What's Your Birthright?

Did you ever wonder? Did you ever wonder?

I do. Did you ever wonder? Why the sun always rises, but the stars never fall? Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says enough?

Enough. I saw some lentil or red soup in order to get his birthright from him. And Esau goes for that deal. And as a result, you might recall in Genesis, it explains that Esau despised his birthright. So the question that just begs in my mind is, what is the birthright?

Because you never saw, you know, Jacob exercised his birthright in anything after he got it from Esau, or you never really understood, or I never really understood exactly what was going on there. And so it's interesting in the second verse of Obadiah, which is kind of where we're going today, to explain this idea of what is a birthright and what happens when you despise it. And God kind of is going to warn Obadiah on what is going to happen here. He says, Behold, and he's talking to Edom here, which interestingly is Obadiah's, if we understand what the Jews teach about this, it's Obadiah's people themselves. It says, Behold, I have made thee small among the heathen.

Thou art greatly despised. Well, beautifully, you know, the idea of the birthright there is that, you know, Jacob was the younger and he wanted to be the older. Well, that word that is used small here where he says, Behold, I have made thee small. That same word could be easily translated and usually is translated younger.

Okay. And the first times you find that word in the Bible, it is translated younger. So it says, Behold, I have made thee younger.

In other words, that idea of small is that you don't have the older position that you once had there, Edom. And it says he's made thee small among the heathen and thou art greatly despised. Well, that word despised is exactly the word for what Edom did with his birthright, which again begs the question, what does that mean exactly that he despised his birthright? Well, as I studied that word despised, I couldn't help but note that it has a lot to do with cleaving, with chopping up and perhaps even to consume.

When you think about what Edom did or what Esau did, was he consumed his birthright by eating that soup? And so here God says he's going to make Esau small and despised or the younger and despised. I mean, you can't help but think about a small nation right this minute that's despised. You don't necessarily come up with Edom because if you go with what we talked about on Friday about Edom is these big, huge countries of Russia that's red and China that's red and those northern countries of Revelation. Those things are huge and they don't appear to be small and despised.

But Israel, on the other hand, does appear to be small and despised. I find that absolutely fascinating. So but again, the idea is the birthright here. And what does this mean in my own life is obviously what I really want to get to is, you know, how can I not consume my birthright?

Well, as I really process this over the weekend, actually used it as a sermon for what I've taught about yesterday at our church. That, you know, clearly Isaac was Jacob's son and Esau was Isaac's son and actually was his firstborn son. And so as a result, he was literally a king. And kings don't work, they serve.

OK. And that's hugely important. OK. And in a matter of working, you're kind of when you're working to make a name for yourself or when you're a self-made man, as we talked about actually on my show Saturday. Then to an extent, at that point in time, you're literally consuming your birthright because you're serving yourself, not serving your people. And certainly we've known kings throughout the ages who serve themselves and not their people, which is, again, they're despising their birthright. Their birthright is to serve, which is interestingly, when you take Obadiah himself, you know, if he was born into the tribe of Edom, it's fascinating that his name means servant of God. And so here he's turned the table and he's actually taken on the birthright of the older son to be the king.

Right. When you think of the two princes in England right there, you know, the older is the one that's going to get to be the king. And the king is the one who is going to serve the people.

And he would normally be considered the greater. And it's interesting that Jesus even said the greatest among you will be the servant of you all. Well, the idea is, do we get a chance to serve the Lord? You know, in doing so, we serve people, love other people, or we despise our birthright by trying to make our name for ourselves or, you know, photo bombing Jesus, stealing his glory in so many different ways. You know, that's kind of how that plays out.

And I think about, you know, that the last shall be first and the first shall be last, that whole idea. And fascinatingly, I've told this story many times. Well, you might remember Skipper Wagner is one of my best friends from my middle school days or my junior high days. And his father started a Boy Scout troop. And the way that they did that was they took all the boys and they distribute them into five different patrols and the ones that nobody else would pick because they all had patrol leaders.

They all put those in my patrol. And so I had the patrol of essentially the nerds and the bedwetters and the unpopular kids, however that all worked. But as it played out that each of these kids, like the bedwetter kid, Pee Wee, I call him Petey, excuse me, his name was actually Pete. He was the guy you did not want on the bunk above you, I'm just telling you. But he had an unbelievable skill in reading maps. And then there was another kid that he was definitely an outcast guy, didn't have a lot of social skills. But man, he was a pyromaniac and he could start a fire out of nothing.

And then there was this other boy who was just, you know, wore the glasses, had the whole nerd outlook, but he could lash like there was nobody's business. And see, what happened was, even though we were despised, and believe me, you would not want to be on the team with these guys playing dodgeball, it was ugly. And we were small amongst the other patrols of that particular troop there in Michigan.

And, you know, like I said, we took it on the chin many, many, many times over the two or three years when we first got started. But then they had, you know, the third year they had this Klondike Derby, which has to do with you got to build this sled and you got to go to different stations by using a map. And the particular thing God had for the rattlesnake patrol is what we were, was that the day of the Klondike Derby that year, it was a blizzard.

And you couldn't see really five feet in front of you, which was no problem for us. We were kids, we loved the snow, and we were just having a blast out there in the snow in our sled. And so we had this map and we were supposed to go to these stations and every time you went to these stations, you were supposed to do a Boy Scout, you know, thing like start a fire with two matches or whatever. And so here we were, we had no idea we were poised for success here because again, we were just doing what we did naturally.

In other words, it was a beautiful thing. God gave us all a birthright, some special gift, and apparently Petey's gift was to read a map. And I can't remember the young man's name that started the fires, those were his gifts, right? And interestingly, he used them to serve his patrol by starting the fire or by leading us all on the map through the blizzard, which really was not a big deal for Petey.

I mean, it was just like he just did it because that's what he did, right? And he was, of course, our friend and we're just going. And so, you know, we went to the stations, we lashed like there was nobody's business. We started a fire. We did some kind of first aid thing as we went to these different stations that day.

But by the time we got to the third station, it was just snowing like crazy. We had a sled. We were boys. We were like, well, man, we're never going to win this thing because we're the rattlesnake patrol.

So why don't we just use this wonderful sled on these beautiful hills? And so we sled it for a couple of hours. And we said, well, we probably ought to go back to the finish line. And, of course, as we crossed the finish line, you know, we were the winners because we had made the most stations.

Because, again, the way that God had gifted us to serve one another in that particular patrol. Okay. And the point is, is that it's a pretty beautiful thing that God has given us all amazing, beautiful gifts. And we don't want to consume them by using them to serve ourselves because if we do that, we're going to despise our birthright. We end up small and despised.

Okay. But if we actually use what God gave us to glorify Him and to glorify others, oh, my goodness. You know, you see what you get? You actually – which, by the way, we got a beautiful little banner to put on our patrol flag. And we were greatly respected after that. Even in Dodgeball, the rattlesnake patrol was no longer small and despised just simply because God gifts everybody. And He's gifted you – but He gifts you to serve, not to serve yourself. Thanks for listening.