Truth for Understanding Your World (Part 17) – What Good is a Birthright to Me? – Genesis 25
September 25, 2016Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Speaker: Jerry Cisar
Birthrights and parental blessings are ideas that are culturally foreign to most of us. Given a choice between a good meal when we are hungry… even famished… many in the church today might say with Esau (25:32), “What good is the birthright to me?”
Ahh, but we do. In fact, the NT condemns Esau for this attitude in Hebrews 13:16-17:
See that no one …is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. 17 Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. Even though he sought the blessing with tears, he could not change what he had done.
Not only is Esau condemned, but we are warned not to do the same, lest we find ourselves in the same condition. This is serious stuff.
What is a birthright? What does it have to do with the blessing? Why should I want it? How do we get it? In Genesis 25, we are going to learn about why Jacob received the blessing, why Esau despised it, why Jacob wanted it so badly. We will learn a lot about how we come into the covenant and blessing. We will also learn about what our attitude toward the blessing should be. And finally, we will talk about why this issue of birthright is so important to our Christian faith.