p. 148 | THE SORROWS OF ESAU

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 31, 1881

THE SORROWS OF ESAU.

Afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.—Heb. 12: 17.

FAINT and weary, the son of the patriarch came back from his hunting tour. He had mused by the way on his hard and sorry fortune. The spirit of enterprise had died in his bosom, and hope had left him to the peevishness of indolence and unsatisfied sensuality; when he met with his brother preparing pottage of lentils for his own refreshment. It was an evil hour for Esau; the slave of appetite, he counted not, at that moment, the worth of character, friends, or prospects. Feigning himself ready to die with hunger, he quickly made a covenant with his brother, to part with all that was truly valuable on earth, for the means of gratifying his propensity to gluttony, for this once. He was determined to have this one dinner, if he might starve in perdition forever as its penalty. The birthright so unceremoniously disposed of, was the covenant of Heaven’s favor. It was understood and seen by him, but despised by his infidel heart—God’s covenant with Abraham and his father of the possession of the land of Canaan to them and their posterity, and the heavenly inheritance of which this was the earnest and representation. He could look upon the fat valleys of Achor, the beauty of Zion, and Lebanon’s towering cedars, and feel that the possession of Canaan’s land was a worthless toy in comparison with a mess of pottage. But, what was more, he could renounce his claims to a benignant Providence here, and a heavenly paradise hereafter, for the gratifications of an hour, that would work the bitterness of death forever.

But there was another day—the two youth had grown up to manhood. The venerable Isaac had come to the period of life when the infirmities of age admonished him that the duties of this world should be arranged, that, in his appointed hour, he might sleep with his fathers in peace. As high-priest of his household, he was on a certain day to consecrate the heir of the sacred covenant. His eye rested on Esau, his first-born; he sent him away to gather preparations for the solemn ceremonial. But God suffered Jacob to come in for the old man’s priestly blessing; the claim which he had long since purchased. He approved and sanctified the consecration; though He despised and abhorred the intervention of Rebecca’s intrigues and falsehoods as a means of bringing it about; as a fair representation of Jacob’s proper claims was all that was needed.

Esau came back from the field, not faint and weary now, bearing a dish of savory meats with which he fondly hoped to procure his father’s blessing. But the birthright which had been sold for a mess of pottage, could not be re-purchased by a dish of savory venison. He had chosen to indulge his sensual appetite once, and he might retain his savory meats now, in the room of the blessing he had bartered away. As he learned the unwelcome truth, that the sacred ceremony was passed, and he himself was a servant among his kindred; “he stood before his father and cried with an exceeding great and bitter cry, ‘Bless me, even me also, O my father.’” But he found no place of change in this transaction, though he sought it carefully with tears. The sale of his birthright had, as it were, turned the current of the stream to the pent-up vale, whose fair and beauteous landscape was lost in consequence beneath the accumulating waters. A small transaction, in itself, but mighty in its consequences.

In the case of Esau there is solemn instruction and warning to every youthful heart. For who-ever, like Esau, chooses present gratification regardless of future good, will, in the end, find that the consequences are pain and remorse, and inevitable ruin.

There was no special judgment of God that visited Esau, no destroying flood as came on the antediluvian world, no storm of meteoric fire as descended on the plains of Sodom, no formal pouring out of the vials of divine wrath; but his cries and bitter tears were only the legitimate result of his own conduct. It is as the course of the sun in the firmament, or any great law of nature, that the votaries of sensuality and lust shall find wretchedness in life, bitterness in death, with accumulating horrors hovering beyond the dreadful valley. Vain regrets, nor cries, nor bitter tears, can ever bring back to the sensualized soul the heavenly peace of innocence and virtue. Another and a strange fire is enkindled on the heart’s polluted altar—a fire that sends up the tainted cloud of heaven-daring blasphemies to mock a Saviour’s love for a ruined world. But “the way of the transgressor is hard,” and neither paints nor patches, princely robes, nor bold and reckless airs, can allay the wretched anguish of the guilty soul. Close on the path of transgression comes the devouring scourge which drinks up every pleasure of the heart and leaves it to desolation and sorrow. And if there is a God in heaven or truth upon the earth, the votary of sensual pleasure will “mourn at the last, when his flesh and body are consumed, and cry how I hated instruction and my heart despised reproof, and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me.” He will seek, yet seek in vain, like Esau, that the penalty of his transgression may be abated while he gives himself up to pursue the lusts of his own heart. We say he will forever seek, for it is folly to presume that the he who now stalks through the world, the living epitome of a walking and breathing hell, until he falters under the ruinous blight of his iniquities, and hobbles down to a grave of wretched infamy, will in the resurrection find in himself a heart to be delighted with the songs of the redeemed in Paradise. No, for even here, his habits of sin grow with his growth and strengthen with his strength, until he is bound, as it were, by the chains of sinful lust, and these shall drag him downwards through the dark ways of iniquity to the chambers of eternal death. Neither in the eternal world will he find any place of repentance or change in God, though he may seek it carefully with tears. He may seek this repentance as did the rich man in hell, when he lifted up his eyes being in torment, and cried for a drop of water to cool his parched tongue. He may seek it with piteous groans or blasphemous howlings, but devils will mock his wretchedness, and heaven to him would be the severest part of hell.—Selected.