My husband is a deer hunter. No, he doesn’t hunt bambi; he hunts the big one. We eat deer meat year round. Deer steaks, deer chili, deer spaghetti, deer jerky–you just can’t beat my husband’s deer jerky.
Esau was a deer hunter, a man’s man. He loved the great outdoors. I can just picture him as a big woolly backwoodsman. The Bible even says his hands were hairy.
Esau came in from hunting one day, famished from hunger. In a moment of lust for food, he gave away the blessing of the firstborn to his younger brother Jacob for a bowl of stew. Then he forgot all about it. One day his father Isaac told Esau, “Take your weapons, your bow and arrows, and go hunting and bring me some of that deer that I love to eat so my soul may bless you before I die.” Then Jacob and his mother Rebekah tricked Isaac into giving the blessing to Jacob.
Isaac didn’t completely disown Esau. Esau still got a blessing. Hebrews 11:20 says that Isaac blessed both Jacob and Esau. In spiritual terms, Esau lost out on being in the lineage of King David and Jesus. Jacob became the ancestor of Jesus, because of that firstborn blessing.
Hebrew 12:16-17 says “Lest there be any…profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.”
Phil 3:19 speaks of a people “Whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.”
What a shame to be so concerned with natural things that he gave up the greatest opportunity of a lifetime, to be the ancestor of our Lord Jesus Christ, for a bowl of beans.
How many opportunities are we missing because we have our mind on things of this world and not on things of heaven?
Jacob possessed Esau’s blessing. Who is possessing your blessing?
When we moved to Ar., was shocked they let school out during Deer Season, so the kids can help put Meat in their freezer for winter, yes, it’s a very poor state, but some really grateful and generous people that live in Ar. It’s kind of like when you are POOR all your life, you don’t mind it all, don’t try to do any better, plus the people are so polite, the kids especially.
Ar. Golden Buddy, Sharon