Let’s Make a Deal

by Tad Lindley

The younger of the twin brothers was named Jacob, he was a mama’s boy. He liked to hang out in camp all the time. The older twin, Esau, was a nukalpiaq, spending his days hunting game to feed the family. The younger boy according to the custom of the people would receive very little when their father, the chief, eventually died. The older twin would become the next chief and inherit the wealth of his father. This was his birthright. Being the first one born, it was his right to inherit the status and the possessions.

The birthright for a bowl of beans

One day Esau had been out hunting. Jacob had been home making red lentil soup. Esau was tired and hungry when he arrived home. The smell of fresh bean soup met his nostrils.

“Feed me some of that soup, I’m about to pass out from hunger!” Esau said.

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 sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.

Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright. (Genesis 25:31-34)

Burned bad on the birthright

Anyway you look at it, Esau made a horrible deal. He traded away his future for nothing more than a meal that temporarily satisfied his hunger. Don’t you know that Esau must have been hungry again a few hours later? The short satisfaction of the soup was gone and so was his future as chief and overseer of all that his father had.

That’s easy for you to see

For most of us looking from the inside out, Esau made and incredibly bad deal. He traded virtually nothing for almost everything. Most small children could recognize what a bad deal this was. Unfortunately, have not you and I also made some pretty bad deals in our own lives. Haven’t we traded short term pleasure for long term pain? How many folks in jail, some for many years, started out thinking, “I’ll just trade an evening for a glass of homebrew,” and before it was all over they found out that there was more to the deal than they imagined. They weren’t just trading a sober evening away, they were trading away their children to the foster care system, and their own freedom to the department of corrections, not to mention the pain inflicted on victims.

We can probably all think of men who had a hard working wife who kept a good house and taught the children about Jesus. Yet like Esau they came to a point in time where the man said to himself, “Behold, I’m dying of loneliness, who cares about my wife and kids!” And he trades a stable hard working wife for a partygirl who won’t even cut fish. Or the wives that leave a good provider with a houseful of kids only to shack up with a man who is primarily interested in bowls, Black Ops, and basketball. We watch these deals dumbfounded, and we wonder, “How could they do that? Can’t they see what a mistake it is?” And yet none of us is immune, because sin is a skillful salesman and we always come out with a bad deal.

Why do we do it?

We do it, because we are descended from Adam and Eve. Remember them? They are our many times great-grandparents who once got suckered into the worst deal ever made. The serpent talked to the woman in the Garden of Eden. Again, to us it is so obviously a terrible deal. All the woman knew was good, and so the salesman tells her, “Sweetie, when you eat the fruit from this tree, you won’t just know good, you’ll know good and evil.” If I’m understanding scripture correctly, our great-ap’a-Adam was salivating over it right alongside of her, and so they made the worst deal ever made in human history. Whereas they formerly knew only the holiness of God, now they would know about murder, about molesting, about addiction, about shame, about hate, and on and on until 2016 when we as their descendents still continue to get burned in deals with the devil.

A better deal

Our only hope is the fact that once upon a time, God came to earth manifest in the flesh (I Timothy 3:16). At that time, he preached the gospel of the kingdom of God, he was brutalized by the Romans, crucified, and buried. From the standpoint of the world, it looked like Jesus Christ was a colossal failure. What nobody could have realized, is that he was making what appeared to be an impossibly horrible deal, but in reality, he was purchasing our salvation with his own blood (Acts 20:28). And when he arose from the dead on the third day, it was so that we too, who have lived from one bad deal with sin to the next, might rise up with him to walk in newness of life. Now that’s a deal.

Reverend Tad Lindley is a minister at the United Pentecostal Church in Bethel, Alaska.

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