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12, the part that I want to focus on is beginning in verse 15 there where the Bible reads, Looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled, lest there be any fornicator or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For you 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. And what I want to preach about tonight is the life of Esau. This is a man, he's only mentioned a couple times in the New Testament, and here he's used as a bad example of someone that we should not strive to be like because he, for one morsel of meat, sold his birthright. But I want to go through the whole life of Esau from the Old Testament and show you that even though he's a bad example in this passage, he actually did have some good qualities. He wasn't just a man that was just rotten to the core. There are some Bible characters that are like that, they're just rotten to the core. Esau was not one of them. I believe that Esau will be in heaven, and a lot of people misunderstand the passage in Romans 9 that we're going to go to later that says, Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated. I'm going to prove to you at the end of the sermon that that's not talking about the person Esau, that's talking about the nation of Esau. Just as the nation of Israel is named after the man Israel, the nation of Esau is named after the person Esau, the Edomites. I'm going to prove that from the Bible. If you're skeptical about that, just listen to the sermon and let the word of God speak for itself. Let's go back to Genesis chapter 25 and let's start out with this story of Esau selling his birthright. This is the thing that he's condemned for in Hebrews chapter 12. God says, lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau. He's saying, don't be like Esau who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. Let's go back to that story in Genesis 25 verse 27. The Bible reads, and the boys grew and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field, and Jacob was a plain man dwelling in tents. And Isaac loved Esau because he did eat of his venison, for Rebekah loved Jacob. And Jacob sawed pottage and Esau came from the field and he was faint, and Esau said to Jacob, feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage, for I am faint, therefore was his name called Edom. 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 swear unto him. And he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils, and he did eat and drink and rose up and went his way. And then here's a key statement at the end of verse 34, thus Esau despised his birthright. Now you say, what does it mean that he had a birthright? Well the birthright was the fact that the firstborn son would receive a double portion of the inheritance. So for example, I at this time have five sons. So if I were going to die and my wife were to die and we were going to leave this great inheritance of all the material wealth that I don't have, but if I did have, you know, leave all this wealth or inheritance unto my children, then because I have five sons, it would be divided into six parts. Not five parts, six parts, because the oldest son would receive a double portion. So you divide it six ways, you give a double portion to the oldest son, and then the other four portions are allotted out to the other sons. You say, well that doesn't seem fair, give everybody the same. But that's what the Bible teaches, that was the law back in the Old Testament, that's the way that they did things. And you know, if I ever have great possessions and lands, which I'm sure I probably never will, I'll leave my firstborn son a double portion. You say, why is that? You know, I was trying to think about why that would be, that God would do that, obviously there are a lot of symbolic reasons why God did the things that he did in the Old Testament and in the law. But if you think about it, you know, you make all the mistakes on the first child. That's the one that you vaccinate and you know, you don't really know what you're doing in the early days of parenting. That's the one that you make all, you know, so that's kind of a consolation for them. At least they get the double inheritance, you know, because you got better at parenting by the time you had the second and the third and the fourth, I don't know, but that's what I was thinking about. But when we see this story of him despising the birthright, what he's really doing is he's receiving a very small reward now. He wants to just gratify the flesh now with a bowl of soup basically, a bowl of chili, a bowl of pottage, whatever you want to call it, and bread. He just wants to satisfy his hunger and lust for food with this meal right now in order to forfeit something down the road. Now you have to understand, the birthright is something that he's not going to enjoy for a very long time because his dad is not going to die for many, many decades. So at this time, what's important to him is just to eat this meal. Now looking at this thousands of years later, we look at this as just ridiculous. Why would you sit there and give up your birthright? Your father's a very wealthy man. We know that Isaac had great wealth and cattle. You're giving up a double portion of the inheritance just for one meal? But God's trying to show us something and that's why he uses this as an illustration in the New Testament and he likens the fornicator unto the person that would sell their birthright. He says don't be a fornicator like Esau who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. Why would he use that comparison? Because what he's teaching here is that when you commit fornication, you're doing something similar to what Esau did because you're taking physical gratification now, physical pleasure now, and you're forfeiting great riches and treasures and rewards later. Later you're going to regret what you lost. What's also interesting about this is that Esau sold his birthright for one morsel of meat which means he despised his birthright which means that he did not have it properly valued in his mind. When it says he despised it, it means he didn't have proper respect for it. He didn't understand how valuable it was, how important it was. But he ends up in the next chapter losing the blessing from God. Now he wanted to just sell the birthright, he still wanted to keep the blessing that would be passed down from father to son, the Abrahamic covenant and so forth, but he ends up losing both. Even though he never bargained away his blessing or he never would have been willing to give up the blessing, he was very upset when he lost the blessing. What this shows us is that when we commit sin, the consequences are always greater than what we think they're going to be. We think to ourselves, okay, I'll go ahead and have this meal and I'll lose the birthright, but you know what, I can live with losing my birthright. I'm okay with just a single portion. My dad's so wealthy, what does it matter if I get the double or the single portion? I'm okay with that. But wait a minute, are you okay with losing the blessing of God? No, but you lose both. So a lot of times we'll look at sin and say, well, you know, if I commit this sin, these are going to be the consequences and I can live with that, but what God's showing us here is you don't know what the consequences of sin are going to be because a lot of times you might factor it in and say, well, you know, if I do this, maybe this will be the punishment or this is what God's going to do. You know, I'm just going to go ahead and do it anyway. But sin always costs you more than you think it was going to cost you and you end up losing more than you thought you would lose. And the specific sin that's brought up here is fornication. We need preaching against fornication in 2014, my friend, because fornication runs rampant in America and in this world and it's just a given that people are going to commit fornication. And people just act like, well, everybody's doing it. No, not everyone is doing it and God's people ought not to be committing fornication. And it's not an excuse to say, oh, well, you know, the world we live in, that's just the way things are. No, that's not the way they ought to be in God's house and amongst God's people. And when we talk about fornication, we're talking about people that are hopping in the sack before they're married. We as God's people need to have a standard in our church that people remain pure and virgin until their wedding day. That is what the Bible demands and that is what the Bible teaches and that's the standard that we should hold up and that's what our young people ought to live up to. And you need to talk to your teenager and talk to your young person if you have children that age and explain to them the importance of abstaining from fornication. You know, I thank God that I got this kind of preaching when I was a teenager because the temptation is great in the world that we live today and in our culture because we're being bombarded with images and things that would incite us to commit fornication. And we need more than ever preaching that will show all the numerous passages in the Old and New Testament that tell us over and over again not to commit fornication. Marriage is honorable and all and the bed undefiled but whoremongers and adulterers, God will judge. And we need to understand the importance of being pure before you're married and it needs to be preached. Now let me say this, young people, and we have many singles in our church and it needs to be preached for their sake as well. That first of all, this is a major sin in the Bible. It's something that we need to stay away from. But what you have to understand, young people, is that, you know, God willing, someday you're going to get married and you're going to be married for a lot longer than you're single in most cases. If you think about it, if you fulfill the average life, you're going to live to be about 70 to 80 years old. Even the Bible says that you're going to be 70, 80 years old. And if you think about it, if you get married around the time you're 20, 25 years old, something like that, you know, the average amongst the world is 30 but a lot of the reason why the average has become 30 is because they're just being a whoremonger for a decade and then they get married. But actually in reality, in the past, the average was more like 20 in America when people would get married. You know, it seems like whenever I talk to people in my parents' generation, my parents included, they all got married around 20 years old. But let's say, you know, you're 20, 25, even 30 years old. But if you're going to live to be 70 or 80 on average and if you stay married to that one person, you're going to be married for a lot longer than you're single. Also you don't even start thinking about these things until you're a teenager anyway. So basically there's a brief period of abstinence that you need to go through as a teenager where you refrain from this act as a teenager because you're not married. And so you refrain from that relationship with any woman or you refrain from that relationship with any man, depending on whether you're a boy or girl. And as a teenager, you go through that trying time and then you get married and then you can enjoy it for the rest of your life. And it's worth it, okay? But if you just say, well, you know what, I just can't wait, and then you go out and commit fornication, then you are selling your birthright for the bowl of pottage, for the morsel of meat, for that physical pleasure. And it's not going to be worth it, it's going to cost you more than what you bargained for. And not only that, but if you're growing up in a Christian home and you're hearing this kind of preaching and you know what the Bible says, the Bible says, unto whom much is given, of him shall much be required. God is going to judge much more severely the Christian young person that grows up under this kind of preaching who goes out and commits fornication than the person who was unsaved and the person who had never heard this, and they're being told by the public school system, hey, it's fine as long as you do it safely and all this kind of garbage. So you will be judged more greatly, my friend, because you've been given the advantage of hearing all the truths of God's word and being a child of God at a young age. Take this seriously. You say, well, I don't really care about, you know, waiting until I'm married. Well, do you care about God judging you? Do you care about God ruining your life? Do you care? And you say, well, God would never do that. I'm going to switch over to Joel Osteen's church. You know, but here's the thing. God will punish. Hormongous and adulterous God will judge. And the Bible says, whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. Look, if God scourges every son that he has, don't you think he would scourge them for a sin like fornication? And do you really think you're going to go out and commit fornication, then God's going to scourge you and you're going to say, it was worth it? Do you think you're really going to say that? Because you don't know what God's going to scourge you with. He can really punish you badly. And there are people who go out and commit fornication and have very bad consequences of it. Okay. And the more preaching like this you've heard and the more truths you've heard, the more God's going to hold you responsible. And you know what? The reward is great if you will live a godly life and if you'll abstain from this. And so we need to understand that this is the primary thing that God wants us in the New Testament to learn from the life of Esau. The number one thing he wants us to learn, because that's what he quotes in the New Testament, he doesn't want us to be a fornicator or a profane person because that would make us like Esau. We're selling our future and we're selling out great rewards for one morsel of meat. Just for a little bit of physical pleasure, food for Esau or you know the gratification of the flesh that goes with fornication for the other. But let's go back to the story of Esau. So this is the first mistake that we see Esau make. He sells his birthright for a morsel of meat. He despises birthright. God was displeased with that. As a result of this, if you flip over to chapter 27, and I'm just for sake of time I'm just going to quickly blow through the story with you in chapter 27. What happens is Jacob's mother tells him to deceive Isaac and to trick him into giving Jacob Esau's blessing because Isaac loved Esau and Isaac wanted to bless Esau and even though he had sold the birthright he still wanted to give him the blessing and he still wanted to pass on the blessings of God, but Jacob's mother incited him to lie and to deceive his father and pretend to be Esau. So Isaac sends Esau out hunting to go catch an animal and make him venison that his soul would bless him. He says, you know, go out and make me savory meat such as I love that my soul may bless thee. So he sends him out to go hunting. Well while Esau is out hunting for the meat, Jacob's mother instructs him just to go get a kid of the goats and they're going to take this kid of the goats and, you know, Rebecca is going to cook it up and make it seem as if it's the wild game that Esau was going to catch. He's just basically going to season it the same way that it would have been seasoned and because Isaac is an old man they think they can pull this off because, you know, the older you get your taste buds aren't as sensitive. Have you ever noticed that if you go out to eat with an elderly person they really put on a lot of jalapenos and Tabasco sauce and you're, whoa, how do you handle all that? But it's not you? Wait, you're not old though. But you know the older you get you use more of those type of things because your taste buds get a little bit desensitized so you really have to put on the hot sauce and so forth. So, you know, basically they're putting so many spices on this meat Isaac's not going to be able to tell that this is goat meat versus venison. He's not going to be able to tell that, that's the plan anyway. So Jacob says well this isn't going to work because even though you can make the meat taste the same and I can bring the meal to him and by the way Isaac is old and his eyesight is gone so he's not going to be able to look at Jacob and tell that it's Jacob. So this is how they think they're going to pull it off. So he says well wait a minute what if, what if dad feels me because he said I'm a smooth man but my brother Esau is a very hairy man. You know if he reaches out and feels me and I'm smooth he's going to know that I'm lying and instead of blessing me he's going to curse me. So Rebecca gives me the idea that he's going to basically take the skin of the goat and put it on him and basically make himself hairy so that when he reaches out and feels it he'll feel that hair and he'll believe and he'll also smell that gamey outdoor smell which is kind of the way Esau smelled because Esau was a hunter whereas Jacob was one that dwelled in tents and dealt with the sheep and so forth. Now let me say this. A lot of people wrongly teach that Jacob was a mama's boy or a sissy. Nothing could be further from the truth because if we were to study, first of all there's no way God would have blessed him if he was a sissy. God doesn't bless queer little sissies okay. Jacob was a manly guy if you study his life. So just because he's smooth oh that means he's girly. No it doesn't because you know what that's genetic. You know what I mean? Some people are just covered in hair and some people are really smooth. It doesn't make you more or less manly. In fact some men can't even grow a beard whatsoever just because of genetics. A lot of Asians, a lot of Native Americans can't grow beards. Others can't. It's just genetic. It doesn't make them any more or less manly. In fact if you study the life of Jacob, he was one of the most manly men in the Bible because of the fact that, and just to give you some examples of this, if you remember there was a stone that would be removed from the well so that the shepherds could water their flocks and they would wait till all the shepherds got together to move that stone. Jacob just went and moved it by himself. So this guy's not a weakling if he could lift this giant stone on his own. When he slept outside on his way to Padan Aram, he used stones for his pillows. So this guy isn't exactly the princess and the pea you know where he has to have his little mattress. I mean this guy was a tough guy. Not only that but he wrestled with the angel all night. Now anybody who's ever done any wrestling knows it's physically exhausting but he wrestled and fought all night. You know we could go on and on. The sermon's not about Jacob. It's about Esau. But all throughout the Bible we see evidence of Jacob's manliness. So it wasn't that he was a sissy or a weakling. He just happened to be a smooth man. Esau was a hairy man. So they go through this deception where Jacob puts on the skins and everything with the hair to make himself smell like Esau and be hairy and he brings the food that's a decoy and he shows up and Isaac's a little bit skeptical because the voice of Jacob but you know the smell and the arms and the feeling is like Esau. And you know are you sure you're Esau? Yes I'm Esau. He lies and says that he's Esau. So Isaac ends up giving this blessing to Jacob. Let's read the blessing. It says in verse 27, and he came near and kissed him and he smelled the smell of his raiment and blessed him and said, see the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord has blessed. So Isaac thinks he's blessing Esau. He's really blessing Jacob because Jacob is stealing his blessing. Says in verse 28, therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth and plenty of corn and wine. Let people serve thee and nations bow down to thee. Be lord over thy brethren and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee. Cursed be everyone that curseth thee and blessed be he that blesseth thee. Look at verse 30 and it came to pass as soon as Isaac had made an end of blessing Jacob and Jacob was yet scarce gone out from the presence of Isaac his father that Esau his brother came in from his hunting and he also had made savory meat and brought it unto his father and said unto his father, let my father arise and eat of his son's venison that thy soul may bless me. And Isaac his father said unto him, who art thou? And he said, I'm thy son, thy first born Esau. And Isaac trembled very exceedingly and said, who? Where is he that hath taken venison and brought it me? And I have eaten of all before thou camest and have blessed him, yea, and he shall be blessed. And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry and said unto his father, bless me, even me also, oh my father, and he said, thy brother came with subtlety and hath taken away thy blessing. And he said, is not he rightly named Jacob, for he hath supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright and behold, now he hath taken away my blessing. And he said, hast thou not reserved a blessing for me? Now, first of all, that's not really true because he sold his birthright willingly. He was being stupid. Now this time it's not his fault, but you know what? This is the result of God looking down and saying, oh, you despise your birthright? If you're going to be a fool, then I'm going to punish you more by taking away your blessing. That's what happened. That's why he lost the blessing. I'll prove it to you. In Hebrews 12, you don't have to turn back there, but what we read was, lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright, that's what Esau did, he sold his birthright, for you know how that afterward when he would have inherited the blessing, now we're talking about something different, he was rejected for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. What's that saying? He could not repent at that point of having sold the birthright. At that point, there's no going back. He can't say, oh, wait a minute, I'm losing the blessing too? Well, I changed my mind. I shouldn't have sold. No, it's too late. And what God's trying to show us with the story about Esau is that once you mess certain things up, it's just too late to fix it. See Esau, we're going to see this later in Esau's life, he always thought he could fix things. You know, go ahead and sin, mess things up and you can fix it later. Wrong. Sometimes there are consequences that never go away. Sometimes you go out and sin one time and there are consequences that never go away. That's the sad truth of the world that we live in. There are people who take drugs one time and permanently damage their brain and become an insane person for the rest of their life. It's true. There are people out there who commit fornication one time and pick up disease or whatever. There are things that you do that can cause irreparable harm and damage to your life. And Esau, he's looking for repentance. He's looking for a way to fix it. You can't fix it. You're done, Esau. You've lost now the birthright and you've lost the blessing. And there's nothing you can do about it. You know, a lot of people say, oh, you know, marijuana is not too bad and, you know, don't worry about marijuana, it's the other drugs that are bad, but just smoke marijuana. But here's the thing, a lot of times when you buy marijuana, it will be laced with something else. There was a guy on my street, remember I told the story a few months ago, where he bought a joint and basically it had something else in it because they want it, you know, I guess they want you to come back and say, well, that was the best marijuana I've ever had, you know, can I get some more of that? Because they put something else in it. I mean, you know, unless it's certified organic, you know, no, I'm just kidding, you know, but I'm just saying, you know, you start dabbling in sin and you say, well, you know, I'm not going to go out and start snorting cocaine or shooting up heroin, but come on, I'm just going to fool around with a little marijuana. But you know what? That's the selling the birthright and then when God allows it to be laced with something poisonous, that's God taking away the blessing. That's the first, you know, you thought you're just fooling around with a little marijuana and then what actually happens is you end up with something worse that's put into the marijuana. That's what happened to this guy on my street and then he was just, his brain was fried, I'm sure he lost his job because his brain was fried for days from whatever he took. So there are all kinds of ways that you could commit what you think is a harmless sin and how it can escalate to something that you didn't expect. So we need to be careful with that. So he loses the blessing. He's very upset about it. Now, did he care much about the birthright? No, he despised the birthright, didn't really. But about this blessing, I mean, he's weeping, he's crying out, he's begging his father. I mean, it's a very sad sight here. And we see Esau so distraught over losing the birthright. Look what it says in verse 36 at the end, it says, "'Hest thou not reserved a blessing for me?' And Isaac answered and said unto Esau, Behold, I have made him thy lord, and all his brethren have I given to him for servants. And with corn and wine have I sustained him. And what shall I do now unto thee, my son? And Esau said unto his father," I mean, he keeps over and over again begging, "'Hast thou but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father.' And Esau lifted up his voice and wept. And Isaac his father answered and said unto him, Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above. And by thy sword thou shalt live, and shalt serve thy brother, and it shall come to pass, when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck." Now, Esau does not like that blessing. It says in verse 41, Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him. And Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand, then will I slay my brother Jacob." Slay means to kill. So we see now the next mistake in Esau's life. Esau's first mistake was to sell the birthright. His second mistake was that he hated his brother and wanted to kill him. That's not right, obviously, for him to hate his brother. Now was it right for Jacob to steal the birthright? No. I'm sorry, not the birthright, the blessing. Was it right for Jacob to lie and deceive and steal the blessing? No. But should Esau turn around and hate him and want to kill him for that? Obviously not. So this is the second bad thing we see about Esau is that he hated his brother and he wanted to kill him. Of course, the Bible says, Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, because if we hate our brother in our heart, you know, the Bible says that that is like unto murder. For example, if you look on a woman to lust after her, you've committed adultery with her already in your heart. And if you hate your brother in your heart, it's like, you know, committing murder in your heart. And by the way, a lot of people will misquote that and say, oh, don't hate anybody. It says, Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. It doesn't say, whosoever hateth anyone. If you hate Mao Zedong, you're a murderer. If you hate Joseph Tsai, if you hate Kim Jong-il or Kim Jong-un or Kim Jong, whoever the Kim Jong is that hangs out with Dennis Rodman or whatever faggot that he hangs out with, you know, oh, you know, don't hate anybody. That's not what the Bible says. There's a time to love and a time to hate, my friend. And so people will misquote. You know, I got so many e-mails about, how dare you preach a sermon against Obama. You're not loving your brother. You know, if Obama is my brother, then I'm a monkey's uncle. Obama is not saved. Obama does not believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. OK, so he's not my brother by any definition. OK, I just had to put that in there from last week. You thought this was going to be a sequel to the bastard sermon because we were in Hebrew chapter 12, but it wasn't. It was just a coincidence. So anyway, Esau hates Jacob in his heart. He wants him dead and of course because of that, Jacob goes and flees at his mother's advice. He goes and flees into the land of Padan Aram in order to go find a wife there. Now part of the reason why Jacob went to Padan Aram to find a wife is because Esau had married the wrong kind of wife and this made his parents very upset. They were not supposed to marry of these wicked, heathen, unsaved tribes of the land of Canaan and Esau married two wives and they were both Hittite wives. So this is the third mistake that we see Esau making in his life. First he sold the birthright, then he hated his brother and wanted him dead, then he goes out and he marries these two women. First of all, you're only supposed to have one wife. All throughout the Bible, it's real clear that a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves them to his wife, singular, and they too shall be one flesh. But Esau goes out and marries two wives and they were two heathen wives. They were of the Hittites and his parents were very upset that he married these Hittite wives. Now remember how Esau thought that he could find a place of repentance when it came to the blessing and he thought he could fix it? Well he tries to do the same thing with the mistake he made by marrying these Hittite wives because look what it says in verse 6 of chapter 28. Go to chapter 28 of Genesis, verse 6. When Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Padan Aram to take him a wife from thence and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge saying, thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan, because remember that's what Esau had done, he took a wife of the daughters of Canaan, and that Jacob obeyed his father and his mother and was gone to Padan Aram and Esau seeing that the daughters of Canaan, meaning the ones that he had married, pleased not Isaac his father, then went Esau unto Ishmael and took unto the wives which he had, Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the sister of Nebajoth to be his wife. So think about Esau's logic here. He says, you know what, I've done wrong, I've displeased my parents, and he feels bad about it and he's looking at Jacob being obedient and Isaac is pleased with him and he wants to please his father and he says, you know what, if my parents aren't pleased with these two Hittite wives that I've married, here's how I'll fix it, I'll just take on a third wife that they're going to like. They're going to love the third wife because she's an Ishmaelite. She's not one of the daughters of Canaan so this will make them happy. So here's the thing, you can't fix it when you marry a heathen godless person, well let's just, we'll add a good wife to the mix and then that'll make it alright. It's ridiculous isn't it? But it's ridiculous sometimes when we think that there's always a way to fix the sins that we commit. That's why we need to just be careful not to mess up our lives in the first place because sometimes you get in a situation where you're stuck with the consequences of your actions. And you young people need to be very careful that you do not marry an unsaved person. Because if you marry an unsaved woman, an unsaved man, you're going to have serious problems with that. And you say, well I just hope they'll get saved later. Well you need to just get them saved before you get romantically involved with them and before you end up getting married to them. Because of the fact that otherwise you're going to get to a situation where you want to go a certain direction in your life and they want to go a completely different direction. And you know sometimes, thank God, that that person that you marry that's unsaved will end up getting saved and that's a blessing. But don't count on that because a lot of times that's not how it ends up. And I can think of a lot of people that I know right now that want to be a godly Christian, want to live a life that's pleasing the Lord and their spouse is unsaved and it hinders them. Now it's not an excuse. They can still serve God. They can still do something for God but they're not going to be able to do as much as if they would have married a saved person. And they're not going to be able to enjoy as much fellowship and communion because you know what fellowship hath light with darkness. You're going to be so different. It's not compatible. You know you're worried about 50 points of compatibility on some internet dating site. You know the real point of compatibility are you both saved. You both have the Holy Spirit living inside of you. That's what really counts more than anything when you're getting married. So Esau takes on a third wife. Guess what? Marrying a third wife is not the answer because that's actually sin to marry a third wife. But you can see that Esau's heart is in the right place but he's sincerely wrong. He's doing wrong here. Okay then let's just fast forward because we kind of go away from Esau. The last time we see Esau, he hates Jacob, he wants him dead. That's his immediate reaction to just being angry, just losing his temper. Then he kind of looks at the fact that Jacob is being blessed, he's being obedient and he says you know what you know I'm going to marry a third wife and try to patch things up with mom and dad. I'm going to marry this Ishmaelite wife. Then we don't see Esau again for decades because we're busy with the story about Jacob. You know Jacob goes into a far land and what he sowed by deceiving his brother, he ends up being deceived over there by his uncle. That's another story. So decades later Jacob is going to come back now to the land of Canaan. He hasn't seen Esau in decades. Last time he saw Esau, what did Esau want to do? Kill him. He wants to kill him. So Jacob goes back to Canaan and he knows that if he goes back to Canaan, he's going to have to face Esau. Well when he's going back to Canaan, he gets word that Esau is coming to meet him with 400 men. Now that's not really the normal way that you go meet your brother that you haven't seen in 20 years. You know you don't bring 400 troops with you. So basically he's nervous. He thinks that they're just coming to just wipe him out like finally revenge time. You know 20 years later we're going to get him. So Jacob's really worried. He's praying all night. He wrestles with God. He does all the different things. We're not really focusing on Jacob. But look what happens when he finally meets up with Esau in Genesis 33 verse number 3. This is when Jacob has been gone for 20 years. He comes back and meets Esau once again and he thinks Esau wants him dead. He thinks Esau hates him and wants to kill him. It says in verse 3, he passed over before them and bowed himself. This is Jacob bowed himself to the ground seven times until he came near to his brother. So Jacob's being very humble here isn't he? Bowing himself seven times to his brother Esau. And Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him and they wept. Now what do we see about Esau here? Isn't this a good quality in Esau? That Esau has done what? Forgiven his brother. He forgave Jacob. You know so you have to give credit unto Esau for forgiving Jacob and letting the past be the past and moving on, forgiving and forgetting and not seeking revenge for what Jacob did steal from him, the blessing. Look what it says in verse number 5, and he lifted up his eyes and saw the women and the children and said, who are those with thee? And he said, the children which God had graciously given thy servant. Then the handmaids came near, they and their children they bowed themselves and Leah also with her children came near and bowed themselves and after came Joseph near and Rachel and they bowed themselves and he said, what meanest thou by all this drove which I met? And he said, these are to find grace in the sight of my Lord. Because Jacob had sent a drove of cattle before him as a present unto Esau. He wanted to give Esau of his cattle and wealth and a huge gift. Look what Esau's reaction to this is in verse 9. And Esau said, I have enough my brother, keep that thou hast unto thyself. And Jacob said, Nay I pray thee, if now I have found grace in thy sight then receive my present at my hand. For therefore have I seen thy face as though I had seen the face of God and thou was pleased with me. Take I pray thee, my blessing that is brought to thee, because God had dealt graciously with me and because I have enough. And he urged him and he took it. Now we see here that he had to really urge Esau to take the goods before Esau would take them. So another good quality of Esau in this chapter is we see that not only has he forgiven and forgotten, but also he is not greedy and desirous of spoiling his brother Jacob and saying well you know you do owe me this stuff anyway since you ripped me off of the blessing and you you know so yeah you know give me more. No he's not greedy. He's not covetous. He says I have enough. And you know what it's a great thing in our lives when we can say these words, I have enough. I mean it's a great motto. I have enough. Esau said I have enough. Jacob said I have enough. That's a great quality, contentment. And so we see that in the life of Esau. In fact in this passage we don't see anything negative about Esau do we? Now twenty years earlier he was making some stupid mistakes wasn't he? Selling the birthright, you know marrying heathen wives, hating his brother. But now we see that he's turned around because now he's forgiving, he's content, he's being loving and friendly unto his brother and there are a lot of people in the Bible who made some really bad mistakes early in life and then later on straightened up. Judah is another person like that. I mean we go through the Bible all kinds of people like that. But anyway just to make a long story short Esau then you know basically wants to kind of join up with Jacob and he said you know come with me let's let's both go and dwell together and Jacob doesn't really take him up on it. Jacob kind of wants to do his own thing and for Esau to do his own thing. So it ends up in verse 16 that Esau returned that day on his way unto Seir. So after this poignant reunion and their displays of affection for one another they end up going their separate ways. Now we don't see Esau again until chapter 35, flip over to chapter 35. This is when Isaac finally dies. He finally gives up the ghost and it says in verse 29 and Isaac gave up the ghost and Isaac then died and was gathered unto his people being old and full of days and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him. So we see Esau and Jacob in harmony at the funeral burying their father honoring his memory and putting him into the ground. Now to find out where Esau finally ended up we go to Genesis 36. This is basically the end of the story on Esau in Genesis. This is where we kind of get the final word on Esau from the book of Genesis. How did he end up? I mean they went their separate ways. What happened though? Well if we read the story in Genesis 36 he gives us actually a whole chapter about Esau and his descendants. We're not going to read the whole chapter for sake of time but let's start in verse number one. It says, Now these are the generations of Esau who is Edom. That's another name for Esau, Edom. Esau took his wives of the daughters of Canaan, Ada the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and Aholabamah the daughter of Anah the daughter of Zibeon the Hivite, and Bashamath Ishmael's daughter sister of Nebajoth, and Ada bear Esau Eliphaz, and Bashamath bear Ruel, and Aholabamah bear Jeash, and Jalem and Korah. These are the sons of Esau which were born unto him in the land of Canaan. And Esau took his wives and his sons and his daughters and all the persons of his house and his cattle and all his beasts and all his substance which he had got in the land of Canaan and went into the country from the face of his brother Jacob. For their riches were more than that they might dwell together and the land wherein there were strangers could not bear them because of their cattle. Thus dwelt Esau in Mount Seir, Esau is Edom. And these are the generations of Esau, the father of the Edomites in Mount Seir. And then it just goes on and on and on listing all the descendants. But it also talks about how they had great kings in Edom before they had kings in Israel. They had kings in Edom and all these dukes and princes and kings. So what we take away from this chapter when we read the whole chapter is that Esau was a successful man in the end in the sense that he had a great nation. He was the founder of a great nation and he had all kinds of kings and princes that were begotten of his body. And he also had great wealth and riches and prosperity because it says they had so much substance they couldn't really dwell together. The land couldn't handle all their cattle. Now it talks about him going to Mount Seir but if you remember he was already hanging out in Mount Seir even before Jacob showed up. So that was the place that he liked anyway. But he was also in Canaan but when Jacob came and set up shop in Canaan and had so much cattle it ended up being better for him to just kind of be in Seir and for Jacob to be in Canaan. And that's the end of the story with Esau. So we don't see Esau ending his life in a bad way, do we? You know we see him forgiving, he's doing right now, he's a nice guy, he's not covetous, he's successful, he's going out and doing his own thing and living in peace and prosperity. That's how he ends his life. There's nothing about any horrible things happening to him or anything like that. Now go to Romans chapter 9, Romans chapter 9 because this is the key passage right here that I want to deal with in the end of this sermon because I had to explain everything about Esau to kind of lead up to this point because we needed to understand the life of Esau. Don't you feel like now you have a basic understanding of the life of Esau? So now we can go into Romans 9 with that understanding and we can look at this passage which is a passage that is abused and twisted by those who teach the false doctrine of Calvinism. This is their favorite chapter. I mean this is the chapter of Romans 9, Romans 9, Romans 9, Romans 9. Now here's the thing, Romans 9 has nothing to do with what they want to use it to teach. In fact if you actually want to know what Romans 9 is about, I don't have time to preach it but I've preached it in many other sermons, it's about the fact that the nation of Israel, the physical nation of Israel in the Old Testament has been replaced by a spiritual nation made up of all believers in the New Testament. That's what Romans 9 is about. In fact Romans 9, 10 and 11 form like a trilogy of chapters. Romans 9 through 11 all go together and they're all explaining about the Jews and the Gentiles, the physical Israel, spiritual Israel, and when read in tandem with Galatians 3 and 4 they provide a very good picture of where the Jews stand today as far as the fact that they've been rejected by God because they rejected the Lord Jesus Christ and they're no longer considered Israel. That's what this passage is actually teaching. The subject of the passage in Romans 9 is, you know, who are the chosen people? Because the word elect or election means to choose, right? If I say hey we're having an election tomorrow, go out and vote, which I don't say but if I did then what am I saying? You know you're choosing. You pull out the ballot and you choose a candidate and we say hey we elected so and so it means we did what? We chose him. So what you have to understand is that people that are saved are called in the New Testament when you see the word elect that's referring to people who are saved. You say why would someone who's saved be called the elect? Because in the Old Testament the nation of Israel were God's chosen people, which means they were, you know, the elect nation because God chose that nation to be a light to the Gentiles. So in the Old Testament the physical nation of Israel was God's chosen people. In the New Testament God said the kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof and he said that nation was in time past not a nation but it's a nation made up of all believers in Jesus Christ. He said if you're Christ's then you're Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Whether you're Jew or Gentile, whether you're bond or free, it doesn't matter. So here's the thing, in the New Testament God's chosen people are Christians. It's not a specific nationality, it has nothing to do with genealogy, he said avoid genealogy. In the New Testament God's chosen people are Christians. So in the Old Testament he chose a physical nation and this isn't talking about heaven and hell because obviously in the Old Testament, you know, Gentiles went to heaven if they believed on the Lord and everything, but the thing is there was a chosen people in the Old Testament, physical nation of Israel, there's a chosen people in the New Testament saved believers and Christians whether they be red, yellow, black, white, doesn't matter. That's why the people that are saved are called the elect because they're part of that chosen nation, that royal priesthood, okay, and the Bible says, you know, that those he foreknew he predestinated to be conformed to the image of his son. So God foreknew who would be saved and he chose them as his people in the New Testament as opposed to the Old Testament. That's what the Bible's teaching in Romans 9. You know, that's why it says in verse 6, not as though the word of God had taken none effect for they are not all Israel which are of Israel, neither because they are the seed of Abraham are they all children, but an Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God. He's saying, you know, the physical nation of Israel, physical descendants call themselves Jews. He said they're not the children of God. The children of the promise are counted for the seed. Look, that's what this chapter starts out talking about. That's what this chapter ends up talking about. The whole end of Romans 9 talks about it. Chapter 10, chapter 11, go back to these themes, but Calvinists will isolate verses 10 through 16 and say that this is about God choosing individually who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. So Calvinists teach that God says, you know, okay, you're going to heaven, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, hell, and it's based on nothing. It's not based on anything. It's not based on who believes in Christ, it's just God just picks people. Now look, that's not true. That's a lie because the Bible says that God will have all men to be saved and to come into the knowledge of the truth. He says, and by the way, Calvinism, one of the worst teachings of Calvinism is they teach that Jesus didn't die for everybody. Even though the Bible says over and over again that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man, that he died not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world, that the Bible says he's the savior of all men, especially of those that believe. But no, no, no, he only died for a certain select few, wrong. He died for everybody. But only those who are saved receive that gift of eternal life, okay? And again, I don't have time to preach that whole sermon, but in Romans 9 here, we get the context of what he's actually talking about and then it makes sense. Now here are the verses that they twist, starting with verse 10. It says, Not only this, but when Rebekah also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac, for the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth. It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger, as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. They saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion, so that it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. So what they're going to do is they're going to take this passage and say, God chooses who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. You can see that God chose Esau to go to hell before he was even born, before they had done any good or evil. Are you listening? If they had done any good or evil, God hated Esau and God loved Jacob and God just chose him to be damned. But that's not what this passage is teaching. First of all, the proof is when we go back and look up these two quotes. Now listen, whenever you're studying the New Testament and there's a quote from the Old Testament, a good way to understand that passage is go back and read that Old Testament story. You know if God says as it is written and he quotes something, go back and look it up and get the context and understand what the point is that is being made. You see when God here is talking about choosing Jacob versus choosing Esau, he's talking about choosing him to be the chosen nation, to be the chosen people. He's talking about choosing Israel to be the chosen people, not Edom to be the chosen people. Now God made the choice also with Ephraim and Manasseh, you know where Ephraim had preeminence over Manasseh. You know God makes the choice of who's going to be the progenitor of Jesus Christ, who's going to be the chosen nation in the Old Testament, it's going to be Jacob not Esau. But wait a minute, does that mean Esau can't go to heaven? No. And you say well but the Bible says God hated Esau. Okay but let's look up where these quotes come from. Now there are two Old Testament quotes here in Romans 9. Look at verse 12. It was said unto her, the elder shall serve the younger. Let's look that up, Genesis 25, Genesis 25. Now here's the thing, the election of Israel in the Old Testament is a picture of salvation. But it is not equivalent to salvation. You see just because you were in the Old Testament nation of Israel, do you think that automatically got you into heaven? In the Old Testament, everybody who was part of Israel just automatically went to heaven and everybody who was outside of Israel automatically went to hell. That's nonsense because salvation is personal, isn't it? No matter how bad our nation is, we can still personally be saved and we can still personally please God. And look, any Edomite, any child of Esau or even Esau himself could still be saved and love the Lord and do right even if he's not part of that nation of Israel. And then there could be people in the nation of Israel who were unsaved people, unbelievers that went to hell, of course. So this isn't about personal salvation. Romans 9 is not primarily about personal salvation. Romans 9 is a chapter about who are God's chosen people. And the conclusion is that it's not the physical nation of Israel, it's the spiritual seed. It's not those who are the children of the flesh, it's the children of the promise. Look, being chosen as a nation of the Old Testament pictures New Testament. Look, lots of things in the Old Testament are Old Testament pictures of salvation. Like for example, Noah's ark pictured salvation. But that doesn't mean that everybody who wasn't on the ark went to hell and it doesn't mean that everybody on the ark went to heaven. One of the guys on the ark was a very evil, wicked person, Ham. He was an ungodly man. And then, you know, we could go on and on about that. But look at Genesis 25. If we want to understand Romans 9, let's look up the Old Testament quotes, shall we? What does it say in verse 23? And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels. The one people shall be stronger than the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger. Question, are we talking about individuals here? How can you say it's about individuals when four times here he says two nations, two manner of people, the one people, the other people, and he says the elder shall serve the younger. Is he saying that the elder son shall serve the younger son or is he saying that the elder people shall serve the younger people? Think about it. It's all about a group. Because let me ask you this. We read the whole life of Esau, didn't we, earlier? We went through every stage of his life. Question, when did Esau ever serve Jacob ever in the story? Did you read about it? Never happened. When did Esau bow down to Jacob? Never. In fact, we see the opposite. Jacob bowed down to Esau. Jacob gave gifts to Esau. Nowhere do you see the elder serving the younger of the individuals. But did the nation of Edom later serve the nation of Israel? Absolutely yes. So we're not talking about individuals. So they're going to take Romans 9 and make it about personal individual salvation and say, oh, God chose Esau to be damned personally and to go to hell personally and he hated him personally. No, no. It's a national thing. It was the nation of Esau that was not chosen. Now look, if you would, at the other quote Malachi 1 because we looked up one quote from Romans 9 and we showed that we're not talking about the individuals. When it was said unto her, the elder shall serve the younger, that quote is not about the person because Esau never served Jacob. Look, read Genesis as many times as you want, Esau never served Jacob. Didn't happen. But let's look up the second quote in verse 13. As it is written, Jacob have I loved but Esau have I hated. Let's see if that quote is about Esau the person or Esau the nation, okay? Because remember, Jacob's name was changed to Israel, Esau's name was changed to Edom but often in the Old and New Testament, God will refer to the nation as Israel or he'll refer the nation as Jacob. Hundreds of years after Jacob died, God would refer to the whole nation as Jacob and he would refer to the whole nation of Edom as Esau. He would refer to the Ammonites as just Ammon, Moab, you know, whoever their ancestor was, they just took on that name as a nation, okay? The nation of Israel because they're descended from Israel, that was the point. But look at Malachi chapter 1 verse 1, it says the burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, saith the Lord, which of course the word you is plural. I have loved you, saith the Lord, yet ye say, Whereon has thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother, saith the Lord, yet I loved Jacob and I hated Esau. Is the sentence over? No. It says, I loved Jacob and I hated Esau and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. Question, did God lay Esau personally, did he lay his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness? Did that ever happen? No. Because actually Esau was very prosperous and succeeded and in his lifetime the Edomites were thriving and even for hundreds of years after his death they were thriving and ruling and in power. I mean 12 kings, just king after king after king after king after king prospering in the mountains of Seir, the Edomites. So how can you say that this is about God hating the person Esau when the other side of the and has nothing to do with the person Esau but is rather about the nation of Edom. It says, I hated Esau and laid his mountains and his heritage waste. He didn't do that to the person, he did that to the nation. Therefore he didn't hate the person, he hated the nation. He says, I hated Esau and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. You say, I'm still not convinced Pastor. Oh, look at verse 4. Whereas Edom saith, we are impoverished but we will return and build the desolate places. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, they shall build but I will throw down and they shall call them the border of wickedness, watch this, and the people against whom the Lord hath indignation forever. So who is God's indignation against? An individual person Esau? No, it's against the nation of Edom. God has indignation against Edom forever. God destroyed Edom. God laid their mountain and their heritage waste. The Edomites said, we're going to rebuild. But he said, go ahead and rebuild, I'll destroy it again. This is centuries and centuries and centuries after the death of the person Esau, that the book of Malachi. Look, the book of Malachi is the last book in the Old Testament and it is chronologically the last book of the Old Testament. Not only does it fall that way in your Bible, chronologically it is the final book that was ever written that is in your Old Testament scripture. And so what does that tell you? Both quotes that are being quoted in Romans 9 can be proven and demonstrated beyond any doubt to have nothing to do with the individual people Jacob and Esau. Let's go back to Romans 9 quickly with that in mind. In Romans 9, let's read it again. And remember, the whole chapter is about the fact that the promised seed, the believers in Christ, are the new nation. You know, it's no longer the physical nation of Israel. It's talking about who are the chosen people in the New Testament. And it says in verse 10, and not only this, but when Rebekah also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac, for the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth, it was said unto her, the elders shall serve the younger. Now what we learn from that statement is that it was already predetermined before they were born that Jacob was going to be the chosen one and that he was going to be the progenitor of the Lord Jesus Christ. That was already determined. Now how it came about, it could have come about a different way than it did, but the way that it came about was through him selling his birthright and through the blessing being stolen and all the different things that happened there. And everything obviously happened the way it did for a reason, but the Bible says here that it was not of works, but of him that calleth, it was said unto her, the elders shall serve the younger, as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid, for he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that show with mercy. Look, God chooses who he's going to save, not that he's going to save this individual and damn this individual, but here's what he does. He chooses to save all those who believe. He chooses that those who believe in Christ are going to be his people in the New Testament, and he chose in the Old Testament that the nation of Israel physically was going to be his people. But he doesn't sit there and choose an individual and say you are going to go to heaven based on nothing except just my will. No he doesn't, because there's a condition to being saved. If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. There's an if, but the Calvinists teach unconditional election. You're just chosen to be saved based on nothing. Now listen, you are not chosen to be saved based on nothing. You have to believe in Jesus Christ to be saved, and if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, you're not going to be saved, and God doesn't make you believe in him. You choose to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, then you are saved. It's that simple, and there are so many scriptures over and over again that teach that whosoever will may come, he died for all men, he's the savior of all, he wants all men to be saved. Jesus said you will not come to me that you might have life. Will means you don't want to. You don't want to come to me that you might have life. Whosoever will, let him come take the water of life freely. Ha ha ha, yes, sucker, it's really just people that I already picked. I mean think about that. Whosoever will may come, please come and be saved, you know, suckers. Ninety-nine percent of you, you know, aren't even chosen anyway. Ha! No, it's stupid. It's a false doctrine. You could prove it wrong. Look, we could go through the five points of Calvinism and prove them wrong with so much scripture. Unconditional election? Are you serious? If thou believeth with all thine heart, if thou shalt confess, that's a condition. Any computer programmer can tell you that the word if is a condition. If then. The computer people just woke up like whoa, what's going on? They weren't even paying attention to the sermon, no I'm just kidding. So it's clear here that God chooses a nation based on his will, not based on anything that they had done in the womb. He just chose, even before they were born, he just said the elder shall serve the younger. That's his choice. He wanted to make a point, he wanted to do an illustration, he wanted to choose that. But here's the other thing. You know what other choice he made? He chose twelve disciples. He chose twelve disciples, right? One of them was the devil. Now it's funny because people will take verses and they'll show you, you know, where Jesus said to the disciples, you've not chosen me but I've chosen you and they say, see, personal salvation. They'll take that verse that's not about personal salvation and then they'll apply it to personal salvation. They'll take Romans 9, which is not about personal salvation, it's about nations, and then they'll apply it to personal salvation. And they'll show you a verse, you've not chosen me but I've chosen you and ordained you that she should bring forth fruit and your fruits will remain. And they say, see, right there, God, we don't choose him, he chooses us. No, we're not one of the twelve disciples. So we can't say like, well God doesn't choose us, you know, or God chooses us, we don't choose him. Because, he said that to twelve disciples because a few chapters later he said, have not I chosen you twelve and one of you is a devil? So how can that choosing be about salvation when one of them went to hell? Judas is scary, it's in hell tonight. But he was chosen to do what? To be a disciple. He was chosen to do what? To be the betrayer, to be the traitor. So you've got to be, these Calvinists will take a passage and take it out of context, fix the meaning and they will alienate that passage from its Old Testament root. They'll take Romans 9 and just completely ignore the fact that both quotes in the example are about nations, about the people. Then they'll ignore that the first part of Romans 9 is all about the nations, verses 6 through 8 especially. Then they'll ignore the fact that Romans 9, 22 through 31 just again bolsters the fact that it's all about which nation is the chosen people in the New Testament. Not about personal salvation. One can be saved. So let me just give you a quick review of the life of Esau. What did we learn about Esau? He definitely did some bad things. He's definitely a bad example. You don't see people naming their kid Esau because they don't want their kid to grow up and be a profane person. They don't want their kid to despise the birthright, marry three heathen wives and do these things. But there are some negatives about Esau and some positives about Esau. Here are the negatives about Esau. And by the way the negatives about Esau were all early in his life. Early in his life he made some mistakes but you know what that should teach us is that if we make mistakes early in life they can haunt us for the rest of our life. Because today everybody uses Esau, even the Bible uses Esau as a bad example because of stuff he did early in life. Some stuff it's hard to live down. Esau is never going to live this stuff down unfortunately. But what were the negatives about Esau? He sold his birthright. He despised it, that's number one. Number two, he married two Hittite wives and then followed that with the third Ishmaelite wife. And then thirdly, he hated and wanted to kill his brother Jacob. Those are the three bad things about Esau all early in life, okay. Positives about Esau is that number one, he forgave his brother for lying and deceiving him. He also was very contented and not covetous of Jacob's goods. And number three, he was very fruitful and multiplied. And he seemed to take care of his family and work hard and provide. And he was a leader. So these are the positive, I don't believe that there's any reason to think that Esau is in hell tonight. I believe that Esau is in heaven. Part of the reason why I believe that, first of all there's no evidence that he wasn't saved. There's nothing about him worshiping other gods, not believing in the Lord. The New Testament's not saying he's not saved. The New Testament is holding him up as the example to believers, don't fornicate because then you'll be like Esau. He's telling believers don't fornicate. Now that doesn't mean that Esau wasn't saved because guess what? Saved people do fornicate. That's why the warning's even there. And that's why we need to be aware of it. But first of all there's no evidence that he wasn't saved because the only evidence you could point to is well I hated Esau but I already proved to you that that was the nation not the person. That that was hundreds of years later. But the reason that I think he was saved is that he even cared about that blessing. What was that blessing? That blessing was not a dollar bill. The only significance that that blessing had was a spiritual significance, that's all. It was the fact that his dad was pleased with him but it was a blessing of God. When Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come, he did it by faith and he did it in the name of the Lord. He said God is going to bless you. God's going to bless those that bless you and curse those that curse you. The Lord is going to make you fruitful and make you the ruler and everything like that. If Esau didn't believe in the Lord, why would he have even cared about the blessing of the Lord on his life? You know it makes it seem as if he did believe in the Lord. Plus the fact that he showed such forgiveness and love and humility in the end, that seems to indicate also that he had grown spiritually between his early life and the end of his life. So what do we learn from Esau? I think the biggest lesson that Esau's life gives us, you know besides just having to disprove the false doctrines of Calvinism, and I've done other whole sermons that go more in depth on that, but the biggest lesson that we learn from Esau's life is that for some momentary pleasure we can forfeit great blessings and rewards in the future and that we can make mistakes and commit sins that will haunt us for the rest of our life and that we can't fix. And you know we definitely want to preach to people, hey you know what, you can always get back up and you can always come back to church and you can get right with God and God's going to forgive you and God's going to be merciful to you and all those things are true. And you know what, we see that in the life of Esau because he picked it up, dusted it off and he lived a pretty good life. And God blessed him in the end, right? And he actually grew spiritually. But hold on a second, in our zeal to tell people about the God of the second chance, let's not forget to warn people that there are still consequences to sin. Look yeah you can abort your baby and down the road you can, you know, basically confess that to God as a sin and move on and live for God and serve the Lord and have a productive life for the Lord and still do things for God and not just throw your life away. God still loves you, right? And God still wants to use you for him spiritually. But you know what, if you abort your baby you can never bring it back to life again and God's going to punish you for that. And you could have repercussions for that for the rest of your life and that's the treat. So I don't want to hear that, I don't like that, I just want to hear about the second chance. But there's also consequences to your sin that never go away. And you go out and fornicate, that disease might never go away. That psychological and emotional pain might never go away. The harm that you've done to your family and that you've done to your parents and the bad example that you've set for your brothers and sisters and all the things that are the repercussions of that decision that you made will never go away. And so yes, you can still pick it up and serve God and you can still be used by God but you and the people around you are still going to suffer for what you've done. And I'm not saying that to be vindictive or mean, it's reality my friend, I'm telling you the truth tonight. That there are two sides to this coin. Repercussions that never go away and a forgiving God that doesn't just throw you in the trash when you make a mistake. You know, you can make a mistake, you can still live for God, you can still be blessed. You know, I know a lot of people today who have lived a bad past, even after they were saved they did a lot of bad things but God's using them and God's blessing them. But don't you young people just think, oh well then that's the path I'm going to take. I'm going to go sow my wild oats and then I'm going to get right with God later. No you can't sow your wild oats and then pray for a crop failure. You know, you will reap what you've sown. And so we need to be careful not to downplay the consequences of sin. And to think, oh I can always fix it later. No you can't fix it when you married two Hittite wives. Because marrying a third Ishmaelite wife's not going to make mom and dad happy. You can't fix it Esau, your blessing's gone, your birthright's gone. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father we thank you so much for the story of Esau, Lord. And Lord I pity Esau, I feel bad for him because he made these mistakes and he was so sad and he just seemed like he was sincere but Lord he messed up. And help us not to be the same way. Help us not to be an Esau.