Never Sell Your Birthright for Anything

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Don’t Sell Your Spiritual Blessings for Anything
And Jacob said,” Sell me this day thy birthright”.

Genesis 25 v 31

The Bible is full of powerful positive models and powerful negative examples. We ought to learn from both these templates of human behaviour and character. Esau was so hungry after returning from a day’s work in the field. Jacob had a bowl of lentils prepared. Esau pleaded for the bowl of lentils. Jacob asked him to sell his birthright as the first born son to him. Esau felt that he would die of hunger and what good would his birthright do in that condition. He agreed to sell his birthright for a bowl of soup. Jacob taking advantage of Esau’s lack of self control is also a powerful negative example. It later led to greater duplicity when he succumbed to his mother Rebecca’s sinister plan to rob Esau of his father’s blessings by acting as if he was Esau. Jacob’s wandering in the wild as a fugitive after his father Isaac’s death and his encounters with the angels of the Lord had a salutary effect on him and he turns into a powerful positive model. He began to realize that spiritual blessings are not something you can buy or sell. You can believe and receive it. You can deceive or be deceived and lose it. Our spiritual blessings are priceless. We can’t put a price tag on it. We can’t exchange or forfeit it for anything on earth.

The bowl of soup is a metaphor for profit or wealth or money or privilege or advantage or favour of this world. Esau became a powerful negative example of a person who preferred his mundane gain to eternal blessings. In exchanging his birthright in return for a bowl of food, he was exchanging the satisfaction of his fleshly appetite with the possibility of the fulfilment of his earthly as well as eternal destiny. Other powerful negative examples are Judas selling Jesus for a handful of silver coins, Ananias and Saphira withholding part of the proceeds of the sale of property and lying about it. The powerful negative examples are templates to teach us what we should not do or become. Judas a person blessed to be a disciple brought upon himself the severest of curses by betraying Jesus, very God and Messiah, the Prince of Heaven, Architect of the created universe. Ananias and Saphira were a couple blessed to be part of the early church, included among the first fruit of the harvest of faith but condemned themselves by lying about the sale of their own property. Jacob brought a curse upon himself by his cunning and his duplicity.

The Bible at the same time has powerful positive models for us to emulate: that of Daniel and his integrity, his practical spirituality, his wisdom and humility, that of Joseph, his purity, his capacity to forgive, his wisdom, that of St Paul, his zeal, his scholarship, his faith, willingness to sacrifice and endure hardship for the cause. Even today in our contemporary world, in our own circles, we have many powerful positive models to emulate and powerful negative examples to learn some lessons of what we should avoid at any cost. As we actively learn from these templates of human behaviour and character, the temple of God is built in and with our lives.

Prateep V Philip