn’t even meat. Now, there may have been some meat in the lentil soup that Esau got for this, but it’s not like it was a beef stew. It was lentil soup. It’s like one of the worst soups you can make. It’s not even a good soup! It’s not clam chowder, it’s not Midwest chowder. It’s nothing like that; it’s just lentil soup. Red lentil soup. That’s what you sold all that for, red lentil soup? Not even meat? A single bowl of that, not a buffet of smoked tri-tip, crab legs, shrimp scampi, ribs. Lentil soup. Phil Johnson, regarding this text, said, “That is pretty plain fare over which to barter away eternal blessings.” Same thing can be said about every time we give in to a craven desire. That’s pretty plain fare over which to barter away your eternal blessings.
Third, Esau showed contempt for what is valuable and desired the worthless, utterly worthless. God’s blessings, His favor, His presence, His Heaven, the land, the eternal dwellings, the resurrection to life, Esau bartered all of that away. He was a godless man who had no room in his mind for what was truly valuable. In fact, he had no spiritual eyes with which he could see the value and the promises that God had given to him. No ability to perceive that whatsoever.
And thus we see his carnality and his contempt, and they go together. Esau was a man driven by his earthly, sensual, fleshly appetites, despised real riches, and the person who that describes will trade away anything for the most temporary, worthless, and temporal things in this world. See to it that there be no one among you who is a godless and immoral person like Esau, who traded away everything for a bowl of soup. That’s the worst exchange in human history. Thus Esau despised his birthright. He is an immoral person who committed a short-sighted, immoral act. He did it deliberately, he did it intentionally, and his act was an expression of his contempt for the God of the covenant.
Now, we’re not going to get to the stealing of the blessing today, which was the second event. I told you there’s two events. The first is Esau sells the birthright. The second is Jacob steals the blessings. So we’ll get to that next time. Then we’ll go back to Hebrews 12.
Now what about Jacob? Is Jacob without any sin in this? He certainly is not. Couldn’t he just have given his brother a bowl of soup? Is there anybody here who was thinking that the whole time? Couldn’t he just have given his brother a bowl of soup? Wouldn’t that be the kind, gracious, and godly thing for Jacob to do, seeing Esau famished? And even if Esau is given to his lusts and he thinks, “I have to have this soup right now. Give me that bowl of soup. I’m willing to give anything for it,” couldn’t Jacob just have said, “Brother, look, you helped me out a couple of weeks ago when you helped me shear the sheep. I’ll give you a bowl of soup. It’s no big deal”? Couldn’t Jacob just have done that? Was Jacob scheming here? He was. Was Jacob in sin here? I think he was. I think Jacob was sinful in his intentions. He was sinful in his ploy to get this from Esau. And Esau was sinful in his despising of God and is willing to trade all of that for a bowl of soup. But God was working through the sin of both of these men to accomplish what He predetermined from before the foundation of the world. God is behind the scenes, orchestrating even their sinful choices and their sinful actions to accomplish something that is for the good of His people and for the glory of His name.
So we can acknowledge Jacob’s sin because the narrative here does not excuse it. It doesn’t commend Jacob’s actions. But whatever else we may say of Jacob, we can also say this: he valued the birthright, didn’t he? He valued the birthright. Was he a schemer, a trickster? Yes. Was he deceptive? You’ll see next time, yes, he was very deceptive. But he knew the value of the birthright. He knew what was promised by God to Abraham and to Isaac. And he knew he wanted that. We can say this of Jacob: he didn’t despise God. Is he a sinner? Yeah, he was a sinner. But he didn’t despise God. He didn’t despise the God who was promised to him in the birthright.
Now the apostate, which is the one that we’re talking about here in Hebrews 12—remember, Esau is mentioned in the context of warning about the presence of apostates in our midst—the apostate thinks little of what is promised in the gospel, and walks away from it for the temporary gratification of his lusts. When things are good and being outwardly attached to God’s people meets a need or scratches an itch or satisfies a desire, the apostate is willing to be among us and hang out with us and pretend to be one of us. But once something comes along that scratches a different itch and meets a different need and satisfies a different desire, they’re gone—for the first thing that comes trotting by that offers something better than what they think they get by being among God’s people. That’s the heart of apostasy. That is what Esau demonstrated; that is what we are to be on guard against. It is trading Christ and His gospel and every blessing that we are promised to satisfy temporary desires. That’s the heart of apostasy.
And listen, though every sin that we commit is not the sin of apostasy, every sin, however small or big it is, is in essence doing the exact same thing that Esau did. You and I are Esau. Every sin we commit is trading an eternal reward for the satiating and satisfaction of a temporary desire. That is what is behind every single sin. We make a transaction. I want this right now more than I want God. That is the heart of every transgression that we commit. And so every person in this room has been Esau at one point in your life, where you, in an act that is unwise, immoral, craven, and carnal in your thinking and in your desires, have traded something of eternal worth for something of temporary value, of worthless value, because that is what is at the heart of every sin. In order to fight against sin, we have to teach and train ourselves to see in God’s promises and in His provision the things that are of true value so that we do not exchange those for the committing of sin. We are called to fix our eyes on what is valuable.