Choosing Now Over Forever
Genesis 25:19–34 gives a raw, honest picture of humanity and a glorious picture of God. As the sermon notes, Scripture never hides human sin: “Esau sold his birthright for some stew… thus Esau despised his birthright.” The message shows how Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and Esau all fall into the same ancient trap—choosing immediate satisfaction over long‑term obedience. From Eve’s fruit to Esau’s stew, the pattern repeats: temporary pleasure over eternal inheritance. The sermon exposes how this same impulse lives in us, often hidden beneath our conscious thoughts, revealed every time we sin. Yet it also points us to the fix: faith in God’s better promises. Isaac learned to trust God rather than flee to Egypt, and God blessed him a hundredfold. “He will hold me fast,” the sermon reminds us, grounding our hope not in our strength but in Christ, who secures our inheritance forever.
Genesis 25 verses 19 to 34 and it's about the birth of Esau and Jacob. These are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son. Abraham fathered Isaac and Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebecca, the daughter of Bethuel, the Armenian from Padamaram, the sister of Laban the Armenian, to be his wife. And Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife. because she was barren and the Lord granted his prayer. And Rebecca, his wife, conceived. The children struggled together within her. And she said, if it is thus, why is this happening to me? So she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her, two nations are in your womb and two people from within you shall be divided and the one shall be stronger than the other. and the older shall serve the younger. When her days to give birth were completed, behold, there were twins in her womb. The first came out red, all of his body like a hairy cloak. So they called his name Esau. Afterward, his brother came out with his hand holding Esau's heel, so his name was called Jacob. Isaac was 60 years old when she bore them. When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents. Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebecca loved Jacob. Once when Jacob was cooking stew, Esau came in from the field and he was exhausted. And Esau said to Jacob, let me eat some of that red stew, for I am exhausted. Jacob said, sell me your birthright now. Esau said, I am about to die. Of what use is a birthright to me? Jacob said, swear to me now. So he swore to him. and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright. May the Lord add a blessing to the reading and the hearing of his word. Isaac's gonna bring us the message. Father God we just ask that your words will come forth from Isaac. Just give him a clear mind to speak your word. Give us clear ears to hear and a will to do your word. Thank you for his willingness to do this. Just bless us all in Jesus name. Good morning. Hope you're all doing well. I've got a super epic PowerPoint coming up in a minute. m But just as I was reading through this passage to bring something to you guys this morning, I found something that I really love about the Bible. um And that is that it just tells it how it is, you know? It's not like how when we tell stories today, we like to leave out the bits that make us look kind of bad, you know? We like to use the fancy and nice language to cover up what we're actually talking about. But the Bible never does this and I love that. All throughout chapters 25 and 26 of Genesis alone, we find sinners like you and I doing exactly what sinners do, sinning. um And the Bible isn't shy about it at all. It doesn't say that Esau did what he had to do to survive, okay? It doesn't say that. It simply says what happened. Esau sold his birthright for some stew. It doesn't say that Esau was dealing with some trauma over the birthright issue. It doesn't say that. says thus Esau despised his birthright, which was, as we will find out, an ignorant sin. So nowhere will you find the Bible using fluff. Words that mean nothing and they just cushion the meaning underneath them, right? The Bible doesn't use fluff and I love that and we're about to see just how much it disregards fluff. So the reason I love this is because it paints a realistic picture of man and a realistic picture of God more importantly. There are no heroes in the Bible, right? There's no heroes except for its author, God himself. It's like Tolkien being the hero in The Lord of the Rings. because the characters have started misbehaving. It's like that. God, the author of the entire plot that we call life, is the hero of the story, which is great news because I certainly couldn't be and I'm pretty sure, offence, none of you guys could be either. I'm sorry, but... um So what is this realistic picture that it's painting? ah Well, it's people, since the beginning, have been prone to instant gratification Pleasure now, over the long term good. I've fallen for the trick many times myself, the illusion that if I get that thing that I want right now, I will be satisfied forever, I'll be good. We know full well that these things have never and will never satisfy us, and yet, we still chase them. Well, if I just get that new car, then I'll be happy. Or once I get this or that job, I'll be all set, you know? It's extremely tempting to think this way. Perhaps, now perhaps you're thinking, I would never say that. I would never say I would be happy if I just had this car. I always say, I always tell people, God is all I need, right? I would never think or say such a thing. Well, that's the thing. Neither would I. No one would actually ever say or think that. I would never actually say it out loud or think it because it lives in me much deeper than my conscious thought. And it lives deep down in all of us. And the reason it's safe to say such a thing is because every time that we sin, this is exactly what we're doing. We're choosing temporary, meaningless satisfaction now over eternal satisfaction and joy forever. We sin when we care a whole lot more about our little picture than God's big picture. And guess what Romans chapter 3 verse 23 tells us? all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And that's how I know that it lives deeply in all of us. So we're going to dive into our passage now. And as we do, we're on, here we go. We're going to cover four topics. So we've got the what. So what does this sin look like? You know, where is, where does it happen in the Bible? Then we've got the why. Why do people do it? Why do people do this sin all the time? The result? What is the consequences of this sin? And then the fix. What are we going to do about it? Or more importantly, spoiler alert, what is God going to do about it? So there are a few things to look closely at in these verses that I was just amazed by as I studied these actually. Firstly in verse 28, so Genesis 25, 28. Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebecca loved Jacob. Now, I'm no parent myself, okay? Not yet anyway, maybe, you know, hopefully one day, but I'm pretty sure that rule number two of raising kids after keep them alive is don't play favorites, okay? I'm pretty sure. Now a fun fact about me, if you didn't know, is I, like Jacob and Esau, am a twin. I have a twin sister who's six minutes younger than me. So it makes perfect sense to me that Isaac would prefer his firstborn son Esau. Clearly there's something about firstborn twins. The secondborn twin just doesn't have, you Maybe Esau stole all the good genes in the womb like I did, right? Now, of course, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. My parents didn't play favorites between me and my sister at all. They loved us equally. My little brother on the other hand was and is absolutely their favorite, but that's fine. I'm working through that. No one's perfect, you know. We'll talk about it later, but seriously, all you have to do is consider the outcome of Isaac and Rebecca's favoritism to see that it clearly leads to destruction and division within families. mean, if you look further into Genesis, I think it's around chapter 37 or something, um when Jacob, he has a son called Joseph, and Joseph is his favorite, and bad things happen, basically. So this kind of starts here and just continues on, and it's always bad when there's favorites, okay? um But the reason I bring this up, and what is particularly interesting, is the reason behind Isaac's favoritism for Esau. It says that Isaac loved Esau because the aid of his game. Now does that sound kind of familiar to Esau's sin? Isaac's sin of favoritism came from choosing the immediate satisfaction over the lasting. Isaac favored Esau over his brother because of food, basically. It's now not so surprising that Esau's weakness seems also to be his stomach. But let's take it back further, all the way to the start of history. Remember the fall. What essentially is the choice put before Eve? The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, food, or obedience to God. And what does she choose? Well, we all know what they both choose. Genesis chapter three verse six says, so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise. She took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. So the fruit was a delight to the eyes, right? It had the lure of immediate satisfaction that a lot of things today have. It looked delicious and so she just had to have it, right? They both just had to have it. um So what's my point here? Food is bad or something? No, obviously that's not the message, of course. You need food to live. But the point being made here isn't even about food, right? Food is representing something. Sin has always been and will always be an issue of choosing our now over God's forever. Adam and Eve chose the fruit over obedience to God. Isaac chose delicious game and therefore favoritism over equal love for his sons. Esau chose stew over his birthright. These are all different stories with the same message. This is what happens when you choose immediate pleasures of the world over obedience to God, over love and over your inheritance in Christ. You know the interesting thing is that food, as I kind of said, is not inherently It's not inherently sinful. Food is delicious. uh And it was not inherently sinful for Eve to want a delicious looking fruit, right? It's because she was commanded not to eat it. It was not inherently sinful for Isaac to enjoy his son's game. And it wasn't inherently sinful for Esau to eat stew. These desires, on their own, are completely fine. But what is not fine, and why these things were sinful, is because... They were inordinate desires, desires in the incorrect order. Their priorities were all out of whack. The fruit, the game, the stew, they all represent this. The issue is not the object of our choosing, but the alternative we are trading it for. We are not sinning by enjoying pleasures here on earth, okay? They were given to us to enjoy. God didn't accidentally make food delicious, right? He didn't accidentally make romance exciting or like friendship delightful. None of that was an accident. um we are sinning, however, if these desires ever take the place of what ought to be our ultimate desire. We are sinning when we expect these desires to fill the hole in us that only God can fill. So, bit of a summary of the what. This is what happens when we choose immediate pleasure of our inheritance in Christ. We are sinning when we expect these desires to fill the hole in us that only God can fill. So the question now is, why do we do this? Let's move on to the why. Why do we struggle so much with this? Well, I think the answer, or part of the answer, can be found in verses 29 to 32. Once when Jacob was cooking stew, Esau came in from the field and he was exhausted. And Esau said to Jacob, let me eat some of that red stew for I'm exhausted. Therefore his name was called Edom. Jacob said, sell me your birthright now. Esau said, I'm about to die. Of what use is a birthright to me? Here's our answer. In the moment, the little things become our big things. In the moment, Esau's little thing, his grumbling stomach, his flesh, overrode his big thing, his birthright. The idea of picking Stu over a birthright, or maybe telling white lies over being honest, or taking some me time over sticking to your commitments. These ideas, when you're well-fed and you're comfortable and you're in a good mood, all that, it seems easy to pick the right thing in those situations. But when we get into the thick of the moment when we're feeling hungry like Esau was, when we're feeling grumpy and we're worried, scared, lazy. Suddenly the easiest option is the satisfaction now option. Esau was in a state of extreme hunger and if he's anything like me, it probably also meant he was very grumpy. The little things like a meal and the big things like a birthright suddenly lost their proper order. Now the big thing for Esau was food. And the little thing in comparison was his birthright. When Esau says, I'm about to die, of what use is a birthright to me? What he's really saying, and something that we've all said, is my immediate satisfaction is more important than following God in this moment. And like I said, that's something we're all guilty of saying. But you may say, okay, but I would never choose Stu over my birthright. That was just downright stupid. Bit of a silly, silly choice, okay? But guess what? You've disregarded your inheritance for much less. Okay? Maybe you just wanted one more less than innocent glance at that good looking guy or girl. Maybe you just wanted to get the last word in during that argument to really stick it to that person. Perhaps you've said something you know is wrong because gossiping is way more fun than keeping your mouth shut. In those moments, We choose the most ridiculous and petty things over our inheritance. Things arguably more stupid than Stu, over our birthright as children of God. So the why? In summary, the little things become the big things and the big things become the little things. In the moment, we get caught up, we get hungry, we get grumpy, like I said, and suddenly our inheritance of Christ is like, yeah, that's cool, but that's later. Right now, this is what I want. So now the result. What is the consequences of this? Where does this lead? When we continually choose immediate satisfaction over God, only death follows. Consider our earliest example, Adam and Eve. God said in Genesis 2, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. God's words were not empty and they never are. When Eve ate of the fruit and shared it with Adam, death followed immediately after because of sin. When Isaac showed favoritism for Esau because he ate of his game, division and destruction came shortly after. And when Esau traded his birthright for the stew, hatred and bitterness toward Jacob and God's promise, came shortly after. When we choose to lie to protect our image rather than tell the truth, anxiety, fear and guilt come shortly after. When we choose to insult others rather than bless them, bitterness follows. When we choose to treat people as an object for our gratification rather than men and women made in the image of God, destruction and pain only follow. And since We have all done these things before. Death must follow for us too. And that's what hell is. The death that God warned Adam and Eve about. Yeah, that is what this death is. And in Romans chapter 6 verse 23 it says, the wages of sin is death. Okay? So, that's my receipt, that's my proof. Death will follow. But it doesn't only lead to eternal death later, right? Leads to death now too. Your life will be unbelievably shallow. Imagine you go to the gym for the first time ever. and you pick up a dumbbell and you start doing bicep curls and then you go into a few squats and you finish it all up with some bench press. No one in their right mind is upset when they walk out of their first gym session looking exactly how they looked when they walked in. Nobody expects their biceps to suddenly be humongous and their legs looking like tree trunks after one gym session. Nobody expects to be able to walk out of their first gym session and lift a car. Unless maybe you grew up on a farm and you can just do that already. This is the madness that we believe when we choose the worthless, the immediate, the sinful things expecting to be fulfilled the way that only God can fulfill us. So the result in summary, when we sin death follows. Choosing our now over God's forever leads to death. Death not only here, but forever. So, where should we look? Where can our ultimate satisfaction and fulfillment be found? What is the fix? The Bible tells us that it is found only, of course, in God. The question is, in what way? How do we actually, practically, choose our eternal inheritance over temporary pleasure? How do we actually experience our fulfillment in God rather than the world? It's all well and good for me to tell you, need to do that, but how do we even do that? So let's go back to the start of Genesis 26 for a bit of a hint at this. Isaac wants to leave the promised land and he intends to head to Egypt due to a famine in the land. Notice again the theme of food coming through here. The famine would have had Isaac worried, so he intends to leave. But what does God say to him? Do not go down to Egypt, dwell in the land of which I shall tell you. So, journey in this land and I will be with you and bless you. For to you and to your offspring, I will give all these lands and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father. God says, I will fulfill your desires and your needs, not the world, but me. Then what happens? Does God deliver on his promise? We learned in the kids talk this morning that of course he did, he always does. Verse 12 and 13 says, And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him and the man became rich and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. So what's happening here that we can actually learn from? Well, this is an example of how someone overcame the allure of immediate satisfaction. Perhaps Isaac has finally learned his lesson. How does Isaac overcome it? What's the key here? The key? is faith. He trusts that God's plan, God's words and God's intentions are better than his. He thinks that going to Egypt would solve all his problems, that he would have plenty of food and wouldn't have to worry, but to go to Egypt would be a sin because he's been commanded not to. Isaac chooses to stay. He chooses to have faith in God's inheritance and receives his reward later by reaping a hundredfold of what he sows. So we must trust in God's plan, in God's design, and God's inheritance over what seems right to us. We must resist the temptation to follow and desire the immediate, the easy, and the meaningless pleasures of the real pleasure that is found in Christ and obedience to Him. Trust, like Isaac, that God has got our real benefit in mind when we are forced to wait. What God has in store for us The pleasure that can be found in our inheritance with Christ is beyond our wildest dreams of perfection. Psalm chapter 16 verse 11 says, make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. You hear that? Pleasures forevermore. These kinds of pleasures are the ones God promises you. Lasting ones. Think of some of the most amazing, breathtaking, beautiful times in your life. That beautiful view of the mountains you once saw that just struck you with an overwhelming awe. That moment you've never felt more loved by someone you also love. That time you and all the people you care about were all in one room, laughing, smiling, talking, having a great time. Those times you felt God's presence so strongly. These are the times when we think, man, I hope this never ends. But imagine that these times that you wish would never end actually never ended. The times wherein you see a glimpse of heaven, a peek behind the curtain, if you will, into the pleasures to come. And remember, it is just that. It is just a glimpse. Theologian J.I. Packer once said, Hearts on earth may say in the course of a joyful experience, I don't want this ever to end, but invariably it does. The hearts of those in heaven say, I want this to go on forever and it will. There is no better news than this. Isn't that true? He's right. There's no better news than this. Did you know that all your longings All your desires, the ones that come and go and the ones that stick around, are ultimately satisfied in Christ. We desire love, but the only truly unconditional love you can ever find is in Christ. We desire comfort. God promises us that in Him is lasting and real comfort. We desire food and drink. You know what God says? that He is the bread of life and He is the living water. Come to Him and thirst no more. What the world can offer us right now has got nothing on what God can offer us both now and forever. The blessings of heaven do not start after we die. They start now. We are already in communion with the Holy God. We are already unconditionally, so purely loved by the ultimate source of all love. We are already nourished by the source of all nourishment. Believe this, trust in this, and watch as you finally see the pleasures of the world to be what they are. Good things, but little things. So in summary, the fix, faith that God's pleasures are greater than any the world has to offer is the key to focusing on our inheritance. It helps us keep the little things little and the big things big. Now, finally, while we are like Esau in the way that we often choose the temporary over the lasting, this is where the similarities begin and end. Of course, when I say that we choose immediate pleasure over our inheritance, I don't mean we are literally giving up or losing our inheritance. What I mean by that is we are considering immediate satisfaction as more important than our inheritance. You see, this is the beauty of our salvation in Christ. Unlike Esau, who actually lost his birthright and then later his blessing from his father, we are not in danger of this. Our inheritance in Christ, once received by believing in what he did for us on the cross, can never be taken away from us. Even though we sin against him, though our desires get out of the proper order, Christ remains ours. Our inheritance is never going anywhere. Ultimately, Jesus Christ has fixed it for us. The fix is Jesus. I'm sure you could have guessed. Unlike Esau, we cannot lose our inheritance. Christ will hold us fast. So what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. This is all the more reason we must have faith in our inheritance. This is all the more reason to believe God when He says that what He has to offer is infinitely greater than anything the world has to offer. All the more reason to love Him, worship Him and trust Him. If the museos want to come up and just get ready for the next song. Now remember that God, the author of all, has come into the world, He created to make it right. Christ is the fix. And the song we're about to sing reminds us of these truths in a beautiful way, I think. We're going to sing, He Will Hold Me Fast, but here's just some of the lyrics that I just loved in the first verse or so. When I fear my faith will fail, Christ will hold me fast. This faith that keeps us from choosing immediate satisfaction over our inheritance. When that faith, when we fear that faith will fail, he will hold us fast. When the tempter would prevail, he will hold me fast. I could never keep my hold through life's fearful path, for my love is often cold. He must hold me fast. Pray with me and then we'll sing this song together. Lord, I just thank you so much for your word. I thank you that we can read about Isaac and Jacob and Esau and Lord that we can learn the lessons that you put there for us. Lord, I thank you that your word is so deep and wide that we can look into it and find new meaning every time. Lord, I pray that in those moments where the little things, where we're tempted to make the little things our big things Lord, that you would remind us that our inheritance in you is all we have really. that our inheritance in you is beyond our wildest dreams of perfection, Lord. Lord, I pray that you would help us to remember that in you is pleasures forevermore. The pleasures that the world has to offer are nothing compared to what we can find in you. In your name I pray, amen.