3.063 See The Bigger Picture

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to Him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as savory salt.

Hello, my friends. It's a new day with new opportunities. Choose ye this day whom you will serve.

Can you see the bigger picture or are you stuck just looking at the pieces of the puzzle? That's been stewing in my mind as we're reading this week Genesis chapters 24 through 33. We're going to get back into our story in Genesis and we've got things moving very rapidly.

In fact, the Isaac and Rebecca story kind of just takes care of itself in chapter 24. And then we immediately move into the Jacob piece of the story in Esau. Jacob and Esau jump in in chapter 25.

After that, we kind of spend time in the Jacob world and Esau world for the rest of our readings for the week. What I got stewing today—no pun intended with the stewing comment here. You might know where we're headed if I say it like that.

Didn't mean to say that. Kind of gave myself the chuckles there on that one. What I got stewing in my mind comes from the tail end of chapter 25 here.

Let's take a look at the verse. And although I guess we need to kind of get the context around it, Jacob and Esau are twin brothers that have been born of Rebecca and Isaac. Esau, while being older and kind of the hunter guy and everything, has the birthright and comes back from a hard day's work.

Jacob has a meal ready and Esau comes in. He's famished and here we have this very, very well-known section as Esau faces a critical decision in his life and changes really the trajectory of the Israelite nation. The house of Israel changes in this moment.

Let's take a look and see. It's Genesis chapter 25. I think we're going to go with verse 33 here.

Although I was just kind of stewing around 32, 33, 34. Verse 33 says, 'And Jacob said, Swear to me this day.' And he swore unto him, and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.' Now, why does that seem like such a big deal? Well, Jacob is going to receive the birthright.

He's going to receive the blessing of his father, and then his name is going to be changed to Israel and become the beginning of the house of Israel and the 12 tribes of Israel and all the other parts of Israel there. But I think the lesson we get here out of Esau is an interesting one. And I wanted to reference one of the books that I like to read from, one of the New Testament copies that I like to use, or I should say Old Testament; it's really the Bible copy, so Old and New Testament.

One of the copies I like to use is from a John Maxwell copy of the Bible. John Maxwell is a mentor of mine and so I like to read the stuff that he writes about. He writes about leadership and communication and whatnot.

And so he has a Bible where he connects leadership qualities and communication qualities inside of the Bible stories. And one of the things that he points out about Esau is interesting to me. I want to give you the same phrase that he says inside of this.

He says, 'Esau's short-sightedness prompted him to give up the ultimate to get the immediate.' Now we've used a phrase like that in Savory Salt before where I've encouraged you not to give up what you want most for what you want now. But I love the way that he phrases the ultimate for the immediate. There's so many times in our lives where the immediate thing seems like the most.

The thing we want here and now seems to be the biggest, most important thing we could possibly imagine. And then we take all those things in the here and now, and it seems to take us down a path getting us further and further away from the things that we say we want most. This is one of those massive examples we can use.

This moment, Esau faces a hungry belly and turns around and sells his birthright to Jacob. What birthright is that? The entire birthright of the house of Israel.

It's quite an interesting story. It's an opportunity for us to pause and say, gosh, in these moments when I want these immediate things around me, are they the immediate things or are they the ultimate things? Can I see the bigger picture in the plan here rather than just gather as many little pieces of the puzzle as possible?

Those are the things stewing in my mind today as we read the story of Jacob and Esau. More to come there as they're going to have quite the struggles throughout this week. And that's all for today, my friends.

You and I have come here for such a time as this. Step forward in faith and let's be savory salt. We will be here tomorrow and we hope