I am an Esau too?

I am getting along pretty well with Kent Hughes' Genesis, Beginning and Blessing and finally met Esau for all that he was. Just like Lot, I never identified with Esau until now.

Here is what Hughes said: Esau despised his birthright. He was no villain, but he was young, attractive with an unbridled nature. He was spontaneous, extroverted, impulsive outdoorsman - a good guy, as we say. A prince of men, prime favourite both with men, and women, and children, with a good word and a good gift from the field for them all. But the tragedy was, that was just about the sum total of who the man was. He was a man of the present and cared not at all about the covenant's future promises of Canaan and a multitude of descendants. What good were they in the present? Even the firstborn entitlement to a double portion of the inheritance meant nothing now. But he did become a good man after a 20-year hiatus and received Jacob with much grace.

So how are we like Esau? Do Christian things mean little or much to us? Is heaven faraway and disconnected to real life? Do we despised our heritage, both the biblical heritage and our own Christian heritage?

I just found our that King Herod was an Edomite, a descendant of Esau and Hughes said this well, that the "ultimate sons of Esau and Jacob (Herod the King and Christ the King) testified to the significance of the path we take up...For every generation, the challenge is the same - to see that there is more to life than a meal, or a video game, or baseball, or a party, or a movie, or an indulgence of some kind - to see, as Paul puts it, that the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."

Are we selling what God has given us through his Word, our churches, and our families for a cheap pleasure?

pearlie