Let us read, in the following Scriptures, something concerning the birthright and our privileges, the position we have in the Lord.
Genesis 25:21–34. And Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord answered him and Rebekah his wife conceived. 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. And the Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb; and two peoples shall be separated from your body; and one people shall be stronger than the other; and the older shall serve the younger.”
When her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb. Now the first came forth red, all over like a hairy garment; and they named him Esau (meaning hairy). And afterward his brother came forth with his hand holding on to Esau’s heel, so his name was called Jacob; and Isaac was sixty years old when she gave birth to them.
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 Isaac loved Esau, because he had a taste for game; but Rebekah loved Jacob. And when Jacob had cooked stew, Esau came in from the field and he was famished; 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 (that means red). But Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.” And Esau said, “Behold, I am about to die; so what use then is the birthright to me?” And Jacob said, “First swear to me”; 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 on his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.
Now let us look to an account of this in the book of Hebrews.
Hebrews 12:12–17: Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Pursue after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.
It is the birthright that concerns us here. It is the privileges, the position that we have with the Lord.
In the passing scene, the present becomes so magnified in our mind that we usually cannot focus on anything else. Esau’s appetite overwhelmed him. That is the way with temptation. Temptation usually is a lack of proper focus; until it is the objective of the moment. The lust, the appetite, the hunger of the moment become everything. Nothing else means anything.
You may say, “Don’t you know what God promised you?” The promises of the Lord make no difference then; later, they may make a great deal of difference. Temptation results from a lack of focus.
Willpower is magnified a great deal as a restraint to temptation, and I am not so sure that it is. When temptation overtakes and overwhelms us, it is generally a lack of perspective. It is a lack of proper focus on the thing that is really important, so something looms up to be important to us when it really is not at all.
It is magnified out of proportion, and we see it out of context. It then becomes something that is very desirable in our eyes. That is the way temptation began in the Garden of Eden. They did not see the overall picture. The woman said she was deceived. How does deception come?
Deception came in Eden because Eve saw that the fruit, was something delightful, and suddenly everything else seemed as if it was of no consequence or importance. Deception comes not because we do not know the truth, but because suddenly one little facet is magnified to us until everything else is blurred and out of focus.
This is what happened to Esau. He was an immoral person. He was a fornicator. The King James version says, “Be not a fornicator as Esau” (Hebrews 12:16). The New American Standard version calls him an immoral person or godless person—godless, not in the sense that he did not believe in God, but godless in the sense that he did not really care about what the Lord wanted him to do.
Esau married of the Canaanites around him. Again this is an indication that Esau was more concerned about pacifying the lust of the flesh, than he was about doing the will of the Lord.
There was a great deal of difference between Esau and Jacob. Yet Jacob had many qualities in him you would not condone (to regard something that is considered immoral or wrong in a tolerant way.
Jacob could never really be trusted until God dealt with him so drastically that he was changed and became Israel, a prince of God.
Whatever could be said in criticism of Jacob, he did have this one thing: he never lost sight of the goal, never lost sight of the overall picture. The panoramic view was always before him.
The big picture was not before Esau. Esau succumbed to temptation because the thing of the moment loomed up out of proportion.
It never did to Jacob. Jacob faced it. He faced many things. He fell in love with a woman. He worked seven years for her and was given the wrong woman on the wedding night and had to work seven more years to get the right one. He had to have a large picture in mind to keep that perspective. He knew what he wanted; he knew what he was to have. He never lost sight of the whole thing, or the circumstance of the moment could have been very discouraging.
The situation could have been different. How else could this have been enacted without the same disastrous results? If a man is put through a time of discouragement, through a time of very great harassment and persecution, he can come to the place where he is ready to break. If he is looking at just the sufferings of the moment, he will break.
But if he is looking at the overall picture, he is able to draw from the past and the future and mingle it together with the present to make a picture which shows him the relevancy of what he is going through.
Jesus did this for us when He was facing the cross. He endured the cross, despising the shame, for the joy that was set before Him (Hebrews 12:2).
He was able to picture what it would be like to redeem us from our sins. Therefore, He was able to go through the thing for the moment. It did not loom up as something out of proportion for Him. The experience of the cross we probably never could fully imagine. We cannot imagine how it was when the Lord laid upon Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6).
What a tremendous thing! Every sin we have ever committed, everything we have ever done in violation against the Lord was laid upon Him as He hung there, on the nails, dying in the agony of it. The mockery, the shame was all part of it, It was unbelievable agony. But He endured the cross and despised the shame for the joy that was set before Him.
You must look constantly forward to the things that are coming. If you do not, in a weak moment you abandon the thing that God intends to do for you. You despise your birthright.
In the case of Esau, his birthright was in the future. It was not a thing that he could point to or enjoy at all. He was the first one of twins out of his mother’s womb, and the firstborn according to the strict laws. He was to receive everything. This custom occurred before the Law was given, but they did not violate the rights of the firstborn. Later it was incorporated into the laws of Moses.
The firstborn son could never be disinherited completely, not in the sense that a second one could come and take over his inheritance.
Yet Jacob, realizing that his brother had received the one thing he wanted, in a matter of seconds, was willing to lie or cheat to get it.
He deceived his own father to get it. Remember how he put the kidskins on his arms and went in to fool his old father to receive the blessing? He was willing to do anything to get it.
Afterward, Esau said, “I’ll kill him.” Jacob ran for his life, but he wanted the blessing. Finally he wrestled with the angel of the Lord, which is one of the ways our Lord appeared in the Old Testament.
Why did Jacob wrestle with the Lord? He wanted the blessing. He finally prevailed, but not because he had used the right method or right way.
He limped away gloriously defeated by the Lord in the wrestling match; that was the thing which determined the blessing he would have.
The difference between Jacob and Esau must be clearly understood because there will be many people in this generation who will go through the same thing.
It will be difficult to walk with God, and so the passing thing, the mess of pottage, will seem more important than anything else. But those who really want the blessing of the Lord, who really want to walk as the sons of God will not despise their birthright, the prophecies, nor the revelation of what God is going to bring in this time.
They will enter in respecting that, honoring it with all of their heart. The more we understand this, the more we will realize we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.
If we suffer with Him, we will also reign with Him (Romans 8:17). The suffering with Him means that we enter into the full measure of sufferings or requirements or deprivings of ourselves in order that we can inherit what God wants us to have. It is very important that we understand this.
In the Old Testament notice how many men were really heirs of God and had, in a sense, a birthright. Look at Abraham, walking with God. Hebrews talks about men who even refused deliverance from death to obtain a better resurrection (Hebrews 11:35).
Paul points out how Abraham walked with God. Abraham did not receive too much in this life besides the birth of Isaac and a few material things. But the Lord appeared to him and revealed Himself to him at the oaks of Mamre (Genesis 18:1). I believe that was our Lord. I believe that was what Jesus was referring to when He said, “Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.”
The Jews said, “You are not even fifty years old, and you saw Abraham?” He answered, “Before Abraham was, I Am,” referring back to the words for Jehovah (John 8:56–58). He was there as Jehovah and appeared to Abraham and walked with him.
Abraham had to walk with God patiently, going year after year just resting in the promises of the Lord. It must have been very difficult for him, and yet he did not throw away his birthright. He did come very close to it a few times, but that is the story of most people of faith.
You walk along with the Lord, and you have times that try your soul very much. The enemy does everything he can to jerk your focus off the long range of things and bring them down to the moment, until you forget the future and the past and you only concentrate on the present.
He tries to get you to focus on the present. One thing which really tests an individual is to suddenly be thrown into almost unbearable odds and difficulties.
The intent and purpose of Satan is to get your focus on that and make you forget that you never were serving for applause in the first place. You were trying to help and minister in the Spirit and do the will of God; nothing else was really in your thinking. If someone is unappreciative or there is no gratitude, you may say, “I did the best I could,” but you did it unto the Lord.
This is the constant test to see if we will accept this as a preparation to be kings and priests of God, the manifested sons of God.
We must refuse to become a part of the world’s thinking at the present time. We cannot think as they think. We cannot even allow ourselves any kind of frivolous thought. We have to do the will of the Lord and do it with all our heart.
Sometimes we must bow to the inevitable thing that God asks of us. For instance: I have a capacity to work and I like to work, especially in the Word. To labor in the Scriptures is the delight of my life.
No one does what they are tempted to do, unless he is an Esau. Esau generally does not like what he does after he has done it, and he does not like himself for having done it. He would like to take his arrows and bow and go out hunting.
Esau was a hairy man and red. He wandered in the wilderness and hills, shooting everything he could find. When he came home with game, his father loved the way he cooked it.
Isaac was a peaceful man who sat at home. He was sixty years old when the twins were born, so he was perhaps eighty when Esau hunted for him. He would sit waiting for his boy to come in with all kinds of game: “What did you shoot today, son?”
But in the meantime, there were the other things that Jacob was thinking about. He was really concerned. He did not stop thinking, did not stop desiring, or wanting.
Temptations come to people, not because of intense desire, but because the desires of the flesh were the only things which were important to them at the moment. The desires of the spirit were suddenly not important.
Can a person be hungry for God and desire after the Lord, and in the next minute desire after the flesh? The two coexist, but intense hunger for the Lord keeps a perspective that takes care of the present, passing feelings and emotions. It really does.
When I am tempted to fulfill a desire of the flesh: I surrounded myself with the presence of the Lord; I lived in the Word. I could never see how a person could feel he were alone if he had a Bible, for he would be able to think God’s thoughts with Him and commune with Him. It was a mystical, wonderful time. Hours would pass, and I would realize I was totally unaware of the circumstances.
I could have been very lonely and unhappy and very much given to temptations and discouragement if I had been aware of my circumstances. But it was something else that God was preparing me for, so I am thankful He gave me the vision.
The bitterness that came up in Esau was a defiling thing that could defile many. Beware lest a root of bitterness spring up in any and do not be like Esau (Hebrews 12:15, 16). This ties the two Scriptures together, and in case you feel that those are not tied together, read the story of Esau. He was bitter. It was a terrible bitterness that gripped him afterwards.
The bitterness came, and it was his own fault because he despised the thing that God had given him. You must not ever lose sight of the prophecies that have come over you. Paul told Timothy, “By them you will war a good warfare” (I Timothy 1:18). You battle successfully because you do not forget what God has said.
I can look back through many difficult years in which I think that I could have really failed, as far as walking with God was concerned, but for a time when He gave me fantastic revelations and visions. I was haunted by what the Lord had shown me. It saved me because God had put the vision in my heart.
Some have never had that privilege. I am not pointing this out to be self-righteous; I am just bringing out how important it is for people to have a real vision and revelation from the Lord. It gives them something more than the present picture.
Shall we deal honestly with what this kind of temptation is? The things of the Lord can fade out of the picture when temptation comes. A young man meets a young woman who wants to entice him away from a walk with the Lord. It can be very real to him.
Young Joseph was probably not prepared for what he faced in Potiphar’s household (Genesis 39). He had been sold as a slave as a young man. There was nothing wrong with him; he had all the natural inclinations and desires that a young man would have.
Potiphar’s wife gave him every opportunity and finally seized hold of him. Why couldn’t he have gone along with that woman? It would have been such an easy thing. It would not have been any great problem to surrender to what that woman wanted, and who would ever have known the difference?
It would not have made a bit of difference except for one thing: Joseph was a real dreamer. He was the kind of dreamer of which realists are made. We say a man is a realist who looks at the situation as it exists. No, a realist is a man who looks at the overall picture as it really is. Joseph had seen the great vision. He had dreamed the dreams that burned in his heart. The softness, the beauty, and the scent of the temptress were not great enough to overcome the vision and dream he had of being a prophet of God, of being the deliverer and savior of civilization in that day. That was a very real thing to him.
The time can come when young people face many problems. When they face the problems, there is always a way of escape that God makes and a way of escape the devil makes. The pressures are on at home, and a girl may not know what to do. No one understands her. She may think: “Daddy doesn’t understand me at all. Mom is just an old nag. I can’t get along at all. What am I going to do?”
Everything is harassing her. Then comes along a handsome, charming boy who can think of many devilish things for her to do and give her just what she needs in the way of a little understanding and comfort. The devil has his way out for her.
But God has a way. No temptation has taken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted above that you are able to bear, but will with the temptation also make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it (I Corinthians 10:13).
Now we begin to understand what the birthright means. The birthright belongs to those who not only see the vision of it but persevere in it. It is not a thing that can be sold for one mess of pottage, for one morsel of food.
The Scriptures said that Esau sold his birthright for a single meal. What was it? A stew of lentils. He sold his birthright for that? Maybe it was very tasty. The aroma was irresistible.
The pull and the enticement of the moment can reach out until discernment is marred, not because we do not have the wisdom, but because we are not focusing on the whole picture.
God deliver us and help us to see that the passing scene is not important. No matter how things seem to come at us, or how effective they are in disturbing our way of life, there is a walk with God that absolutely cannot be sacrificed for anything else. No release or satisfaction for the moment is worth it.
I wonder how many young people are lost from the Walk when they suddenly decide they must get married. They go out to find anyone in the world who will marry them, and then for the next five or ten years they are frantically phoning the church: “Please pray for me. Please pray for my spouse. Life is hell. I don’t know how I can stand another day of it.” They sell it all for a mess of pottage, and they do not like what happens afterwards. They do not like the difficulty that is suddenly laid upon them.
The cost must be counted beforehand. The cost of sin is obvious; that is not the issue. But I am concerned about counting the cost of serving God. There are many things you have to set aside saying, “I give this over. I do not really need it to be happy.”
Should it bother us that the word is coming and is not appreciated by everyone? No. Nor should it bother us that we will not be appreciated either.
We need to see the big picture. One book which gives you a good picture of this is the book of Ephesians. It takes a great searchlight and searches the heavens. It takes a microscope and analyzes every part. It shows you all the relationships, even to the warfare against principalities and powers and the great, marvelous thing that God will do in manifesting His wisdom openly against those principalities and powers.
Tremendous things are all in one scope. How could six chapters cover such grand truth with such marvelous revelation, to know the length, breadth, height and depth, and the love of Christ that passeth knowledge (Ephesians 3:18)? That is certainly what the book of Ephesians is about, and that is what we need.
We need the kind of sermons which build in our mind something besides just living for today.
We should really be concerned about the perfect will of God: “Where am I going?” “What is the destination that God has for me?” If we can get that in our spirit, it would be as if we put ourselves on automatic pilot, so to speak. We would have already made our decisions ahead of time and prejudged every situation.
“I’m determined.”
“What are you determined, Paul?”
… Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death. Philippians 1:20. “I have already set my course. I’m going to do the will of God. Nothing else really matters.”
“Don’t you know that people will oppose you? It will be very difficult for you.”
“Yes, but I’m going to do the will of God. He shall be magnified in my life, whether it be by life or whether it be by death.”
The book of Hebrews outlines so clearly how we should be. Hebrews 6:11: And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end. Have you known what it is to have that full assurance of hope? You just knew everything would be alright.
Paul said you will have to keep that full assurance of hope right up until the end—that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. Verse 12. You must stay with it.
A message like this will take hold and orient you. Have you ever played a game where people blindfold you, turn you around, and set you in one direction, and you try to pin the tail on a target? God does better than that for you. He takes you when you are completely dizzy, and He says, “Stop. Take the blindfold off. Look at the goal. Now walk. Walk with Me.”
Paul must have known this message. After he had been beaten, almost drowned in shipwrecks, and many other things, he tells King Agrippa, … I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision. Acts 26:19. “They could not do anything that would distract me from the goal.” A walk with God must be more than just passing experiences. It must be real revelation.