Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #18 of Genesis, chapter 25, and we are going to read Genesis 25:31-34:

And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.

We have been going through these verses, and seeing that Jacob was not innocent.  He was not guiltless in this situation.  Remember back in verse 29, the Lord said that Jacob “dealt proudly,” where it says that Jacob “sod pottage,” and this word “sod” was translated in other places in a negative way which had to do with “pride” and being presumptuous.  So Jacob should not have offered this deal to his brother.  It was really a sinful thing that he did, but he did it.  And people do sinful things all the time, and God’s elect are no different.  We were “children of wrath,” even as others, and we were in our sins.  Jacob appears to have been in his sins at this particular time, but God still had mercy on him because Jacob had already been chosen before he was born.  And we know from the Bible that he was chosen before the world was, in eternity past.  His sins had already been laid upon the Lord Jesus.  God worked it out, knowing all the terrible and horrible things that Jacob would do, as well as the sins of all the others that he had elected to save. 

And God does not hide the sins of His people from the readers of the Bible.  We see that with King David when he committed adultery and then committed murder by having Bathsheba’s husband put in the hottest part of the battle, which caused Uriah the Hittite to fall by the hand of the enemy, but David was really behind it.    So the elect are not sinless, even after salvation.  Even if Jacob had become saved by that time, it does not mean he had ceased from sin.  When we become born again, we do cease from sin in our new, born again soul, which cannot sin.  It is a perfect soul and it will remain that way, but we still have our fleshly bodies, so that is why 1John presents that seeming contradiction: if we say we are without sin, we are liars.  Then a couple of chapters later it says that whosoever is born again does not commit sin, and the only way of understanding that is to realize that God has a two-stage salvation program.  First, He saves the soul, making it sinless in its resurrected condition, and then on the last day He will save the body in the resurrection of the rapture, and He will change our sinful bodies into new spiritual bodies, which will then be in the same condition as our souls from the time God saved us.

So, either way, it is no problem to recognize that Jacob was involved in a deceitful and despicable thing.  He was not loving his brother in any way.  He was trying to connive and get the birthright from him because it disturbed him (apparently) that he was so close to receiving it as he had latched onto the heel of his brother when they were born and, yet, he did not have it.  So he saw an opportunity and he said, “Sell me this day thy birthright.”

I would not be surprised if they had discussions like this before in other situations and, perhaps, Esau had even turned him down.  Maybe Jacob made previous offers.  God does not give us all the information about the history between these two.  He just gave us bits and pieces of information, for His own purposes.  And, in this case, on this day Esau could have been physically weary, as well as mentally weary and tired, so Esau said, in Genesis 25:32:

… Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?

If you remember, in our last study I pointed out that his literal statement should read: “Behold, I am going to die.”    That is true of every human being, is it not?  You are going to die, and I am going to die, if given enough time, and if the Lord does not end this world before we die, then we will die.  And, yet, it is very revealing, and it really captures the mindset of the natural man.  Remember, we went to 1Corinthians 15, which is the “resurrection chapter,” and it said in 1Corinthians 15:32:

If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for to morrow we die.

I am going to die tomorrow or soon and, therefore, why hold back?  Let us eat.  Let us drink, and let us make merry!  Let us have a party and enjoy the things of the world.  Let us take our pleasure while we can because there is a time limit.  You see, the whole idea the Bible presented to man in the day of salvation was that you do not know if you are going to die today, tomorrow or next week and, therefore, you had better get serious with God.  Go to the Lord and beseech Him that He might have mercy before that time comes.  But, you see, the natural mind just turns that around, and they do not look at the shortness of time and the eternal destruction to come.  No – they just look at the world and its pleasures, and they think, “I have just a little time, so I had better enjoy it while I have it.”  And Esau is just expressing that mindset.

And we know that Esau was also guilty of sin.  These are the two men that represent the human race, Jacob and Esau: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.”  And God makes a point of stressing, in Romans 9, that before either had done good or evil, God made the choice – not man.  And that is because when we look at mankind as a whole, none are righteous, no not one.  There are none that have done good.  All have done wickedly.  All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.  So God could not have selected Jacob because he had done good, because Jacob was just as much a sinner as Esau was a sinner, and we see both of their sins right on the surface here in Genesis 25.

God comments on Esau in the book of Hebrews, chapter 12, in a section where He speaks of chastisement and how He chastens every son He receives, and it leads into a discussion of Esau.  Let us break into it in Hebrews 12:14-17:

Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled; Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.

In these two last verses, God is commenting on two different chapters in Genesis.  Verse 16 is commenting on the chapter we are looking at now, Genesis 25; and verse 17 is commenting on Genesis 27 when Isaac decides to give the blessing to Esau.  But notice how God joins the two together.  Again, I will read Hebrews 12:16:

Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.

Then you can see the relationship to the next verse in Hebrews 12:17:

For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected&hellip

Of course, God was watching and observing, and he saw Esau’s belittling and despising of the birthright, and that is what we read in Genesis 25:34:

Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.

He sold something that had great value, at least in what it symbolized in the spiritual realm.  It symbolized a right relationship with God and having the blessing of God upon him, and he sold it for almost nothing, “for one morsel of meat,” as Hebrews 12:16 puts it in describing the bowl of pottage of lentiles.  It was “one morsel of meat,” just one serving of a nice hot meal.  “Here you go,” and Jacob laid it before him, and Esau quickly went at it because he was so hungry.  He dipped the bread and got the last drop.  Yes, he got everything out of it that he bargained for, the whole bowl of pottage, and then he “went his way.”  He “went his way,” and, apparently, he did not pay it too much mind, until we see in Genesis 27 that he had the expectation of receiving the blessing of the firstborn son.  Isaac had told him, “Go find some venison and make that savoury meat that I love, and I will bless you.”  And Esau went out.  All was well.  All was well.  What does that matter?  But God remembered it, and God allowed circumstances to develop with Rebekah and her instruction to Jacob to deceive his father Isaac and to supplant Esau and get the birthright that should have been Esau’s as the right of the firstborn.

But he despised it.  Of course, we can feel sorry for him.  We can feel sorry for Adam and Eve, as well, because they had all the blessings of a proper and good relationship with God.  They had a new earth.  They had everything that anyone could ever want.  They were made good, and everything in the world was good.  The animals were good.  There was no sin.  There was no death.  Then came the serpent and deceived Eve, and she ate and gave to her husband who was by her, and he did eat.  And look what happened!  Just one little sin.  Just one little bite of that fruit, whatever kind of fruit it was.  Of course the serpent’s promise was that they would “know good and evil” if they ate of that tree.  He delivered on the “knowing evil,” and we have to acknowledge that, as we all have come to know evil quite well, especially those of us that were elected by God and are living in this time at the end of the world when evil has multiplied across the face of the earth, like never before in history.  We have a very good view of what “evil” is, and sometimes we just want to shut our eyes and close our ears and say, “Please, Lord, no more – we do not want any more knowledge of evil.  It is too awful and ugly and filthy and rotten.  O, Lord, our righteous souls are vexed day by day with all the evil that is in the world, and it was (initially) all by eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

And Esau was making a similar error by going after the lust of the eyes and the pride of life and the present satisfaction of a bowl of soup, despising the glory, the honor and the potential of the birthright.  “Oh, that is off in the distance, but the soup is right here on the table right in front of me, and I can enjoy it.”  And he did, and he went his way.  But how long before he had to go to the draught, and it all came right out.  That is what he sold his birthright for, and we can only say that we know the feeling.  We know how it is to make that kind of decision when faced with doing it God’s way or doing contrary to the will of God and sinning against Him.  We have done it over, and over, and over, again.   So we do not stand in judge of Esau.  We recognize the foolishness of being in a sinful condition, and we recognize that we have done the same thing.

And we see ourselves in Jacob who deceived his own brother and manipulated his own brother to the point where it brought this shame upon him that he had gone in that direction.

Let us look at what the Bible has to say about the birthright because it is mentioned a few times here.  This whole passage is about the selling of the birthright.  The word “birthright” is Strong’s #1062, and it is found in Deuteronomy 21:15-17:

If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have born him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers that was hated: Then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn: But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his.

Here, we have another Hebrew word in verse 17.  There are two different Hebrew words translated as “firstborn” in verse 17.  The first time it is used, it is Strong’s #1060, and the second time it is used is Strong’s #1062, which is our word translated as “birthright” in Genesis 25.  We can see how the statement, “the right of the firstborn is his,” ties in with being firstborn.  The firstborn has the birthright. 

Now it is interesting how well these verses fit the case of Jacob that would develop later on in his life as we go further in the book of Genesis.  Jacob would end up with two wives that are sisters, Leah and Rachel.  And Leah would give birth to six sons, including Rueben, the firstborn.  When Leah gave birth to her children, she was moved by the Lord to make statements about her being hated and when her son is born, she says, “Now my husband will love me.”  So Rueben was the son of the hated.  On the other hand, Rachel (who was barren for a time) eventually gave birth to Joseph who would be the firstborn son of the beloved wife.  So the situation was that Jacob should have given the blessing of the firstborn, the birthright, to Rueben because he was the firstborn son, despite the fact that he was the son of the hated.  And, yet, it turned out that Rueben did not get the blessing of the firstborn.  He lost it, and the sons of Joseph, or Joseph himself, received the blessing of the firstborn.  We can see this discussed in Genesis 49:1-4:

And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days. Gather yourselves together, and hear, ye sons of Jacob; and hearken unto Israel your father. Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power: Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel; because thou wentest up to thy father's bed; then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch.

Rueben ended having relations with one of Jacob’s concubines, so he went up to his father’s bed in that way.  You know, it reminds us of the verses in 1Corinthians 5:1:

It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife.

And the judgment of the Apostle Paul was that he should be delivered unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh.  We have looked at that before, and we have seen that this is a type and figure of God giving up the corporate church to be ruled over by Satan for its own destruction as judgment began at the house of God.

Rueben was in a similar situation that was not so much even spoken of among the Gentiles, so he did something that was really bad in going into his father’s wife.  We read in 1Chronicles 5:1-2:

Now the sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel, (for he was the firstborn; but, forasmuch as he defiled his father's bed, his birthright was given unto the sons of Joseph the son of Israel: and the genealogy is not to be reckoned after the birthright. For Judah prevailed above his brethren, and of him came the chief ruler; but the birthright was Joseph's:)

The word “birthright” is the word we are looking at in Genesis 25.  Again, we find strange circumstances surrounding the birthright when it came to the sons of Jacob.  Not only was Jacob himself a man who received the birthright under highly unusual and deceitful circumstances, so, too, when it came to his own sons; and he ended up giving the birthright to Joseph, and not to Rueben.

Lord willing, we will look at this a little bit further when we get together in our next Bible study.