(As “The Price Is Right” theme song plays, invite three contestants forward.) Welcome to the Price Is Right brought to you today from St. Peter’s Lutheran Church! Before you is a lovely bag of Skittles. The contestant who comes closest to guessing the retail price of this object without going over the actual price wins the item and a chance to win another lovely prize. (After the winning contestant is determined, invite him or her forward for the next game.) Before you now are three objects: a can of tuna, a DVD player, and a Bible. Stack these objects so that the least valuable item is on the bottom and the most valuable item is on top. You may begin. (The contestant should put the can of tuna on the bottom and the Bible on top.) Well done! (Give contestant a piece of candy.) But why did you put the Bible on top of the stack and not the DVD player? This Bible only retails for $10 while the DVD player costs $60. Of course, God’s Word is the most important thing we have in this world isn’t it? It’s more valuable than anything we can buy. (The contestant may be seated.)
Although our contestant correctly identified the Bible as the most valuable item here, don’t we often forget how precious spiritual blessings are? As a result we often treat God’s Word, worship, even Holy Communion as if they were something cheap, like a plastic toy that comes from a cereal box. That’s the attitude Jacob’s older brother Esau demonstrates in our episode of Jake TV this morning. Let’s find out what warnings and encouragement we can glean as we watch Esau sell Jacob the birthright.
In our Nanny 911 episode last Sunday we learned about the birth of Jacob and Esau. Although twins, the boys weren’t identical in appearance or in character. Esau was covered in hair (in fact the name Esau means “hairy”) while Jacob had smooth skin. Esau loved the great outdoors and the thrill of hunting wild animals while Jacob stayed close to home caring for his father’s flock and puttering around the kitchen with Mom. Although Jacob was younger and the quieter of the two boys, God promised that he would be the dominant one, and the one to receive the birthright usually reserved for the eldest son. Receiving the birthright not only meant inheriting a larger portion of Dad’s estate, it meant benefiting from the promise God had given to Grandpa Abraham that the savior would come through his family line. The birthright is something each boy should have valued and sought – not so much for the property one stood to inherit but for the honor of being a direct ancestor of the Messiah. What happens in our episode shows that only one boy truly valued this blessing.
One day, Esau came home from a hunting trip famished. As he drew near the tents his family called home, he smelled something delicious. He quickened his pace to the outdoor kitchen where he found Jacob stirring a pot of lentil stew. Esau said to his brother: “Quick, let me have some of that red stew!” (Genesis 25:30a) That English translation doesn’t quite capture Esau’s desperate impatience. Esau literally barked: “Let me gulp some of that red stuff. That red stuff there!” Esau didn’t care what Jacob had cooked up, he just needed something to fill his stomach, and now! (Esau’s identification of the stew as that “red stuff” helped another nickname he had received at birth to stick. Because Esau was not only hairy but had darker skin than Jacob, he was called “Edom” – Hebrew for “red.” Now he would also be known as Edom for having called his brother’s stew that “red stuff.”)
Jacob answered his brother’s demand with a demand of his own: “First sell me your birthright” (Genesis 25:31). While Jacob’s stew may have been aromatic, his attitude was unsavory. When your brother is hungry and asks for food, you don’t say: “I’ll sell you some” (John Jeske). What was Jacob up to anyway? Jacob was trying to secure the birthright that God had said would be his. Do you see the irony in this? Jacob was trying to purchase something that already belonged to him (Martin Luther)! How often don’t we do the same when we think that there is something we must do to get into heaven? Jesus proclaimed from the cross: “It is finished!” (John 19:30). With that he assured us that all has been done for sinners to enter heaven. Jesus paid for every single one of our sins. There is nothing we must do to secure eternal life. God doesn’t need our help in the matter. He’s done it all through Jesus! Believe it!
While Jacob was guilty of thinking God needed his help to fulfill his promises, he at least knew what was worth securing. His older brother Esau didn’t have a clue in the matter. When Jacob demanded the birthright in exchange for a bowl of stew Esau responded: “Look, I am about to die. What good is the birthright to me?” (Genesis 25:32) And so after swearing to give Jacob the birthright Esau ate and drank and left with hardly a thought of what he had just given up. The sacred writer sadly comments that in so doing Esau despised the birthright (Genesis 25:34). Esau didn’t think the birthright to be worth more than a couple of loonies you and I might throw to a sidewalk vendor selling corndogs. Esau thought this way because he lived for the immediate and not the ultimate (Richard Lauersdorf).
Do we live for the immediate rather than the ultimate? For example do we seek solace from a hard workweek in multiple bottles of beer and a buzz instead of in our Savior who said: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28)? Do we try to relieve our boredom by inhaling all that which pop culture can throw at us and so have become more familiar with the babies of Britney (Spears) and Brangelina than Bethlehem’s Babe who alone cures boredom by giving meaning to life?
The price of immediate gratification seems cheap but the actual cost is exorbitant. A sentence of callous words, for example, may take five seconds to speak but years to live down. It can cause a friendship to go from one of hearty handshakes to awkward silence. It’s no wonder the author of the book of Hebrews wrote: “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. 15 See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. 16 See that no one is…godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. 17 Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. He could bring about no change of mind, though he sought the blessing with tears” (Hebrews 12:14-17).
Consistently choosing the immediate over the ultimate will cause us to lose the grace that is ours. That is why the writer to the Hebrews says that we are to watch ourselves and one another. When we start to think that worship attendance and securing a spot at the Lord’s table for Holy Communion is a good practice but not necessarily important, not as important as sleeping in or saving on the gas it takes to drive here, we need to repent. We need to come to our senses and realize that we are despising, that is, treating as cheap and unimportant God’s blessings the same way Esau despised the birthright. The Bible calls such an attitude godless (Hebrews 12:16), not just a weakness or a bad habit. So Friends, don’t be an Esau. Don’t treat the Means of Grace as unimportant and so despise God’s love for you. And don’t push those away who love you enough to tell you when we are guilty of despising God’s blessings.
The saddest thing about Esau is that he didn’t even realize what he had done until it was too late. Years later he tried to get back what he had so carelessly tossed aside but the birthright passed on to Jacob just as God said it would. In the same way don’t wait another day to get serious about your walk with the Lord. It may be too late tomorrow.
The price seemed right to Esau when he sold the birthright for a bowl of stew but he was wrong. The price Esau paid was one he could not afford. And so when we treat as cheap God’s grace whether by ignoring his Word, opportunities to receive Communion, or his calls to repent from fellow believers, we are paying a price we can’t afford. Thankfully Jesus did pay the price for those sins. He paid it all with the shedding of his blood. Although it cost everything he had, Jesus gives us that forgiveness for free. Forgiveness is free but since it didn’t come cheaply don’t treat it like a plastic toy from a cereal box. Value it by doing everything you can to safeguard this blessing from God, as did Jacob. Amen.
