I am Esau

Praying and reading scripture today caused me to reflect on the perfections of God.  As I was doing so, I heard a fight break out in a neighbor's house. Division and strife in a home compounded by sinful methods of fighting, all born of broken and wrong expectations and frustration.  There are lots of Esaus around.  I am one of them.

Yes, I am Esau.  I guess that was the point of the study.  While I certainly have some tendencies toward being a grabber, I find that the default pattern of my life is really Esau.  I have a few things I really like doing, like war gaming.  Its easy to give that a lot of my time, but is not a necessity for life.  Esau was in the same mode.  It was not necessary for life, because he was the son of an extremely wealthy man.  It was pure sport for him, with the added pleasure that his father also enjoyed wild game.  I guess eating the fatted calf, sheep and an occasional goat was a little boring after a while.

We have leisure to be procrastinators because we live in a culture that makes that vice a non-life threatening proposition.  Esau could be one, and focus on sport, rather than practical matters, because he had the leisure to do so.  I am now finding that this vice, which I have let go to seed, is costing me a good deal in my unemployment, and in my education.  

I have long subscribed to the truth that God is omnipotent and sovereign in all things. In this season of unemployment, I find that resting in that truth is a difficult proposition. “How do I find rest when I am supposed to be the hunter/gatherer for the family? How do I find rest when my wife is working, my kids pay rent, and I am not contributing financially at all?  How do I find rest when I am supposed to be finding a job?”  These questions, which perpetually come across my mind disturb rest in Christ.  And this season of unemployment God is using to help me to work through my identity in Christ.  

He is working in me to “remove the Esau” from me. I must be about what my Father in heaven has called me to do and to be.  The top of that list includes “Likeness to Christ.”  I am learning to set aside pleasure, procrastination and ease to make way for structure, self-starting and service.  

He is working in me to remove my identity as a money source.  I am not nor have I ever been the money source.  I am a father to my children.  I am a husband to my wife. But I am not their source. God is. I must learn to wait on my Father in heaven to be our source, with me as His willing and ready servant. But I am not a good or bad person because I no longer have an income. He loves me either way.

He is working in me to trust His plan. I may think “if it is to be, its up to me.”  But it really is up to God.  I can have the best resume, walk miles of sidewalks, knock on a hundred doors, and send out dozens of resumes.  But if God has determined that I am to be unemployed, unemployed I shall be. I must learn to rest in the fact God, as omniscient and good as He is, really is in control of my situation, and He will bring forth the best for me “my” family.  

Even in this time of doubt and darkness, while I wrestle with the choices of my past over against the goodness of God in the past, present and future, I was able to look up in wonder and worship at the beautiful blue September sky over my head, knowing that God is working to take “The Esau” out of my life. 

O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I’m constrained to be!

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,

Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above.

Esau 3: The wrath of Edom

Read Genesis 27 first.

Our next vignette in the life of Esau takes place in his father’s old age.  He has sold off his birthright for a bowl of suit.  As we shall see, apparently this has begun to irk him.  But he knows he has an ace up his sleeve.  He’s Daddy’s favorite.

One thing that we can do as parents to bring harm and destruction in our family is to play favorites.  I am not talking about favoring or rewarding because one works hard and the other does not, or one is thoughtful while the other is selfish.  I am talking about actively picking out one child and favoring in relationship and reward, come good or bad.  

We don’t know if there was any rebuke from Isaac for the transaction, though it was considered binding enough that Isaac does not break it.  Now, because Jacob has “grabbed” the family wealth and priesthood from Esau, one might think that if there was a favorite to be played, he ought to have been spending more time with Jacob.  After all, Esau spent time in the field hunting anyway.  

Nevertheless, Isaac gave special favor to Esau.  Its a word that can be used for Divine Love, and is used in Mal 1:2, being the passage Paul uses in Romans 9 when he writes, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”  Its an interesting switch.  God is described as favoring Jacob, but apparently Isaac does not listen.  He picks and plays favorites with his sons, even the one who despised his birthright, and then went and married two of the local Canaanite girls (Genesis 26:34-35), and they were described as a “grief to Isaac.”  His son needs correction, instruction and guidance, and not indulgence. Yet, because of his favor, he can’t bring himself to do so. Is he, perhaps, living through his son a freedom that he was denied as the son of a wealthy sheik?

I guess we can see more reasons why Esau turns out the way he does.  Indulging a child is never a pathway to a solid lasting relationship with a child.  I have seen it for myself when people spoil their children and protect them from the consequences of their actions.  They grow up with few virtues and many vices; lazy children who are endlessly dependent, yet thankless.  

In any case, Esau knows he’s the favorite.  He bides his time, knowing that his father will eventually sicken.  Then he expects to secure the special blessing that his father, as family priest will bestow.  

This blessing was believed to have special powers to bring good things into the lives of those it was bestowed upon.  As oldest and favorite, he expects it.  And then who cares about any old birthright…after all he is father’s favorite, and a special blessing of success will follow him wherever he goes.

But not so fast.  

We have forgotten Rebekah, who has also been playing favorites.  Her favorite is Jacob, and so she seeks to “grab” the special blessing for the one she delights in.  

As you can read in Genesis 27, this is one trick even Jacob fears to play.  Only when his mother is willing to take the blame on herself is he willing to go forward with the plan.

The disguise is made, and Isaac is fooled.He gives a special blessing to Jacob.  Shortly thereafter the ruse is discovered, and Esau burns with anger.

We must ask ourselves, as Isaac and Esau ought to have: why be angry when you were not promised the birthright and the blessing to begin with?  They already had the oracle spoken of the two boys before they were born. Why be surprised.  Many times, anger comes from us when our goals are blocked.  We develop plans, pursue goals with purpose and then find ourselves, at times, denied what we wanted.  The result is often anger and rage!  Ever been there?  Something as simple as being denied a slot in heavy traffic, to seeing a retirement fund disintegrate in a bad market can cause anger that even can be murderous at times.  

That’s exactly how Esau felt.  He was enraged that he had been denied everything.  And of course, he assigned the object of his rage as his brother.  Never mind that he had willingly traded his birthright (which had begun to gall him, 27:36; maybe because of the regular reminder by the nickname of Edom); never mind that taking the blessing was Mother’s idea.  Never mind that God had said these things would belong to Jacob.  

When we get angry, we need to take a look at the situation that created that anger.  Were we blocked from achieving a goal?  Where we denied the fulfillment of a purpose?  What about God’s view of these things?

Just today, I heard a pastor confess that he got mad at someone whom he loaned money to, only to have the friend renege on his repayment. The pastor got angry.  But then, he heard from God, who let him know that he ought not to be mad: God had told him to GIVE the money to the friend in the first place.  “So why be mad for something which you did not follow my will anyway.”

When we are angry, indeed even in a rage, we need to take stock: why am I so mad?  Is this really God’s plan?  If its’ God’s will, isn’t he big enough to handle this present blocking situation?  Or is this something that God really did not want me to have or do in the first place?  In all of these cases, if we are answering the questions the way God wants, then we ought not to be angry.  

This anger ended up costing Esau his brother.  He seldom saw him again. And the evidence suggests that after she sent Jacob away, Rebekah never her favorite son again either. All of the are guilty and complicit in grabbing after things which God had already determined would be disposed of in ways he intended.  It was when these men and women sought to gain these things by their own power (even when, in Jacob’s case, it was promised him) that a horrible dynamic of anger and murderous rage was sown into that family.

Even when Jacob returned to Canaan, its apparent that he did not have much of a relationship with Esau.  There was no basis for trust.  It seems Esau wanted to be reconciled, but Jacob was not buying it.  He stayed away from Edom ever after that.

What about us?  Are we going for things that we have not been promised?  Are we trying to seize things in ways which are deceptive?  Are we angry about things we have been denied?  

Steep Climbs

Hello!

I have not forgotten about you, or this blog AGAIN!  It has been a busy week, and I hope to post the next edition by tomorrow, with the next events of Esau's life.

It has been a very busy week with the start of my classes at Calvin Seminary, in Grand Rapids.  I am enjoying what I am doing there, but I did have a "Deer in the Headlights" moment on Monday.  It has been my intent to go on to a Ph.D. program all along.  I desire to teach and influence the next generations by teaching on a college campus, after the manner of a C.S. Lewis or a Francis Schaffer.

Monday, Dr Young Kim, from Calvin College, graciously sat down with me and spelled out for me what I face as a prospective Ph.D. student.  In short, here it is in list form:

The likelihood that I may not find a job on college campus unless I go to a "Tier 1" school
Tremendous amounts of debt, unless I can be fully funded.
The need to learn German, French, Latin, refresh my Koine Greek, and possibly Italian and Coptic.  The first three on that list need to be learned probably in the next couple of years.

Daunting is a term I can certainly a term I can use for this.

Shortly thereafter, still feeling some "shock and awe,"  I bumped into Pastor Keith Doornbos, who is a very wise man.  As we talked, I realized that the timing of my conversation with Dr. Kim was no mistake.  If I had had that conversation a few months ago, I would never have signed up for class.  I was MEANT to come to school at Calvin.

Keith pointed out to me that I have three options: Give up the dream; Modify the Dream; Chase the dream and embrace the work.

So far I have chosen the third.  I am researching modification.  The goal is always to teach on a secular campus and represent Christ there.  But I do love to study history.  The way may be hard, but it is not impossible.  And God seems to have a way of moving people through hard experiences, and getting them through to the other side.

So here I am.  Tomorrow I plan to being studying Latin and possibly German for an hour per day.  I also have studies to complete, as well as a continued study on Esau, a character whom I can very much identify with, to continue.

God bless you, and pray for me that I can achieve what I believe God has called me to do and to be.

"Red Stuff"

Read Genesis 25:21-34 here.

In Genesis 25, we see, in close order the account of the birth of the twins, Esau and Jacob, followed immediately by an account of the twins as adults.  That’s a lot of material to pass over.  But the writer of scripture only sought to preserve for us these two things as the first accounts of their life: The account of the birth, which includes the pre-birth drama of the two children at war in the womb, and then of this unsavory account of the Bible Hero and Villain as young adults.

I write unsavory, because that is what it is.  Its about two young men, one of whom is hardly a Bible Hero, though he is often held up as such, and the other a person who is guilty of a terrible crime of short sightedness.  There is, in fact, no heroes in this account.   The man who would become a hero of faith, Jacob who becomes Israel, is still very early in his formative stages, and is not a man of faith in Yahweh.  Esau seems to care little beyond what he can shoot and what he can put into his stomach. He does care about what his father thinks of him, as Genesis 27:41-42 and 28:6-9 indicate.  But at the point of the soup story, we know very little about this man, save that he was disfavored by God for his brother, and that he was a hairy hunter.

Esau arrives at the scene of the camp.  He has been hard at work in the hunt, and has worked up quite a hunger.  Apparently they shot nothing, or if they had, it will be some time in preparation.  He’s hungry, and here, his brother, “Grabby,” or Jacob in Hebrew, already had a hot fire and hot stew cooking!

It must be hard to be stuck with an unflattering name. I have a great name: Michael. Its such a great name it seems there are people everywhere with that name. On my dorm floor at MSU, it seemed like there was about 25% of the people were named Michael.  Shout “Hey MIke,” down the dorm floor, and maybe 10 heads pop out the doors.  Its a good name that is actually a praise: Who is like El/God?  A question that exalts the divine one.  What a name. 

That is not Jacob’s legacy at this point.  He was grabbing his brother’s foot when he came out of the womb.  So “Grabby” they called him.  I remember my Grandmother calling me “Grabby” once.  It was not a term of endearment.  She called me that because I tried to grab something out of her hand without saying me “pleases” and “May I’s.”  It hurt, but I also knew better. And it stopped me from being grabby with her after that.  

But in our label conscious day today, we recognize from numerous studies that such names can have detrimental effects on people.  They tend to live up or down to the label they have been given.  Jacob here, in this account demonstrates that he is grabby for lots of things, including things he has been promised already.  God has already stated that Jacob has been favored by him when he was in the womb.  But, rather than wait for what God has promised, instead he decides to grab at it himself.

Enter our character Esau.  “Hey,” he says, “Let me gulp down some of that Red Stuff.”

My paraphrase uses “gulp down.”  The form of the word La’at is a particular form that suggests that Esau was not interested in tasting the stew.  He just wanted to fill his gut, NOW, to end his inner emptiness.  He had a legit need.  He had a legit hunger.  It was going to be filled at some point.  His father is a wealthy sheik, so there is no need to fear starvation.  But he wants to be filled NOW, and to end the discomfort of hunger NOW.

I have heard stories of people who were truly hungry…starving.  And sometimes when they come across an abundance of food, they will bolt it so fast that they will actually die because of the flood of food that fills their small, shrunken stomachs.  We can’t blame those who are actually in a case of true starvation for wanting to eat quickly. 

Esau, however, is no poor malnourished child.  He is a healthy adult in a wealthy family.  He’s been away from food for a while, and he really is hungry.  Legitimately hungry.  So asking for some “Red Stuff,” the stew is reasonable.  But “Grabby” knows his brother.  Here is an opportunity to have some fun, and maybe profit by it. “Sure, but only if you give me your birth right.”

I almost wonder how serious Jacob really is about this.  Is he like the cat who is quite full but sets a trap for his mouse anyway, without any real intent to kill?  Or does he really want to withhold the food from Esau until he gives in.  After all, food is just a fatted calf and a call to a servant away for Esau.

Esau however does not put up any fight whatsoever.  “I am about to die, so what good is a birth right to me.”

Again, I point out, Esau is NOT about to die.  He is simply really hungry.  We laugh and say how ridiculous, but how often, in some fit of pique, do we say “I am about to die, if…”  We tend to find ourselves faint over sometimes the silliest things, then we look back and say “What was the big deal?”  A legitimate desire, whether for food, money, friendship, sex, influence, or whatever, suddenly becomes all consuming: What will happen if I can’t get my need filled?  Surely I’ll die, be in the poor house, faint, fail, or whatever dire ending we can imagine.  Yeah…Esau is just like us.

Now we need to understand what this thing called “the birthright” really is.  Esau has it because he’s the oldest child.  For one thing, it means he gets “the double portion.”  In a family of four, the inheritance is divided five ways, and the oldest child gets two of those.  In a family of two, like Esau’s family, it is divided in three, and Esau get’s two pieces: two thirds of the family fortune.  So if Esau waits and gets his inheritance as the heir, that means two thirds of all the money of a very wealthy eastern sheik becomes his. 

Now, if any body came to you and said “I will give you 4 dollars today, and you have to sign over to me two thirds of everything your parents own when you die in exhange,” you would say “Dude, you are out of your mind.”  Rightfully so.  Today, I can get a bowl of soup in a restaurant for about 4 dollars.  That’s what “Grabby” offers.  He gets, in exchange, 2/3 of the family fortune in the future.

The scripture says, “So Esau despised/showed contemp/scorned his family birthright.”  It really meant nothing to him.  But wait…money is not all he gave up.

In that family, Isaac was the priest of the most High God.  He had a relationship with Yahweh as His priest.  He had a relationship with God that involved direct communion with Him.  He offered sacrifices directly.  He knew God personally, and could pray for others as a priest.  We don’t understand how important that was in the church today, because we are all believer/priests (1 Peter 2:9). Back in those days, the only people who had relationships with God were prophets and priests.  Abraham was a prophet, and was the friend of God. Isaac was a priest.  If you wanted to communicate with God you had to go to a priest or a prophet.  Otherwise, you could not come to him.  

Esau gave that up too, when he sold his birthright.  So not only did he despise the wealth and honor of being the firstborn heir of a powerful sheik, but he had no use for God and no desire to serve Him as His priest. 

Wow.

Esau despised his birthright.  He sold out a relationship with God for soup.

We would never do that, right?  After all, who gives up conversing and relating to the God of the universe for a short sighted moment of satiation?

Wait a minute.  We do.

Think about this for a bit.  We all have legitimate desires.  But we are often offered opportunities to satisfy those desires in sinful ways.  When we give in to those solicitations from the Devil or from the flesh, to satiate ourselves for the moment, we are doing what Esau did.  There are lots of legit desires.  But the world and the flesh and the devil like to find ways to entice us to fill them in illegitimate ways.  In the moments we give in to them, we say “yes” to sin and “No” to our relationship with God.

To make matters worse, “Grabby” decides to memorialize the moment by calling him “Edom,” or “Red Stuff” after that.  Perhaps a way to remind Esau who is now the heir, but also to remind Esau of how stupid he was.  Sometimes when we give in to do something foolish, we find that we are reminded frequently of our fall.  When our choices become public, the press or social media will ruthlessly remind you of your mistake. Sometimes your own worst enemy is yourself.  And you relentlessly and tirelessly beat yourself up, and label yourself for your error.

I’ve been there. I know what that’s like to lay awake at night and beat yourself to mental putty.

The wonderful thing in that is this: If you are a Christian, then God knew about your error before he opened your eyes and applied the blood of Christ to your life.  And yet he still chose you.  Even now, he has seen your error, and knows that, in your moment of foolishness, you chose sin over him.  Even now He waits for you, his prodigal child, to come back to him.  He awaits your return.  Stop beating yourself up.  Go back to your loving heavenly Father.  Tell Him you are sorry, and that you repent.  You’ll find that before the words are even out of your mouth, he is already there with His arms around you, telling the servants to get the party ready: His child has come home.

If however, you are wavering on whether or not to give in to the temptation you are being offered, don’t do it.  Its never worth it. Wait for God to legitimately meet that need.  It will be much more satisfying if you do.  And God is always worth more than some temporary moment of satiation by means of sin.  Spare yourself the heartache and the grief.  Say Yes to God.  

For Esau, though, there would be no homecoming.  His foolishness and Jacob’s duplicity sowed the seeds for family division that will bear fruit as we shall see in the next vignette from their lives.

Esau

After a long hiatus, I am restarting my blog!  Enjoy!

Uncommon characters in the old testament can be a fertile field for study for the Bible student.  All of us want to work on developing good Christ like character.  All of us want to root out sin and fight against it.  Some of these uncommon characters can help us toward that goal. 

One person that it is profitable to study is Esau.  He is often an after thought in studies about Jacob.  Jacob is depicted as the good guy and a “bible hero,” while Esau is depicted as the dirty, self-centered hedonist, with little concern for the future.  We must recognize through this study that there is some truth to this characterization of Esau.  But the picture is much more complicated.  In fact, Jacob is less saint than you realized, and Esau is probably a lot more like you and me than we may want to admit!  So, lets take a close look at Esau that we may become less like sinners and more like the Christ we want to emulate.

The first lesson we learn about Esau is rather shattering.  Its a great deal about the mercy of God, as well as His justice.  Romans 9:13 quotes the Old Testament so: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”  For Paul, Esau is an object lesson in the mercy of God.

Esau was a sinner by choice and by birth.  He was a born sinner, as the whole human race, save Christ, has been since Eve gave birth to her own children.  He was also a sinner by choice.  He sinned during his life, despising the good, and choosing earthly things rather than godly things.  He participated in Canaanite paganism through his marriages to Canaanite brides.  He cared little for the things of God.  This is what we know from scripture alone.  But we can also infer that he sinned in many ways simply because he was a sinner!  Just like us, if you think about it!  How many of us has, as our first thought, honoring and loving God?  How many of us want to please Him and seek His face all the time?  If you say that you do, then you just lied!  

The reality is that all of humanity seeks its own willful way.  Only when Christ comes into a life is the even the rudimentary beginning of truly God centered life.  And then its a long road to building a life that is more an more Christ centered, thinking God’s thoughts after him.

But this is where things get really strange to our minds.  Read the context in Romans 9:

1 Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad — in order that God’s purpose in election might stand:  12 not by works but by him who calls — she was told, “The older will serve the younger.”  13 Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

“…before they had done anything good or bad….”  Think about that for a few moments.  Before they had made any choices.  Before they had “rejected God.”  Before they broke a commandment.  Before they looked upon a woman or a mountain or property or fatted calf with selfishness, before their first toy broken in a fit of self centered rage…  God had already made the most important decision.  God had elected to bless Jacob, before he had done any good thing.  And he chose not to bless Esau with a relationship with himself.  As we shall see, Esau certainly did reject God in his own turn.  But before that decision was ever made…indeed in eternity past, God had a elected to bless Jacob and not Esau.

Why was there a need for an election by God?  Why is it required that God had to choose to bless Jacob with His mercy?  As we have already pointed out, Jacob and Esau were both born sinners.  They were descended of sinners and members of a sinful race.  And they were both also sinners by choices.  Either of those conditions are sufficient to bring the condemnation of separation from God in the afterlife.  We are a race of rebels, who never have done anything worthy to earn or force God, or compel him to grant us a seat in his heaven.  So unless God intervene, and choose to grant mercy to some of our race, we are lost and without hope.

God chose to have mercy on Jacob.  Esau was not elected to receive mercy.

For some of us, that is hard truth to swallow.  We want to think that we did something  to gain God’s notice.  We want to think he was attracted to us, or he saw us do something good.  We want to think that somehow, we had salvation coming to us.  Maybe we credit ourselves with some inner movement of the soul, or some graciousness of spirit that we evidenced.  

Not at all.  It was, from eternity past, seeing us in our depravity, that God chooses.  And as part of that choice, he moves and works and prepares you for that day, when perhaps you thought it was you who had been seeking and found Him!  In actuality God has been pursuing you.  And even knowing that you would stray and be wayward affer you were awakened to new life, He still chose you. 

The amazing thing is, since you had nothing to do with your choice, and since God knows all ends, that means you have nothing to do with keeping your salvation.  He is the one who made the purchase and supplies the guarantee (Eph 1:14).  

Jacob, himself, was not a “saint” in the sense that he had earned his place at God’s table.  He was a cheat, a thief, and a terrible parent.  He himself struggled with belief when hard times came.  He needed the election of God.  He was no better than Esau, who was not so blessed.

So Esau, then, is for us a reminder of the kindness that God shows those who belong to Him.  “There but for the grace of God go I.”  That’s an old saying that certainly is true.  God saves us, changes our destiny, and makes us more and more His own as life goes on after salvation.  

Have you understood your need for salvation?  Do you recognize that, you too, are a sinner?  The amazing thing is God asks you, right now, if you believe in Jesus Christ and His payment on the cross.  And if say “yes” to Him, or have already done so, perhaps you did thinking that it was you that figured this thing out.  But then we look back, having “received Christ,” and realize that it was God himself who set the appointment time for your salvation, that he opened your eyes and made you aware of your need, and gave you the faith required to bring your salvation (Eph 2:8-9).  

There is more to be learned from Esau’s life.  For now, let’s just remember with gratitude that it is God who saves us from a just end in Hell.