Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Red Stew and the Ruined Soul (Genesis 25:27–34)

Transcript

The Red Stew and the Ruined Soul (Genesis 25:27–34) · Reformed Thinking

0:00
Welcome back to Reform Thinking. I'm your host and I am, as
0:03
always, really glad you're here with us.
0:05
It's good to be back. Now if you are new to the show,
0:07
let me just kind of set the table for you.
0:09
We don't really do surface level skims here.
0:11
No, not at all. We take a stack of, you know,
0:15
dense, heavy theological sources, sermons, papers, old
0:18
commentaries, and we really try to get to the bottom of them.
0:21
We want to find the gold that actually changes how you see God
0:25
and, well, how you live your life.
0:27
That really is the goal. We're not here to just, you
0:30
know, recite stories you already know from childhood.
0:32
We're here to uncover the theological weight that's that's
0:36
behind them. And today, yeah, today we are
0:38
opening up a file that I have to be honest, it made me really
0:41
uncomfortable while I was prepping for this.
0:43
I can see why it's a tough passage it.
0:45
Is it's a story that I think everyone thinks they know.
0:48
If you grew up in church, you definitely heard it in Sunday
0:50
school. If you've just read Genesis once
0:53
or twice, you've seen it. It's Genesis chapter 25, verses
0:56
27 through 34, the account of Esau selling his birthright to
1:01
his brother Jacob. A bowl of soup for an entire
1:04
legacy. Right.
1:06
And usually the take away is, well, it's pretty simple.
1:09
It's don't be greedy or maybe don't make big financial
1:12
decisions when you're hungry. You know, it's treated like this
1:15
little fable about sibling rivalry or just a really bad
1:19
trade. Which is a tragedy.
1:21
I mean, it's a complete tragedy because when you actually open
1:24
up the formed theological sources on this specific text,
1:27
you realize this isn't a story about table manners.
1:30
Not at all. It is a terrifying portrait of
1:33
what the Bible calls worldliness.
1:34
It's about a very specific type of spiritual apathy that is just
1:38
it's absolutely deadly. I really want to get into that.
1:41
Yeah, because the sources we have in front of us,
1:43
specifically these papers, one called Despising the Birthright
1:46
and another The Red Stew with the Ruined soul, they argue that
1:49
this little story is actually about the doctrine of election.
1:52
And total depravity. And the danger of pragmatism, I
1:55
mean, these are huge concepts. They are.
1:57
We have to frame this correctly right from the start.
1:59
This text, it acts as a mirror. It exposes the human heart in a
2:03
way that is very, very hard to look at.
2:05
And if we just stop at oh, Esau was a bad guy, we miss the
2:09
gospel entirely. So let's set the mission for
2:11
this deep dive. Then we want to answer a pretty
2:14
haunting question. What leads a person, a real
2:17
person, to trade eternal treasure for a momentary
2:20
appetite? And just as central, how does a
2:24
story about lentils of all things point us directly to
2:28
Jesus Christ? OK.
2:30
That's the destination. That's where we need to land,
2:33
because Esau is a warning for sure, but he is not the
2:36
solution. OK, let's get into the text Part
2:38
1 of this whole thing, The divided household.
2:41
Genesis 25 verses 27 and 28 and narrative.
2:45
It doesn't actually start with the cooking with this do.
2:47
It starts with a description of the men it says when the boys
2:50
grew up. And that phrase right there is
2:52
so important. It implies that the crisis we
2:54
are about to see this big blow up, It didn't happen in a
2:57
vacuum. It wasn't just a bad day.
2:59
Not at all. It was a result of years and
3:01
years of habit formation. Characters formed in the quiet
3:05
years. It's formed long before the
3:06
crisis actually has. So let's.
3:08
Look at the players. First we have Esau.
3:11
The text calls him a skillful hunter, a man of the field.
3:14
Now I have to pause here because in our modern context that
3:19
sounds that sounds pretty cool. Right.
3:21
Absolutely. He's the rugged outdoorsman.
3:23
Yeah, he's competent. He can provide.
3:25
Why should we see this as negative in any way?
3:28
Well, there is a natural mobility to it, sure.
3:30
I mean, being a hunter isn't inherently sinful.
3:32
Of course not. But the sources are quick to
3:35
point out that the field here is symbolic.
3:37
It represents an entire worldview.
3:39
OK, think about the cycle apology of a hunter.
3:41
I mean really think about it. What is his life built around?
3:44
What is the rhythm of his life? I guess the chase, the catch,
3:48
the immediate result. It's the immediacy of the
3:50
reward. That's it.
3:51
You track, you kill, you eat. It is a high risk, high reward
3:55
feedback loop that happens today.
3:57
Right now, if a hunter doesn't catch anything by sunset, he
4:00
fails. His entire validation, His sense
4:03
of success, is tied to what he can seize with his hands in the
4:07
present moment. The source is called this the
4:09
theology of the immediate. I thought that was a great
4:11
phrase. It's perfect.
4:13
So he is trained, I mean you could say biologically and
4:16
mentally to respond to short term stimuli.
4:19
He's a dopamine chaser. He is.
4:21
And again, that's not inherently sinful.
4:23
You need hunters to survive in that world.
4:25
But contrast that lifestyle, that mindset, with the
4:28
description of Jacob. Right.
4:30
The text calls Jacob a quiet man dwelling intense.
4:34
Now I have to be honest with you.
4:35
I have always, always heard this preach as Jacob being soft.
4:40
You know a mama's boy. The classic caricature.
4:43
Totally. Esau is out there fighting bears
4:46
and Jacob is inside. I don't know, rearranging the
4:50
furniture or something. And that's that's just
4:52
historically inaccurate. The Hebrew word there, Tam,
4:55
which is translated as quail, it actually means complete or sound
4:59
or settled. And dwelling in tents doesn't
5:01
mean he's just sitting around. It implies he's a shepherd
5:04
manager, a steward. OK.
5:05
So he's run the family business. He is now think about the
5:08
psychology of a shepherd or a household manager compared to a
5:11
hunter. It's it's much slower, it's a
5:13
long game. You don't see the results
5:15
immediately at all. Precisely.
5:17
You breed sheep today for wool you won't shear for months.
5:20
You plant grain that you won't harvest for a whole season.
5:24
The tent represents delayed gratification, it represents
5:27
structure accumulation. And this is the crucial part,
5:30
inheritance. You cannot pass down a hunt to
5:33
your children. You can only pass down a flock,
5:36
a business, and a state. Wow, so Jacob is living in a
5:41
world defined by the future and Esau is living in a world
5:44
completely defined by the now. And that right there is why
5:47
Jacob is the one who is compatible with the covenant.
5:49
The covenant is a promise about a future seed and a future land.
5:53
A man addicted to the now, a man like Esau, literally cannot
5:57
process the value of a promise that won't pay out for 400
6:00
years. That completely blows my mind.
6:03
It reframes the entire conflict. It's not just that Esau was
6:05
hungry later in the chapter, it's that his entire personality
6:09
structure, his old way of life, was built to reject the abstract
6:12
in favor of the concrete. If he couldn't taste the
6:15
promise, then the promise wasn't real to him.
6:17
It had no weight. But we can't talk about the boys
6:19
without talking about the parents.
6:22
This part of the source material was fascinating to me, the
6:24
dynamic between Isaac and Rebecca.
6:26
It's a tragic detail, isn't it? The text says.
6:29
Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game.
6:32
Yeah, I literally made a note here in the margin.
6:35
It just says this feels gross. It is gross.
6:38
I mean, it's carnal. It's bait.
6:39
How does the patriarch? I mean, this is the guy who
6:41
walked up Mount Moriah with Abraham, the son of the promise.
6:45
How does he end up selling out his spiritual discernment for a
6:50
literal piece of venison? It's the tragedy of the senses.
6:53
It really is. The source material points out
6:55
that Isaac essentially became an Esau worshipper.
6:58
He saw the virility, the strength, the smell of the field
7:01
on his son and he preferred that.
7:03
He preferred it over the quiet, long term faithfulness of Jacob.
7:07
He wanted the son who could feed his belly.
7:08
Not the Son who could carry the spiritual torch.
7:11
His spiritual priority, The covenant line itself, was being
7:14
overridden by his stomach. So his affection was tethered to
7:17
his appetite. Precisely.
7:19
And it reveals a deep weakness in Isaac.
7:21
He is valuing the son who feeds his flesh over the son who
7:25
carries the promise. It's a a very humbling detail
7:29
for the patriarch. And then on the other side, you
7:31
have Rebecca, and she loved Jacob.
7:34
Right, and the text doesn't give a carnal reason for her love.
7:37
It was likely because of the prophecy she'd received directly
7:40
from God that the older would serve the younger, and also
7:43
probably because Jacob was part of her domestic world.
7:46
He was there. But the result is the same kind
7:48
of division. You have a home that one of the
7:50
sources called Cracked by Partial Affections.
7:53
That's a great way to put it. It's a divided house.
7:56
You have a father led by his taste buds and a mother who's
7:59
already playing favorites, maybe even plotting based on the
8:01
prophecy. And this is a huge warning for
8:04
us, isn't it? I mean, the sources note that
8:06
proximity to holy things, they live near Abraham's altars.
8:08
They knew all the stories of God, that proximity does not
8:11
guarantee a love for holy things.
8:14
Not at all. You can be in the right family,
8:17
go to the right church, check all the boxes, and still have a
8:19
home and a heart that's driven by fleshly preference rather
8:24
than covenant love. So that's the atmosphere.
8:26
It's a pressure cooker. You got a dad led by his
8:28
stomach, a mom playing favorites, a son living
8:31
completely for the moment and another son scheming in the
8:33
tent. The stage is just set for
8:35
disaster. It's.
8:36
All there. So let's move to Part 2, The
8:38
Anatomy of Temptation. This is where we see how this
8:42
worldview, this worldliness, actually works in real time.
8:46
Yeah, the theory becomes practice.
8:48
The scene opens in verses 29 and 30, and as the source notes,
8:52
there's no Thunder. There are no angels fighting
8:53
demons in the sky. It's just a Newsday, a normal
8:56
day. Esau comes in from the field and
8:58
he is wiped out. He is exhausted, the Hebrew
9:00
says, faint, and that is so crucial.
9:02
Temptation rarely announces itself with a brass band.
9:06
It starts with the mundane hunger, fatigue, stress.
9:11
When you are physically depleted, your spiritual and
9:13
emotional resistance just goes way down.
9:15
The source argues that weariness shrinks the world.
9:19
And I really felt that when you're dead tired, you don't
9:22
care about your five year plan, you care about sitting down and
9:24
putting your feet up. Exactly.
9:26
The urgent feels real. The important feels distant and
9:30
abstract, and that is the exact state where Esau finds himself.
9:34
He comes in, he smells the Stew, and the demand of his appetite
9:38
completely takes over. And the language he uses.
9:41
I had no idea about this until reading these notes.
9:44
He doesn't just say may I please have some soup or hey brother
9:47
can I get a bowl? No.
9:48
Not at all. The Hebrew is very, very
9:50
graphic. It suggests something like, let
9:52
me gulp down or let me stuff myself with that.
9:55
It's animalistic language. Wow.
9:57
He's not speaking like a son of the Covenant, the heir of the
9:59
promise. He's speaking like a creature
10:01
driven by pure instinct. And he calls it that red red.
10:04
He doesn't even name the food. He just says that red red stuff.
10:07
He's totally fixated on the sensory appeal, the color, the
10:11
smell, the heat. He can't even be bothered to use
10:15
the proper noun for Stew or lentils.
10:17
He just wants the red stuff. It shows that his rational mind
10:20
has shut down and his senses are driving the bus.
10:23
And then the text adds that little note, that little
10:25
commentary. Therefore, his name was called
10:27
Edom, which means red. And that is the Holy Spirit's
10:31
commentary on the event. It's a divine footnote.
10:35
Esau becomes defined by the craving he couldn't control.
10:38
His identity gets reshaped. It does.
10:40
Repeated surrender to appetite carves a character.
10:43
His identity is now forever linked to that moment of
10:45
weakness, that craving for red stuff.
10:48
He is red. He is the man who wanted the
10:50
stuff more than the promise. That is a heavy, heavy thought
10:53
that our identity can be shaped by what we refuse to say no to.
10:57
So he demands the food. And this brings us to Part 3,
11:00
the transaction. Because Jacob, Well, Jacob is
11:04
Jacob. He doesn't say.
11:05
Here, brother, you look tired. Have a bowl?
11:06
No, Jacob sees an opening. He sees leverage and he says
11:10
sell me your birthright now. That word now is doing a lot of
11:12
work in that sentence, isn't. It it is, Jacob is completely
11:15
calculating. He exploits the timing
11:17
perfectly. He sees the clock of temptation
11:20
ticking down. He knows Esau is weak, He's
11:23
irrational. And that's when Jacob strikes.
11:26
OK, we have to address the elephant in the tent here.
11:28
We've been pretty hard on Esau, and for good reason.
11:30
But reading verse 31, I find it really really hard to root for
11:35
Jacob in this moment. I think you're supposed to.
11:38
Esau comes in, he's legitimately suffering, he's exhausted, and
11:42
Jacob's first move is sell me your birthright.
11:45
Now that is just hold. It is cold, it's ruthless.
11:49
There's no brotherly love there. It feels like extortion.
11:52
I mean, if you walked into a hospital and saw someone who is
11:55
severely dehydrated and I came up and said, I'll give you a
11:58
glass of water, but first you have to sign over the deed to
12:00
your house, I'd be arrested. And I should be, right.
12:04
So how did the Reformed sources, how does someone like Calvin
12:07
reconcile Jacob's behavior here? Is he the hero of this story or
12:11
is he a villain? That is the tension the text
12:14
forces us to sit in. And you're right, Calvin is
12:16
actually very interesting on this point.
12:18
He does not let Jacob off the hook at all.
12:20
OK. He points out that while Jacob's
12:22
goal was righteous, he valued the covenant blessing, the
12:26
birthright. His method was completely
12:28
fleshly. He wasn't trusting God to
12:30
fulfill the prophecy and give it to Him.
12:32
He was seizing it with his own two hands.
12:34
He was using Esau's physical weakness as spiritual leverage.
12:38
Exactly. It's sanctified scheming, if you
12:41
want to call it that, which is still sin.
12:44
But here is the critical distinction the sources make,
12:46
and we have to get this right. Jacob is a Sinner who values the
12:51
right thing but pursues it in the wrong way.
12:54
Esau is a Sinner who values the wrong thing entirely.
12:57
OK, unpack that a little more. That's a big distinction.
12:59
Jacob looks at the birthright, the kora, and he says, I want
13:03
that more than anything in the world.
13:05
I'll cheat for it, I'll lie for it, I'll be in a brotherly
13:07
monster for it. Now that's bad ethics,
13:09
absolutely. But it shows you where his heart
13:12
is. He knows what the treasure is.
13:13
He has the right value but the wrong method.
13:15
Exactly. Esau looks at that same
13:18
birthright, that same treasure, and says, what's this worth?
13:21
A bowl of soup sold. So the indictment against Esau
13:25
isn't that he was hungry, it's the exchange rate, he said in
13:28
his own heart. Yes, that's it.
13:30
And let's talk about that birthright for a second, because
13:32
I think modern listeners, you hear that and you just think,
13:34
OK, so he gets double the money in the well when Dad dies.
13:37
Right. Big deal.
13:38
Who cares? Go out and make your own money.
13:39
But in the patriarchal era, this is before the Levitical
13:43
priesthood was established at Mount Sinai, the father of the
13:46
clan was the priest. He was the mediator between God
13:50
and the family. So the birthright was a
13:51
spiritual office. It was the spiritual headship.
13:55
The holder of the birthright would become the one to offer
13:57
sacrifices. He would be the one to carry the
14:00
oral tradition of creation and the flood and the promise to
14:03
Abraham. He was the conduit of the entire
14:06
Abrahamic covenant. So Esau isn't just selling a
14:09
bigger bank account, he's resigning his priesthood.
14:11
He is effectively saying I do not want to be the man who
14:14
stands before God for this family.
14:16
I would rather eat lunch. That makes the text
14:19
significantly darker. I mean way darker.
14:21
It does. And now look at his logic, his
14:23
rationalization in verse 32. Behold, I am about to die.
14:29
Now let's challenge that for a second.
14:30
Was he really about to die? I.
14:33
I highly doubt it. He's not lost in the wilderness,
14:35
he's in the main encampment of a wealthy patriarch.
14:38
There are servants around. Abraham was wealthy.
14:40
Isaac is wealthy. There is bread, there is water.
14:43
He's probably just hypoglycemic and being dramatic.
14:47
It's what one source called the drama of the flesh.
14:50
This is a key insight from the psychological analysis and our
14:52
sources. Sin always, always
14:55
catastrophizes the present need in order to justify the
14:58
transgression. Give me an example of that.
15:00
I am dying is a lie he tells himself to make the trade
15:03
permissible. It's the same logic as if I
15:06
don't look at this pornography, I'll literally explode.
15:08
If I don't embezzle this money from work, my family will be
15:11
ruined. Precisely.
15:12
We convinced ourselves that the immediate felt need is a matter
15:16
of life and death, so that spiritual laws and future
15:19
promises no longer seem to apply.
15:21
Esau equates his hunger pangs with imminent death, which then
15:25
allows him to equate the soup with life itself.
15:28
If a spiritual promise cannot feed my belly right now, at this
15:31
very second, it is worthless. That is the definition of
15:34
worldliness, judging the eternal by the standard of the
15:37
immediate. If God's promise doesn't fix my
15:40
problem right now, then I have no use for.
15:43
It. And so Jacob, being Jacob, makes
15:45
him swear an oath. He locks it in.
15:47
And he swears he sells the eternal for the immediate.
15:49
He treats the holy as a common commodity to be traded for a
15:53
meal. And then he eats.
15:55
And this leads us to part 4, which the source describes as
15:58
the verdict. And I found this section on the
16:00
grammar just fascinating. It's devastating, isn't it?
16:03
The Hebrew text uses a chain of rapid fire verbs.
16:06
In Hebrew they're called way a call verbs, and they create a
16:08
sense of quick successive action.
16:10
It's just one thing after another.
16:12
It's like a machine. He ate, he drank, he rose, he
16:15
went his way. He despised.
16:17
It sounds fast even in English. Just boom boom boom boom.
16:20
Boom, boom, it's meant to. There is no pause, there is no
16:22
reflection, there is no oh man, what have I done?
16:26
He gulps it down, wipes his mouth, gets up, and just leaves.
16:30
The meal was just fuel, it wasn't fellowship.
16:33
And he treats this sacred transaction as casually, as if
16:36
he just bought a pair of sandals in the market.
16:38
That phrase, he went his way. That phrase really stuck out to
16:41
me. It's so final, like he just
16:43
moved on with his day. He.
16:45
Did. And that's the horror of it.
16:46
He didn't even realize what he lost.
16:49
He walked away from that tent feeling satisfied because his
16:52
belly was full while his soul had just been declared bankrupt.
16:55
And then the checks drops the final hammer.
16:58
Thus Esau despised his birthright.
17:00
That word despised is the absolute key to the entire
17:03
passage. It doesn't mean he stood up and
17:05
screamed I hate this birthright. It's terrible.
17:07
It wasn't an act of angry rebellion.
17:09
No, it means he treated it as weightless, as cheap, as
17:13
insignificant. He didn't value it.
17:15
You signed it. No worth.
17:17
He valued the soup more. That is the essence of despising
17:21
something. The sin wasn't just the act of
17:23
eating, it was the valuation. He put the promise of God on a
17:27
scale opposite a bowl of lentils and the lentils one.
17:30
That is what makes him, in the language of Hebrews, A profane
17:33
person. That brings us right into the
17:36
theological deep end, Part five. Yeah, because you can't read
17:39
this, especially in a Reformed context, without talking about
17:42
the doctrine of election. You really can't.
17:44
The sources immediately link this directly to Romans made
17:47
where Paul uses this exact story to explain God's sovereign
17:51
choice. Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.
17:55
Honestly, that verse scares people.
17:56
I mean, it should. It sounds so arbitrary.
17:58
It should scare us. In one sense, it completely
18:01
strips away our illusion of human autonomy.
18:03
But the objection I always hear, and if I'm being honest, the 1 I
18:06
feel in my own gut sometimes, is this.
18:09
If God had already decided before they were even born that
18:12
the older would serve the younger, did Esau ever really
18:15
stand a chance? Is he just a puppet in a tragedy
18:18
that was written by God from the beginning?
18:20
How do you answer that? That's the classic objection.
18:23
It's the fair question. And if you look at the classic
18:26
Reformed sources, specifically the way theologians like
18:29
Turretin or the Westminster Divine's handle this, they don't
18:32
shy away from that question at all.
18:34
They make a critical distinction between God's sovereign decree
18:37
and man's moral agency. OK, English please.
18:41
How does that actually work in the tent with Jacob and Esau?
18:44
OK. Let's walk through it.
18:46
Did God force Esau to sell the birthright?
18:49
No, Jacob made the offer and Esau accepted it.
18:52
Did God supernaturally make Esau hungry against his will?
18:55
Did God grab Esau's hand and force the spoonful of Stew into
18:59
his mouth? No.
19:00
The text is clear. Esau wanted the Stew.
19:02
He demanded it. That is the crux of the whole
19:04
thing. Esau acted strictly according to
19:07
his own nature. He wasn't a robot being
19:09
programmed to do something he didn't want to do.
19:11
He was a man who, in the deepest seat of his will, preferred the
19:14
creation to the Creator. So God's decree.
19:17
God's decree of rejection regarding Esau didn't
19:20
necessitate God putting evil into Esau's heart.
19:22
It simply involved God leaving Esau to his own desires, passing
19:26
him over. So God didn't have to push him
19:28
away from the birthright, he just had to not stop him from
19:31
running away from it. Himself exactly.
19:34
This is what theologians call preterition, or passing over.
19:37
God gave Esau exactly what Esau wanted, the Stew in the world it
19:42
represents. And he gave Jacob what Jacob
19:44
didn't naturally deserve, grace and the covenant.
19:48
That's a crucial distinction. Jacob is the anomaly here.
19:52
Esau is the default setting of the fallen human heart.
19:55
Yes, that is the take away from a reformed reading of this.
19:58
We aren't naturally Jacobs, who sometimes get corrupted and act
20:01
like Esos. We are all born Esos, every
20:04
single one of us. We are all born led by our
20:06
senses, demanding immediate gratification, despising the
20:09
unseen promises of God because we can't taste them right now.
20:12
So the miracle isn't that Esau was rejected.
20:15
No, the miracle is that Jacob was chosen.
20:17
Because again, Jacob was a schemer.
20:20
He was not a good guy in this story.
20:21
He was a Wretch, A manipulator. If election were based on merit,
20:25
on who was the better guy, God would have been done with this
20:27
entire family right here in Genesis 25.
20:30
The doctrine of unconditional election is actually the only
20:32
hope any of us have. Because if God waited for us to
20:35
be good enough to choose us. We'd all be trading our
20:39
birthrights for lentils every Tuesday afternoon, so.
20:42
Sovereignty doesn't negate responsibility.
20:44
Not at all. The text doesn't say thus Esau
20:47
fulfilled the prophecy. It says thus Esau despised.
20:50
He is held fully culpable. Hunger was the occasion for the
20:54
sin, but his worldly heart was the 'cause it wasn't an excuse,
20:58
it was a revelation of what was already inside him.
21:02
Now let's connect this to the rest of the Bible, because this
21:04
story doesn't just sit here in Genesis Part 6 Canonical
21:08
connections. The book of Hebrews gives us a
21:11
really scary warning, using Esau as the prime example.
21:15
Hebrews 12 verses 16 and 17. It warns us not to be sexually
21:19
immoral or unholy, like Esau, who sold his birthright for a
21:22
single meal. And then it says something that
21:24
scares a lot of people that he sought the blessing later with
21:27
tears but found no place for repentance.
21:29
What does that mean? I mean, did he try to repent and
21:31
God just said sorry too late, the doors closed.
21:34
Is that what's happening? That is a very common and I
21:37
think a terrifying misreading of the text.
21:40
We have to look very carefully what he was crying about.
21:43
The Greek grammatical structure there implies he was seeking the
21:46
blessing with tears, not seeking repentance with tears.
21:50
So he was crying about the consequences he lost, not the
21:53
sin he committed. Exactly.
21:55
Imagine a guy who gambles away his family's entire life savings
21:58
at a casino. He comes home, he's broke, and
22:01
he's crying. Is he crying because he sinned
22:03
against his family and against God?
22:05
Or is he crying because he's broke and his life is ruined?
22:08
Usually it's because he's broke. That was Esau.
22:11
He wanted the inheritance. He wanted the power and the
22:14
wealth. He wanted the stuff that came
22:16
with being the first born. But he had no appetite for the
22:18
God of the first born. He wanted the gift gift, but he
22:21
despised the giver, and God does not grant repentance to those
22:25
who only love his wallet. That is a sobering distinction.
22:27
It is now one of our sources brings us right into the modern
22:31
church. It talks about the modern red
22:32
Stew and this is where it gets very pointed.
22:36
This is where it gets uncomfortable for us today,
22:38
right? The source draws a direct and
22:41
unflinching line between Esau's bargain and the modern seeker
22:46
sensitive or purely pragmatic church movement.
22:48
OK, lay that out. How so?
22:51
We'll think about the trade. The birthright in this analogy
22:54
is the rich historic Christian faith.
22:57
It's robust theology, it's the Westminster Standards, it's deep
23:01
expository preaching that challenges you.
23:03
But that stuff is tent dwelling work, right?
23:06
It takes time, it takes effort, it's not always instantly
23:09
gratifying or entertaining. And the Stew, the Stew is what
23:11
works now. It's the immediate payoff.
23:13
It's entertainment. It's emotionalism.
23:15
It's light, fluffy, how to sermons, it's needs based
23:18
programming that caters to every felt need.
23:21
The critique from the source is that many churches look at the
23:23
culture and they use Esau's logic.
23:25
They say we are dying, we're becoming irrelevant.
23:28
If we don't give them the Stew, the entertainment, the felt need
23:30
stuff, we won't survive. So the logic is, what use is
23:34
this deep historic theology if the church building is empty?
23:37
Exactly. It is Esau's logic applied to
23:40
ecclesiology. We must trade the birthright of
23:43
doctrine to feed the immediate appetite for relevance and
23:47
numerical growth. And the result, the source
23:49
argues, is a church that might be full of people but is
23:52
spiritually starving to death. And.
23:54
What about on an individual level?
23:56
For the people listening to this?
23:57
What is the Reds do for them? For us, it's whatever you turn
24:02
to for immediate relief instead of turning to God.
24:05
For many men, the most obvious example is pornography.
24:08
I am stressed, I am tired, I'm lonely.
24:10
I need this release now. It's the immediate pleasure over
24:13
the eternal promise of purity. For others, it's screen time
24:16
just numbing out. Numbing out with alcohol.
24:18
Chasing career status because you need the validation today.
24:22
It's anything we treat as necessary for survival that
24:24
causes us to neglect the means of grace, prayer, scripture,
24:27
fellowship. So if I say to myself, I'm just
24:29
too tired to pray tonight, I need to binge watch this show
24:32
just to survive my week, I am making an ESAU calculation.
24:35
You are You are weighing communion with the eternal God
24:39
against flickering digital images, and the images are
24:42
winning in that moment. You are, in that small way,
24:45
despising the birthright. That is, yeah, that's really
24:49
convicting, but we can't leave it there.
24:51
We have to look at the hope and all this Part 7, the Christ
24:55
centered conclusion, because there's a true heir in
24:58
Scripture, a true first born, and it's not Jacob.
25:01
No, thank God it's not. The sources take us beautifully
25:04
from Genesis 25 all the way to Matthew chapter 4, Jesus in the
25:08
Wilderness. The temptation.
25:09
Think about the parallel. It's stunning.
25:11
Jesus has been fasting for 40 days.
25:13
He is genuinely starving, far more than Esau ever was.
25:16
He is in the field, so to speak, the desolate wilderness, and
25:20
Satan comes to him with the classic Esau temptation.
25:23
If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become
25:26
loaves of bread. Translation is you are the son,
25:29
you hold the birthright. Use your power, use your sonship
25:32
to get immediate relief. Satisfy your appetite now.
25:35
Here is your red Stew. You deserve it.
25:37
Exactly. And unlike ESAW, Jesus refuses.
25:41
He doesn't rationalize, He doesn't say, well, I'm about to
25:43
die. He quotes Scripture.
25:46
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
25:49
comes from the mouth of God. He valued the Father's word
25:52
above his own physical survival. He refused to let appetite rule,
25:56
he held fast to the birthright. He obeyed perfectly where Esau
25:59
failed completely and where we fail constantly.
26:02
And because he did that, because he held on, he secured the
26:06
inheritance for. Us and the gospel is that he
26:09
shares it, he doesn't hoard it. That is the glorious reversal.
26:13
Esau sold his birthright. Jacob stole the birthright.
26:15
But Jesus earned the birthright and then in grace freely gives
26:19
it to us. We become Co heirs with Christ.
26:21
He is the true bread. Yes, Esau ate the lentils and he
26:24
was hungry again the next day. But Jesus says I am the bread of
26:28
life. Whoever comes to me shall not
26:29
hunger. He offers us a deep, lasting
26:32
satisfaction that the red Stew of this world can never, ever
26:35
give. And that is the only way we can
26:37
actually say no to the Stew, isn't it?
26:39
It's not by just gritting our teeth and having more willpower,
26:41
it's by tasting something better.
26:43
It's the expulsive power of a new affection.
26:45
As Chalmers said, when you know the true value of the
26:48
birthright, when you know the value of being united to Christ,
26:51
the Stew starts to look like what it actually is.
26:55
Cheap, temporary, and ultimately worthless.
26:59
So as we close this deep dive, we want to leave you with a
27:01
final thought or provocation to think about this week.
27:03
We want you to look at your life this week, and specifically, we
27:06
want you to look at your life when you are tired.
27:08
That is the test. When you are exhausted, when the
27:11
world feels small and the pressure is high, what do you
27:15
run to for relief? What does your Reds do?
27:18
Identify it, name it, and then repent of the trade.
27:22
Don't be like Esau who just walked away indifferent.
27:25
Run to the true heir to Jesus, who has already secured your
27:28
inheritance for you. This has been reformed thinking.
27:31
Value the unseen over the scene. We'll see you next time.