A rebellious son knows how to break the heart of his father. He just has to listen to good advice and then do exactly the opposite. Esau was one of those sons.
“Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed
Jacob (his brother) and sent him away to
Paddan-aram to take a wife from there, and that as he blessed him he directed
him, ‘You must not take a wife from the Canaanite women,’ and that Jacob had
obeyed his father and his mother and gone to Paddan-aram.
So when Esau saw that the Canaanite
women did not please Isaac his father, Esau went to Ishmael and took as his
wife, besides the wives he had, Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s
son, the sister of Nebaioth.” (Genesis 28:6–9)
Jacob may have been a trickster and devious, but he did obey his father. Esau
did the opposite.
After reading this, I thought of other
opposites in Scripture and realized that being a black and white person could
be more of a virtue than I’d realized. The next reading pointed to more of
them. It says . . .
“A good name is better than precious
ointment” and “The day of death than the day of
birth” and “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to
the house of feasting” and “Sorrow is better than laughter.”
(Ecclesiastes 7:1–4)
Figuring out God’s reasons for having
Solomon write these things is a bigger challenge, but it seems to me He is
saying that if difficulties, grief, and sadness will make me think about the
serious and eternal matters of life, then those trials are better than being
happy all the time and not thinking about much at all. Happy or not, Esau
seemed to be one of those people that didn’t think much.
The NT reading also contains several
contrasts. First, Jesus contrasts two things when He was asked by His opponents
where His authority came from. “I also will ask you one question, and if you
tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these
things. The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?”
(Matthew 21:24–25)
Notice that Jesus gave them only two
options with no shades of gray between them. It is either God who is boss, or
human beings thinking they are the boss. I cannot serve God and my own self at
the same time.
In the next passage, Jesus tells a
parable about a man with two sons. He told the first to go to work, and the son
refused, but then changed his mind and went. He told the second to do the same,
and he said he would, but did not go. Of course the first one did the will of
his father. This story illustrates the importance of obedience over empty
rhetoric.
Right away, Jesus contrasted the
religious people listening to this parable with the sinners they despised. He
said, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into
the kingdom of God before you.” (Matthew 21:28–31) This must have angered
them, but Jesus wanted them to think about their empty talk. The ‘sinners’ did
the will of God in contrast to anyone who claimed to do it, but had not.
Jesus clarified this by saying, “For
John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but
the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it,
you did not afterward change your minds and believe him.” (Matthew 21:32) John
the Baptist stressed that genuine faith affects behavior!
Here Jesus contrasts faith with
disobedience, then later shows that faith and obedience are team mates . . . “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God
will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.”
(Matthew 21:43)
A professor of philosophy does a good job
of bringing out the contrasts in the Bible, but he also does a good job of
showing that whatever a person truly believes will be demonstrated by their
lives. This is a humbling truth. It means that whenever I disobey God, I cannot
claim faith, but need to examine where I’ve failed to believe Him.
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