Christian Living

---

Don’t eat the porridge

Now Jacob cooked a stew; and Esau came in from the field, and he was weary. And Esau said to Jacob, “Please feed me with that same red stew, for I am weary.” Therefore his name was called Edom.
But Jacob said, “Sell me your birthright as of this day.”
And Esau said, “Look, I am about to die; so what is this birthright to me?”
Then Jacob said, “Swear to me as of this day.”
So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. And Jacob gave Esau bread and stew of lentils; then he ate and drank, arose, and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright. (Genesis 25:29-34)

In the passage above, we can say a shocking evil deal took place. There are so many things about this deal that alarms me when I read it literally. I usually go “what! How could he do that? Give up his birthright for a bowl of stew?” One interesting thing about the passage is that Jacob spelt out the cost of the stew, it wasn’t hidden from Esau, he said it outright “Sell me your birthright as of this day”. I would have thought that hearing that, Esau would say something like “No ways! That’s very unfair, I am not buying that for that price, don’t be sneaky” but instead he said “Look, I am about to die; so what is this birthright to me?” Obviously he must have been very tired and exhausted and probably not thinking straight, and in such time we need the word of God to save us from the attacks of the enemy. When you are at your wits end, when you feel exhausted, please do not make rash decisions, run to Jesus, run to the word, take up the shield of faith resist the devil and he will flee. Jesus faced a terrible temptation from the devil in the wilderness too (Matthew 4:1-11). The bible says after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, Jesus was hungry. This probably seemed like a good time for the enemy to try to make Jesus fall, but thank God for the weapon of the word, He used the word of God skilfully and overcame the devils deception. Jesus did not eat the devils porridge because He knew He had something much better ahead. We can also learn from Joseph reaction when faced with a terrible temptation from Potiphar’s wife in Genesis 39, she pressurised him day after day to commit fornication with her, but he firmly resisted her and when she advanced in her lure and grabed his clothes, he left his clothes in her hands and flee. In his situation, that was the right thing to do, to flee. Sometimes we will need to run away from the environment of the temptation, may God give us wisdom in Jesus name.
Coming back to the story of Jacob and Esau, we see the lie that the enemy told to Esau which made him justify his actions. Esau said “Look, I am about to die; so what is this birthright to me?”. I think this is still one of the lies the devil makes people believe when he want to tempt them; he tells them “they are about to die” so they can forget about the consequences of their actions. If you refuse to fornicate, you won’t die, if you shun stealing, you won’t die, if you don’t revenge you won’t die. You are not about to die! Discipline might be painful for a while, but in the long run, it produces the fruit of peace and righteousness and makes you succeed.
When people believe “they are about to die” they tend to disregards futures consequences as if saying “let me enjoy the pleasures of today while I live”. The problem is if you live only to enjoy the unholy pleasures of today, there might be many worries tomorrow. Esau later worried a lot, laboured a lot and suffered a lot, because he yielded to the temptation of eating that porridge. So please don’t eat that unholy porridge, it might be red, it might be hot but avoid it!

---

PLEASE ENCOURAGE AUTHOR BELOW LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE AS A MEMBER OR VISITOR