Esau was not about to die.

I think we can say that with some degree of confidence.

He was hungry, yes—maybe even famished—and exhausted after a long day hunting in the field. But describing his condition as teetering on the verge of death was probably a touch on the dramatic side.

And yet he certainly acted like it was true. When Jacob set his price for the bowl of stew, what did Esau say?

“Look, I am about to die; so what is this birthright to me?” (Genesis 25:32). He swore away something priceless: “Thus Esau despised his birthright” (verse 34).

The author of Hebrews picks that thought back up, turning it into a challenge for us. What Esau did was almost incomprehensibly foolish, yes—but what if we were capable of making the same mistake?

“And see to it that no one becomes an immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. For you know that later when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no opportunity for repentance, although he sought the blessing with tears” (Hebrews 12:16-18, NET Bible).

When Esau had to choose between a present discomfort and a future blessing, his perspective was skewed. The promises weren’t as real to him as the growling in his belly, and so he traded away incalculable riches in exchange for a bowl of stew.

A mountain later in exchange for a molehill now.

* * *

You’ll be asked to do the same.

We all will.

It won’t be a bowl of stew, but it will be something tempting. A quick and easy fix for a real and inescapable discomfort. Some obstacle we want to see removed.

And all we’ll have to do is walk away from our birthright.

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

(John 1:12-13)

The right. The birthright. To be children of God. To reign with Jesus Christ. To be part of a perfect world forever.

That’s what’s on the table. That’s the mountain. But getting there is hard, and it takes time, and it’s easy to lose sight of the things that make that mountain so valuable, and the molehills are something immediate we can reach out and have right now, and . . .

For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore. . . . But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.

(Hebrews 12:22-24)

The ones who reach that mountain will be the ones who understand the worth of that mountain—who refuse to trade it for a molehill along the way:

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

(Hebrews 11:13-16)

Read through Hebrews 11. Read through the stories of the men and women who felt the pain and discomfort of the present and still kept their vision on the future—because they believed in that future and because they saw it as more real than the world around them. No bowl of stew could ever be worth those promises in their eyes, because they knew those promises. Those promises were their driving motivation. They understood what was on the line.

Do you?

Do I?

Get familiar with the promises. Get familiar with your birthright as a child of God. Let it be the thing that propels you forward each day in this world we travel through as strangers and pilgrims, just as it propelled those who came before us.

Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented—of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth.

And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.

(Hebrews 11:35-39)

* * *

What will be your bowl of stew? How many molehills will you be offered on your journey to the mountain?

I don’t know. I can’t tell you.

But I know they’ll be there. And I know they won’t be easy to turn down. And I know the only way to choose poverty over riches and pilgrimage over residence and death over deliverance is by becoming so familiar with the promises, so committed to receiving them, that we can stand before the rulers of this world and say, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter.”

Esau let the pain of the present convince him to let go of far superior blessings in the future.

A bowl of stew was enough to relinquish a birthright.

Brothers and sisters—if it means rising up to be with our Savior at His return—let us embrace the hunger.