Like the passing of a fine meal, sexual intimacy feeds for the moment, but doesn’t sustain one indefinitely. Like a good meal, the enjoyment and satisfaction of sexual intimacy lasts for but a short moment. Yet just like Esau, many would trade their eternal birthright, their entire inheritance, for a single meal of forbidden sexual intimacy. And not only did he trade his birthright, Deuteronomy 21:17 states that Esau was also entitled to “a double portion” of the paternal inheritance.

     And yet, as incredulous as this may seem, when Jacob offered to give Esau a bowl of stew in return for his birthright, amazingly, Esau agreed. And yet, even today, there are those of us who would risk forgoing “a double anointing”, such as the inheritance of Elisha, for the momentary satisfaction of a short-lived intimacy that inevitably, just as for Esau, afterwards turns as bitter as wormwood or gall. “But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.” (Proverbs 5:4). For the birthright from the Father above is always “a double portion”, as it has to do with both position and inheritance. Yet for the fleeting moment of a single act of sexual intimacy, they would sell the double portion of their entire birthright for what can be held in one hand. Just like Judas, who traded his entire destiny and legacy for a mere thirty pieces of silver.

     Compared with the enormity of what God is offering everyone as an eternal birthright, for is it not written “In his hand are the depths of the earth” (Psalm 95:4), can anyone possibly believe that the inheritance of the righteous in God would be so small that it could be held in a single hand? That it would be as trifling as thirty pieces of silver or a bowl of stew? Would an inheritance from He who “has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens, who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance” (Isaiah 40:12) be only sufficient for a single meal? And yet, many is the man who would gladly trade his entire eternal inheritance and position for the earthly bounty of a single meal of fulfilling a legitimate desire in an illegitimate way.

     Besides every good reason not to, including that God means more to us than that, the mathematics of such a bad trade are simply all wrong. And yet many is the man and woman who prefers the deficit of imbalanced scales. And when it is sadly all too late, just like for Esau, so too shall many cries be heard in the belly of the earth and the bosom of heaven.

“When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry, and said to his father, "Bless me, even me also, O my father!"”

(Genesis 27:33-35)

"For you know that even afterward, wishing to inherit the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place of repentance, although having earnestly sought it with tears."

(Hebrews 12:17)