Playing the Long-Game

I don't think I have ever been truly, truly hungry. 

Maybe the closest I've come would be Thanksgiving meals when I've visited family, and all the day, the house fills with the aromas of freshly baked bread, buttery mashed potatoes, roasting turkey, bacon-garnished green beans, etc. My mouth waters and waters, and my stomach makes sounds no stomach should ever make as it protests its lack of immediate fulfillment. 

Time slows down, and when we finally sit down at the table to eat our feast, the noisy, joyful confusion of seating what must be a thousand children, assigning name cards, pouring freshly-made tea, and asking the blessing further pushes out the blessed event when the first taste enters the mouth and all the salivary glands rejoice.

Hungry as I think I am during these occasions, I have never been at the place where my body is sending starvation signals to my brain. 

Back in Genesis 25:29-34, Esau thinks he is starving. He's been hunting, and he comes back to camp, absolutely famished. Jacob, his artful twin brother, is cooking some stew, and when Esau smells the aroma, he says, "Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I'm famished!"

Jacob the Artful says: "First... sell me your birthright." 

Esau the Firstborn is supposed to value his place in the family. He stands to inherit everything that is his father's, which is considerable wealth. Not only that, he is supposed to inherit the blessing and covenant that God gave first to Abraham, then handed on to Isaac, his father.

But Esau doesn't value that. His stomach is growling now, and future benefits and inheritances weigh far less heavily on his mind than his immediate needs. "Look," he says, "I am about to die (there's nothing dramatic about Esau). What good is the birthright to me?"

Jacob makes Esau swear to give him the birthright, and -- in payment -- Jacob gives him the stew. The final line of that chapter says: "So Esau despised his birthright."

Jump ahead to Exodus 13, where the Israelites have just walked out of Rameses to begin their exodus from Egypt and from slavery. Exodus 13:1-16 details instructions from the Lord to Moses, all about the firstborn sons of Israel.

"Consecrate to me every firstborn male," God tells Moses. "The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether man or animal."

Esau is a firstborn male who, granted, lived before this instruction, but who lived in the position of firstborn, which -- given the emphasis placed on this throughout Scripture -- is an important position to have. It signifies belonging. Sonship. Inheritance.

The fact that Esau despised his birthright -- giving up the long-game in order to meet his immediate pleasure -- speaks volumes about his priorities.

The Lord reminds Moses that the firstborn of every Israelite family is to be consecrated to Him -- that the oldest will belong to Him. Hundreds of years later, Jesus is carried into the temple in Jerusalem for this very purpose, to be consecrated as the firstborn of Mary's womb. It's an essential and holy instruction. It holds a big place in the grand picture.

What's the deal with it?

Focus. Priorities. 

Esau the firstborn gives up what is of far greater worth for the short-game: fulfilled hunger. Hebrews 12:16-17 says: "See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. He could bring about no change of mind, though he sought the blessing with tears."

See, when you weigh hunger of the body against hunger of the soul, one hunger digs a hole far, far deeper than the other. When you fill up the lesser hole with things of lesser importance, the far deeper hole that has existed from the moment Eve plucks the first fruit from the tree is left... unfulfilled. 

Esau does not recognize this until it's too late. He ignores the deeper hole, the longer game, to his own detriment, and he pays the price with the sacrifice of his future.

Jesus, in Matthew 4:1-11, heads into the wilderness to spend some time fasting and praying. 4:2 says: "After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry."

You know, I'll bet he was hungrier than Esau by this point. Esau is likely out on a hunting trip that lasts hours, maybe days, and he probably scrapes by on snacks until he can get back and eat a real meal. Jesus is without food for over a month.

Esau's goal is to fill the lesser hole. Jesus -- by virtue of the fact that He is the sinless Son of God -- does not have His own deeper hole, but he has the deeper holes of every person who has ever existed throughout the continuum of time from the beginning to the end... to contemplate.

Goodness gracious.

Esau sells his birthright at the first smell of tempting soup. Jesus turns away strong temptation offered three times by the tempter himself, Satan. Not only does Jesus refuse Satan, he hits back with the double-edged sword, the living and active Word of God -- because He is the Word.

Yeah, but... He's Jesus. Of course he plays the long game. 

But we're God's children, too. Not in the same sense as Jesus is God's son, but God accepts us as His firstborn. Consecrated to Him. We live as inheritors of His kingdom, and as such, we are to run with perseverance the race marked out for us. "Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons" (Hebrews 12:7).

Endure the hunger pangs; the long-game is a race worth running. The inheritance is worthwhile.

I found during my short and not-very-spectacular sojourn with track-and-field events in high school that my athletic talents did not lie with the shorter races. My legs were long, but slow and lugubrious. I love the grace and finesse of a big cat, cutting through the savannah with quiet majesty and speed, and that was what I wished I could be. However (and I once wrote an article about this), I was the T-Rex thundering along at the rear of the pack: thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud. My game -- never very worthy -- lay much more in the longer endurance races, the 1600m, for instance. Running a mile quickly was difficult, but I seemed to have a better idea of how to pace myself than I did in a 400m.

A 1600m is four times around a track. If I had crossed the finish line after the first time around and sagged over, hands on knees, gulping in the breath I'd longed for during that short sprint, I would have come up three laps short... and been disqualified.

Endure the hunger pangs; the long-game is a race worth running. The inheritance is worthwhile. Keep your eyes on that finish line that is still far in the distance. "Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith" (Hebrews 12:1-2). "Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart" (Hebrews 12:3). 

Play that long game. Jesus, the Firstborn over all creation, did it first.