I want to talk to you this morning about the most hated man in the whole Bible - Genesis 25:27-34.
I want to talk to you about decisions that we make, and what a lot of things come down to. The Bible is full of awesome things; people fulfilling great potential, and doing great things for God - like the stories of David and Goliath.
Normally when we retell (or illustrate) the story of David, we make him a small, little boy. David was like a trained assassin - he killed a lion and a bear with his bare hands! This was a guy that you just wouldn't want to run into. He just happened to be the youngest, the runt of the litter, so to speak, in terms of age and hierarchy. However, he goes up against Goliath; so no matter how bad David was - he was the underdog.
Instead of following the crowd (of the whole armies of Israel), he steps up and says: I am going to make a difference; and He steps out to do it. Something happens inside of us, when we read stories like that, and we go: yes!
Like Noah standing against the whole culture – he would have been ridiculed, and made fun of. I loved Evan Almighty, because it retold the story of what would have happened if a person in power started building a boat proclaiming there's a flood.
Yet you read it, and you see it all work out, and you're like: yes! This is incredible! The Bible's full of stories like that; about people who kind of make their way and get free.
Mary Magdalene, and Peter, and guys like James and John - the sons of Thunder - you didn't get that nickname going to Sunday school; and Jesus takes people like that and He moulds them into something bigger.
But then there are also sad things; and that starts in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve have oneness with God; and they trade perfect oneness for likeness - a chance to be like God - which is a really bad trade.
They traded: oneness with God; for a chance to have their life defined by how well they navigate good and evil.
No matter which side of the tree of knowledge and good and evil you pick from, it's the wrong side, because ultimately it messes you up. If you make 100 decisions in a day, and 98 of them are good, and 2 of them are evil, you go to bed thinking about the evil. It just messes us up - no matter what side of that tree.
So you have pictures of people all through the Bible, that God had these great plans for; and then, for whatever reason, they sold it out for something way, way cheaper.
I want to read you one of these stories from Genesis 25. This guy is the most hated man in the whole Bible. All through history, the rabbis have called him: by far the most foolish man who ever lived.
You would think that this guy would have been a child-sacrificer, or an adulterer, murderer, fornicator, or some kind of big sin. If they'd had heroin back then – then heroin! But this guy was basically an honest, hardworking man, who traded everything he could be, for one meal.
“The boys grew up, and Esau became a skilful hunter, a man of the open country”.
You guys think I'm a redneck? Ya'll are rednecks! I mean what I was seeing those guys do back there last night - that's redneck. They were eating with no forks! I made my plate, and I said: where are the forks? They said: this is a men's meeting - we don't need forks. I was like: oh, right, yeah! Rednecks!
So in this culture we like that. We like this guy already: Esau, a skilful hunter - a man of the open country; while Jacob was a quiet man, staying among the tents - which is basically staying at home.