Genesis chapter 25 and verse
29. And Jacob sawed pottage. Now let me just immediately say
that this is basically he's making a sort of porridge or a lentil
soup. So that's what this little phrase
means. Jacob, one of the two sons of
Isaac, one of the twin boys, is making soup. He sawed pottage. And Esau came from the field,
and he was faint. And Esau said to Jacob, Feed
me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage, for I am faint. Therefore was his name called
Edom. 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 swear unto him, and
he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and
pottage of lentils, and he did eat and drink and rose up and
went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright. So here we see a little incident
in the lives of these two boys. And it is perhaps the case that
they weren't very old. There is a suggestion that they
may only have been in the middle of their teenage years at this
time, although that's just speculation. But you'll remember with me that
it had taken 20 years for Rebecca, their mother, to become pregnant. But when she did become pregnant,
there were two babies in her body and her pregnancy, it seems,
was peculiarly difficult. twin boys were born to Rebecca. Esau was the first to be born,
with Jacob following, grasping or holding tightly onto Esau's
heel. Now, twins are very rare in the
Bible. I don't know whether you've ever
thought about that before. But there is only one other set
of twins mentioned in the whole of the Bible. And that other
set is a man called Phares and his brother Zarah. And they were
the children of Judah and Tamar, And that is an account that we
read about in Genesis chapter 38. And in some senses, that
was a peculiar set of circumstances with respect to that birth as
well. So twins are rare in the Bible. And if we might be allowed to
speculate a little bit, if this really was so rare, this birth
of Rebecca's twins may well have never happened before in the
history of the world. This may have been the very first
birth of twins and so if that is the case then again it shows
just how significant this birth was. It certainly appears that
Rebecca's birth was special, the birth of these boys by Rebecca
was special in the way in which she describes speaking to other
women about it and then taking her concerns to the Lord. We spoke about that last time. But the normal questions Well,
the normal answers about birthrights may have been confused a little
bit by the birth of these two boys together. And it's perhaps
for that reason that the question of birthright is so prevalent
in the minds of these young men. With birthright came privileges. Privileges of inheritance, privileges
of priority in the family, and authority in the family. And
if these two boys were born together, as it were, then some of those
questions may have been challenged. When two are born together, who
is the first to be born? Who carries the birthright? Well,
In the case of Esau and Jacob, that question had even more significance. Because who was to be the heir
of God's promise to Abraham? Abraham was their grandfather.
Whose children, Esau or Jacob's, would possess the promised land?
In whose line would the coming Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ,
be found? And let me add another thought
to this question. Isaac assumed that he knew the
answer. He took it for granted that because
Esau came first, Esau had the birthright. But Rebecca knew
differently. Rebecca knew God's mind in this
matter. And she knew that though the
outward appearance may have suggested that the rites of birth lay with
Esau, in fact, even although he was older by only moments,
Yet God's choice, God's blessing and God's promise fell on Jacob
because the elder would serve the younger. Rebecca knew that.
And Paul tells us the meaning of that little phrase. In Romans
9, verse 11, we're told there, The Apostle Paul is explaining
the doctrine of election and the purposes of God in election
and salvation. And he says this, for the children
being not yet born, having neither done any good or evil, that the
purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but
of him that calleth, it was said unto her, that is to Rebekah
their mother, the elder shall serve the younger. So Rebekah
knew that the blessing, the birthright, lay with Jacob. Now I don't know
how much Rebekah revealed of that knowledge. But perhaps that
little phrase at the end of verse 28 in chapter 25 tells us something
when it says, Rebecca loved Jacob. Jacob sought, right from an early
age, the respectability that the title carried of firstborn. and it seems by the way in which
the subject is raised over the matter of a plate of lentil soup
that the brothers had surely talked about this before. Jacob
was wise enough to realise and to sense that Esau thought little
of this birthright and that it might just be possible to get
it from him. and so it proved to be. For a
meal, for a simple dinner of lentils, Esau sold his inheritance. And that act showed that he despised
his birthright. That's what we're told in verse
34. He thought nothing about it. We're told that he rose up and
went his way. After he'd eaten his soup, after
he'd had his lentil potage, he got up and he left, carrying
on as if nothing had changed, nothing had happened. But for
that bowl of soup, he had given up his birthright. And I don't
think that it would be too much to say that he had already decided
that the promises that God had given to his grandfather weren't
anything that he was going to be bothered about. God's covenant
promises were in the mind of Esau just stories, worthless
and meaningless, in much the same way as most people today
couldn't care less about the death of the Lord Jesus Christ
or the gospel of God. Esau thought, it doesn't matter
to me, all these superstitious stories. Esau betrayed a fleshly
unbelief and a vanity He said, my tummy is more important than
my faith. My body and my flesh means more
to me than those old stories. And what I want now, right now,
in this moment, to eat and to take away my hunger, that trumps
everything. I don't need God, I don't care
about God's ways, I'm not hungering after righteousness, I'm hungering
after lentil soup. When the Lord Jesus Christ died
on the cross, he did so to fulfil God's purpose of salvation. He did so to accomplish God's
promise to his chosen people. And he did so to save his people
from their sins. On hearing that, you might ask
yourself a question. Do I care about all that stuff? Or is it just another grandfather
story? May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us.