The Blessing Of Esau
You soon may be lifting up your eyes where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, shedding tears too late. The passage does not address the impossibility of Esau’s salvation as though he sought to repent of personal sins to God. First of all, such an idea would contradict the clear teaching of numerous passages that reveal the possibility of salvation to anyone who sincerely seeks the Lord according to his Word. I feel like I am reading my Bible in vain, trying to reproduce the conviction that I once felt. But knowing deep down that that conviction can only come from God, not me and that He gave me numerous chances and i rejected them. pharisees searched scripture looking for eternal life, but Jesus told them He is life. And the lesson that is taught us is just this old solemn one. You cannot wash out bitter memories, you cannot blot out habits by a wish. Tears will not alter the irrevocable, you cannot avert consequences that fall upon a man, the consequences of a lifetime, by any weeping and wringing of your hands, and by any wish that they might disappear. You women, the interests of your children, their social well-being frequently stand higher than the interests of the word of God. We are playing the same old game of Esau again when that happens; Esau, the godless, profane man. He swears, he sells his birthright, and we read the tragic sentence in verse 34, “Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew,” and then notice the last of that sentence. And yes, I struggle against bitter feelings towards God that I simply must deny and not embrace. Nothing is worse than feeling comfort and relief and immediately thinking “oh this is just an emotional high and means nothing.” One of the many lies Satan tells is that you’re alone in this stuff, and you’re not. The antecedent for the “IT” Esau sought is obviously the birthright he sold for a “mess of pottage”… and the “IT” is not the repentance. I just learned that the Holy Spirit gives repentance, it is a gift of God. They were twins, they were brought up together, and they were together constantly. Mother fed one and the other; you can just see Rebekah, just like this, twins. Twins, someone has said, is the living proof there is no such thing as free will. But, you can see that these two constantly together had equal opportunities, but the attitudes that they had were different. In fact, as we said in the studies in Galatians, the cross of Christ would be the greatest blunder that this world has ever seen and God would be the one who had committed it. Christ died for the simple reason that there is no salvation apart from the blood that was shed. If there is to be any salvation, that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, should die for sinners. Now, occasionally when we study Jacob and Esau, we are inclined to think, let me put it this way, we are inclined to have sympathy with Esau rather than Jacob. We read through the account and we cannot help but have our heartstrings tugged at by the tragedy of the life of Esau. And when we see Jacob scheming and conniving, this crooked man, we tend to want to condemn Jacob and admire Esau and feel compassion for him. |