EU•AN•GE•LION (YOO-AN-GEL-EE-ON) · εὐαγγέλιον — Good News
The Daily Bread
From the archive · unnumbered13th Week after Pentecost
The daily prayer
David · Psalm 143
1O LORD, hear my prayer. In Your faithfulness, give ear to my plea; in Your righteousness, answer me. 2Do not bring Your servant into judgment, for no one alive is righteous before You. 3For the enemy has pursued my soul, crushing my life to the ground, making me dwell in darkness like those long since dead. 4My spirit grows faint within me; my heart is dismayed inside me. 5I remember the days of old; I meditate on all Your works; I consider the work of Your hands. 6I stretch out my hands to You; my soul thirsts for You like a parched land. Selah 7Answer me quickly, O LORD; my spirit fails. Do not hide Your face from me, or I will be like those who descend to the Pit. 8Let me hear Your loving devotion in the morning, for I have put my trust in You. Teach me the way I should walk, for to You I lift up my soul. 9Deliver me from my enemies, O LORD; I flee to You for refuge. 10Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God. May Your good Spirit lead me on level ground. 11For the sake of Your name, O LORD, revive me. In Your righteousness, bring my soul out of trouble. 12And in Your loving devotion, cut off my enemies. Destroy all who afflict me, for I am Your servant.
Psalm 143 (BSB)
Today’s Scripture
One day, while Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the field and was famished. He said to Jacob, “Let me eat some of that red stew, for I am famished.” (That is why he was also called Edom.) “First sell me your birthright,” Jacob replied. “Look,” said Esau, “I am about to die, so what good is a birthright to me?” “Swear to me first,” Jacob said. So Esau swore to Jacob and sold him the birthright. Then Jacob gave some bread and lentil stew to Esau, who ate and drank and then got up and went away. Thus Esau despised his birthright.
Genesis 25:29-34 (BSB)
Genesis 25:29-34
Sold For A Single Meal
Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of lentils, and Jacob took the blessing by dressing up as his brother. Neither brother comes out of Genesis 27 well, and Christians have seen the gospel in it anyway.
One day, while Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the field and was famished. He said to Jacob, “Let me eat some of that red stew, for I am famished.” (That is why he was also called Edom.) “First sell me your birthright,” Jacob replied. “Look,” said Esau, “I am about to die, so what good is a birthright to me?” “Swear to me first,” Jacob said. So Esau swore to Jacob and sold him the birthright. Then Jacob gave some bread and lentil stew to Esau, who ate and drank and then got up and went away. Thus Esau despised his birthright.
A Future Traded For Lunch
Esau comes in from the field exhausted and hungry. Jacob is cooking. Esau asks for some of the red stew.
Jacob does not offer him a bowl. He names a price: “First sell me your birthright.”
The birthright was the firstborn son's place in the family and his share of the inheritance. Esau decides it is worth less than a meal. He says he is about to die, so what good is it to him? He swears, eats, drinks, gets up and leaves.
“Thus Esau despised his birthright.”
Neither brother looks good here. Esau treats something God attached to his family as cheap. Jacob uses his brother's hunger to take it from him.
The New Testament remembers the scene. Hebrews 12:16 warns against being “godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his birthright.”
Esau's problem was that he wanted what was in front of him more than what God had promised. Hunger is not a sin. Letting hunger decide what you are willing to lose can be.
Reflect
What have you been tempted to trade away for something you wanted right now?
Prayer
The catechism corner
Heidelberg, Q116
Why do Christians need to pray?
Because prayer is the most important part of the thankfulness God requires of us. And also because God gives his grace and Holy Spirit only to those who pray continually and groan inwardly, asking God for these gifts and thanking God for them.
Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Q116 · Psalm 50:14 · Matthew 7:7 · Luke 11:13
Voices
From the church’s shelf
By the grace of God we have not come to that. Woe to these priests! But we hope that God will bestow His mercy upon us that we shall not be of them.
Blaise Pascal · Pensées
The question
To carry, not to close
When did you last let someone help you?
The memory verse
This week · same verse all seven days
I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You.
Psalm 119:11 (BSB)
The proverb
Blessings are on the head of the righteous, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.
Proverbs 10:6 (BSB)
The hymnal
Miss Kate Hankey, 1867
I love to tell the story
I love to tell the story
Of unseen things above,
Of Jesus and his glory,
Of Jesus and his love!
I love to tell the story,
Because I know it's true;
It satisfies my longings,
As nothing else would do.
I love to tell the story!
'Twill be my theme in glory,
To tell the old, old story
Of Jesus and his love.
I love to tell the story!
More wonderful it seems,
Than all the golden fancies
Of all our golden dreams.
I love to tell the story!
It did so much for me!
And that is just the reason,
I tell it now to thee.
Rabbit holes
Where today’s Scripture leads
Genesis 25:26-28
After this, his brother came out grasping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob. And Isaac was sixty years old when the twins were born. When the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man who stayed at home. Because Isaac had a taste for wild game, he loved Esau; but Rebekah loved Jacob.
What comes just before Genesis 25:29-34, which sets the scene for today's passage.
The practice
Give away one thing today that you would rather keep.
Generosity is a habit of the hands before it is a conviction of the heart.
Today
Greek today
γραφή
graphḗ
a drawing, painting; writing; that which is written, a writing
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.
Matthew 6:22 (BSB)
The funnies
A wordless strip
Echo & Dust — No. 2: The Window Seat
The season
Ordinary Time — the long green season after Pentecost
From the day after Pentecost until Advent begins in late November — roughly half the year, all summer and autumn.
"Ordinary" here does not mean unremarkable. It comes from the same root as "ordinal" — these are the counted weeks, numbered one after another from Pentecost all the way to Advent. It is the longest season of the church year, roughly half of it, covering the whole green stretch of summer and autumn, and it has no headline feast to organize it. That is deliberate. The festival half of the year announces what God has done — birth, death, resurrection, Spirit. Ordinary Time is where the church practises living as if all of that were true, in weeks that look exactly like the ones before them. It opens with Trinity Sunday, naming the whole mystery at once, and it ends with the last Sundays turning toward judgment and hope, just before Advent starts the year again in the dark. Most of the Christian life is lived here. The season simply admits it.
The 13th week after Pentecost counts the church’s long walk of ordinary faithfulness between the Spirit’s arrival and the year’s end.
Green — the color of things that grow, worn for the long season of ordinary growth.
The gallery
7plates · tap any to look closer
God the Father with an Angel and the Orbafter GuercinoA close engraved scene after Guercino: the Father, bald-crowned and vastly bearded, leans down from the right in a dark mantle, one hand gripping a tall gold scepter, his gaze bent on a winged putto at left who sits among clouds steadying a large banded orb topped with a cross. The orb's straps, the scepter, and the jeweled band across the Father's lap carry the print's ochre accent.
How to read
Practical guides to reading and studying the Bible.
Method
The Whole of Mark, in One Sitting
The shortest Gospel takes about ninety minutes aloud, and it was built for exactly that.
Clear ninety minutes, phone in another room.
Choose a translation you don't usually read.
Read straight through, aloud if you can.
Mark nothing; notice snags and keep moving.
Next morning, write one sentence on what surprised you.
Father, I know how Esau felt at that table. I have wanted the bowl in front of me more than what you promised. Keep me from selling cheaply what you gave me, and keep me from taking advantage of anyone else's hunger.
And Rebekah took the finest clothes in the house that belonged to her older son Esau, and she put them on her younger son Jacob. She also put the skins of the young goats on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. Then she handed her son Jacob the tasty food and bread she had made. So Jacob went to his father and said, “My father.” “Here I am!” he answered. “Which one are you, my son?” Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau, your firstborn. I have done as you told me. Please sit up and eat some of my game, so that you may bless me.” But Isaac asked his son, “How did you ever find it so quickly, my son?” “Because the LORD your God brought it to me,” he replied. Then Isaac said to Jacob, “Please come closer so I can touch you, my son. Are you really my son Esau, or not?” So Jacob came close to his father Isaac, who touched him and said, “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” Isaac did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like those of his brother Esau; so he blessed him.
The Same Word For Food
The stew in Genesis 25 has an unexpected link to Romans 14, and it runs through a single Greek word.
When Hebrews 12:16 says Esau sold his birthright “for a single meal,” the word for meal is brosis. It means eating, or food. Paul uses the same word in Romans 14:17. “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.”
Both verses put food below something greater: the birthright in Hebrews, and righteousness, peace and joy in Romans. Esau lost something by choosing a meal over a promise. The Roman Christians Paul wrote to were in danger of losing something by fighting over meals.
Augustine noticed that the problem in Genesis was not the lentils. Lentils were never forbidden to anyone. In his City of God he drew this lesson.
“We learn from this that a person is to be blamed, not for the kind of food he eats, but for immoderate greed.”
Augustine’s point keeps the two passages together. The food laws of Leviticus were real and holy. A person can keep every food rule and still value a meal more than what God has promised.
The opposite mistake is possible too. A person can be free to eat anything and still let appetite rule. Esau was free to eat the stew, and he still wanted it more than his birthright.
Dressed In His Brother's Clothes
Years later, the birthright is Jacob's. The blessing is still to come. Isaac is old and nearly blind, and he asks Esau to hunt game and make him a meal so that he can bless him before he dies.
Rebekah hears it and makes a plan. She cooks two young goats the way Isaac likes. She dresses Jacob in Esau's best clothes. She covers his hands and neck with goatskin, so that he will feel like his hairy brother.
Jacob objects only that his father might touch him and find him out.
Then he lies. He tells his father, “I am Esau, your firstborn.” When Isaac asks how the hunt went so fast, Jacob brings God into the lie: “Because the LORD your God brought it to me.”
Isaac is suspicious. He calls Jacob closer and touches him. He says the voice is Jacob's, but the hands are Esau's. He smells the clothes, and they smell like the field. He blesses him.
Then Esau comes home. When Isaac realizes what happened, he trembles violently. Esau lets out “a loud and bitter cry.” He begs, “Bless me too, O my father!”
Esau also turns his brother's name against him. “Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me twice.” The verb Esau uses comes from the word for heel. Young's Literal Translation keeps the picture: “he doth take me by the heel these two times.” The boy who came out holding his brother's heel has now tripped him twice.
Genesis does not approve of any of this. Esau resolves to kill Jacob, and Jacob has to run for his life. The blessing is real, and the deception costs everyone.
He had despised his birthright, and he still wept for his father's blessing.
Blessed In Borrowed Clothes
Readers have never been comfortable with Genesis 27, and they have also never stopped finding meaning in it. Jewish and Christian interpreters have both lingered over the clothes.
The medieval Jewish commentator Rashi asks why Isaac liked the smell. Goatskins do not smell pleasant. Rashi's answer is that the fragrance of the Garden of Eden came into the room with Jacob. The Talmud offers a different reading built on a play on words. The Hebrew for “his garments,” begadav, sounds like bogedav, “his betrayers.” Rabbi Zeira taught that even the betrayers among God's people carry the smell of a field the LORD has blessed.
Augustine saw Jacob as a picture of Christ. Jacob covered himself in goatskins “as if bearing the sins of others,” he wrote, and came under his father's hands.
Ambrose of Milan, in the fourth century, read the fine robe as a picture of the Old Testament given to the church. He also wrote about the smell of the clothes. Perhaps, he said, it means we are justified not by works but by faith.
John Calvin took Ambrose's hint further. In his Institutes he described the Christian coming to God the Father the way Jacob came to Isaac.
“So we conceal ourselves under the precious purity of Christ, our first-born brother, that we may obtain an attestation of righteousness from the presence of God.”
Those words are Calvin's, following Ambrose. Paul says something close to it in Galatians 3:27. “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”
Calvin’s comparison has a clear limit. Jacob wore clothes that were not his and lied to receive the blessing Isaac intended for Esau. Paul says that those baptized into Christ “have clothed yourselves with Christ.” They are received through the Son without deceiving the Father. In this Christian reading, Jacob grasped at a blessing; believers receive life in Christ as a gift.
Before this faith came, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law became our guardian to lead us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.
Then and Now
A Guardian Until The Date Set By The Father
Galatians gives a picture of what the law was for, and it is easy to get wrong.
Paul calls the law a paidagogos. The King James Version translated that word as “schoolmaster,” and many people imagine a teacher. The Greek lexicon of Joseph Thayer says otherwise. A paidagogos was a trusted slave who supervised a boy's conduct and morals. He was not the teacher. His job was custody and discipline for a limited time.
Paul extends the picture in the next chapter.
“What I am saying is that as long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a slave, although he is the owner of everything. He is subject to guardians and trustees until the date set by his father.”
The heir owns everything and still lives under supervision, because he is not yet grown. Then the date comes.
“God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive our adoption as sons.”
Paul's conclusion follows. The believer is no longer a slave but a son, and a son is an heir.
This picture helps explain why Christians disagree about the law without calling it bad. They differ over what ended with the guardian: the law as a covenant, its ceremonies, or the law as a way to be justified. The guardian was not the enemy of the heir. He kept the boy safe until the father's appointed time. Paul even says the law led us to Christ, though scholars debate whether the phrase means “to Christ” or “until Christ.”
What the guardian could not do was give the inheritance. Only the father could do that.
That connects the law of Leviticus to the story of Jacob. Jacob wanted the blessing so much that he dressed as the firstborn to get it. Paul compares the law’s custody before faith came to a guardian’s temporary care. Neither Jacob’s disguise nor a guardian’s supervision creates an heir; in Galatians, that status comes from God through his Son.
The Man Who Thought He Was Esau
John Bunyan was a tinker from Bedfordshire in England. He became a preacher, and in 1660 he was put in prison for leading religious meetings the law did not allow. In prison he wrote an account of his own soul, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, published in 1666.
In it he describes a temptation that came to him over and over. A thought kept running through his mind: “Sell Him, sell Him.” He resisted for a long time. Then one morning he felt the words pass through his heart, “Let Him go, if He will.” He went out into a field, he wrote, “like a man bereft of life.”
Then a verse from Hebrews took hold of him. It was the verse about Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. Afterward, when Esau wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, though he sought it carefully with tears.
Bunyan believed he had become Esau. He writes that the verse lay on him “all day long, all the week long, yea, all the year long.” He says the torment lasted two years.
Relief came slowly. He studied the story in Genesis. He noticed that Esau's sale was deliberate and public, and that Esau later sought the blessing, not the birthright.
Then one day, walking in a field, a sentence came into his mind: “Thy righteousness is in heaven.” He saw by faith Jesus Christ at God's right hand. He understood that his good moods did not make his righteousness better, and his bad moods did not make it worse.
“For my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, The same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.”
“Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed.”
When he got home, he could not find those exact words in the Bible. He found their meaning in 1 Corinthians 1:30, which says Christ became our righteousness.
How The Churches Sort The Old Law
Christians agree that Leviticus is Scripture and that the law is holy. They disagree about how it carries into Christian life. Here are the main positions, each in its own terms.
The Catholic Church calls the law “holy, spiritual, and good, yet still imperfect.” Like a tutor, it shows what must be done but does not give the strength to do it. Its moral commands remain. Its ceremonial laws, including the food laws, were fulfilled in Christ. Catholics keep the Church's own discipline of Friday abstinence and Lenten fasting. Historically, Thomas Aquinas and the Council of Florence taught that keeping the ceremonial law after the gospel was a mortal sin. The modern Catechism also says the Old Covenant has never been revoked.
The Eastern Orthodox churches keep no Levitical list. They fast as a discipline received from the early church. On strict fast days, they even allow shellfish, which Leviticus forbids.
Reformed churches, following the Westminster Confession, divide the law into moral, ceremonial and judicial parts. The ceremonial laws are “now abrogated,” and the moral law binds everyone.
Lutherans draw the line differently. In 1525 Luther wrote about how Christians should treat Moses.
“We will regard Moses as a teacher, but we will not regard him as our lawgiver—unless he agrees with both the New Testament and the natural law.”
The Lutheran confessions still keep a use of the law as a guide for believers.
Methodists hold that the ceremonies of Moses do not bind Christians, while the moral commandments do. The Methodist article is taken from the seventh of the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles, which holds the same line.
New covenant theologians such as Thomas Schreiner argue that the whole covenant of Moses has passed. They hold that its moral norms are fulfilled in Christ.
Dispensational teachers treat the age of the law and the present age of grace as distinct.
Seventh-day Adventists teach believers to “abstain from the unclean foods identified in the Scriptures,” while holding that salvation is all of grace.
Messianic Jewish congregations hold that Jewish followers of Jesus should keep Torah as their covenant calling. Gentile believers are not bound to it.
One Law or Hebrew Roots teachers hold that Gentile believers are grafted into Israel, so the Torah, food laws included, applies to all believers. They teach that salvation is by grace and that keeping Torah is the way of a blessed life. Messianic Jewish leaders answer that Jews and Gentiles have different callings in the one body.
The moral, ceremonial and civil division is widely used, and it has critics. Lutheran, new covenant, Messianic Jewish and Jewish writers do not use it as the key to what continues. That sorting is also where many present-day arguments about Leviticus begin, including arguments about sexuality in the chapters near the food laws. Christians reach different conclusions there too. Where they disagree, they still owe love and respect to the people in their lives.
Reflect
Where are you still trying to earn a blessing that can only be given?
The Blessing Esau Wanted
Hebrews says something hard about Esau. “Afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected. He could find no ground for repentance, though he sought the blessing with tears.”
That verse frightened John Bunyan for two years. It has frightened many readers since.
Esau could not undo the sale. He had traded his birthright for a meal, and the blessing had gone to his brother. Hebrews uses him as a warning not to treat holy things as cheap.
Bunyan's relief did not come from deciding the warning was false. It came from seeing where his righteousness really was. It was not in his feelings or his record. It was in Christ, at God's right hand.
Genesis also does not leave Esau without mercy. He becomes a man with plenty of his own. Years later, he is the one who runs to meet the brother who cheated him.
So hold both brothers today. Esau reminds us not to sell God's gifts for something in front of us. Jacob reminds us that God's blessing comes to people who do not deserve it.
Neither of them could make himself an heir. The law could not do it either. That work belongs to the Father, and he does it through his Son.
Prayer
Father, I have been Esau, trading what you gave me for what I wanted right away. I have been Jacob, dressing up to get a blessing. Neither made me your child. Thank you that your Son gives me his own clothing, and that I do not have to trick you to be blessed. Keep me from despising your gifts, and keep me gentle toward every brother I have wronged. Amen.
This week
I will stop trying to earn a blessing that God gives through his Son.
