I want to start out with my standard disclaimer—everybody stops laughing. Anyway, I feel like I need to say this whenever I get up here to talk: what I am about to talk about today is by no means perfected in my life.
What I want to share today is something the Lord has shown me and is dealing with me about. It is still a work in process, and I do not know—it may never be perfected in me. I do not want this to come across as me saying that I have got my act together and you do not, because it is probably just the opposite. I am sure I do not have my act together. I feel like y’all do.
I also want to use Ed Miller’s standard disclaimer: anytime you approach the Word of God and try to study it and receive meaning and blessing from it, there are a lot of helps and a lot of things out there that can help you do that. But there is no substitute—there is no replacement—for absolute dependence on the Holy Spirit.
So, as we approach the Word today, we need to depend on the Holy Spirit to see His meaning, His heart, and the heart of Christ in His Word. So, let us pray.
Father, thank You, Lord, for this opportunity. Thank You, Lord, for the blessing that Your Word has been in my life over these past several years. I pray that, as I speak this morning, Your Word would be spoken and Your heart would be revealed to us, Lord.
Father, I ask that no one would depend upon me for the meaning of the Word. Rather, may they depend upon Your Holy Spirit. In Christ’s name, amen.
Okay, this morning I want to talk about somebody you rarely hear a message about, rarely hear a Bible study about, or see a book about. His name only appears a few times in Scripture, only in a few places. He is not one of the good guys in Scripture. He was a constant irritation to the nation of Israel—or his family was a constant irritation to the nation of Israel.
The person I want to talk about is Esau. If you want a title for this message—like Marianne demanded a title from me—the title is “The Mind of Esau versus the Mind of Christ.”
Nobody ever talks about Esau. He is just Jacob’s older brother. He was the furry guy. He was the guy who gave away his birthright and then had his blessing stolen from him. Anybody who knows Esau does not want to be like Esau, and that has kind of been a puzzle.
What I want to talk about today is why nobody wants to be like Esau. I think what is portrayed in Esau is the opposite of the mind of Christ, or the opposite of Christ. I think we can learn something from examining his character flaw.
Now, those of you who are still paying attention will notice that I said “character flaw,” not “sin.” Whenever I have read the story of Esau in the Old Testament, he has always come across to me as kind of a pathetic character. He made a mistake. He was acting foolishly one day, and he lost his birthright for it.
But when you read about Esau in the New Testament, the New Testament, in the light of Christ, portrays Esau as an immoral and godless person. There is quite a big difference between somebody who had a bad day and an immoral, godless person.
To get started, let us read the story of Esau and Jacob in Genesis 25:29-34. I will be using the overhead a little bit today. I do not have any upside-down words like Alan uses, but we will have an outline so you can keep track of where we are. Hopefully, it will help you make a little sense out of what I am trying to say.
When Jacob had cooked stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was famished.
And Esau said to Jacob, “Please let me have a swallow of that red stuff, for I am famished.” Therefore his name was called Edom.
But Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.”
Esau said, “Behold, I am about to die; so of what use then is the birthright to me?”
And Jacob said, “First swear to me”; so he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob.
Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew; and he ate and drank, and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.—Genesis 25:29-34
Now let us turn to the mention of Esau in the New Testament: Hebrews 12:15-24. This passage is what started me thinking about Esau. I was reading it one morning in my quiet time, and the “godless, immoral” part really caught my attention—what the New Testament said about Esau, and also what immediately followed that description.
See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled;
that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal.
For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it with tears.For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and to a blazing fire, and to darkness and gloom and whirlwind,
and to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of words which sound was such that those who heard begged that no further word be spoken to them.
For they could not bear the command, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it will be stoned.”
And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, “I am full of fear and trembling.”But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels,
to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect,
and to Jesus, the Mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.—Hebrews 12:15-24
As you can see, the New Testament has a very different take on Esau than the Old Testament. The New Testament calls Esau an immoral and godless person, and those are pretty strong words for a simple mistake.
Even after Esau made the mistake, he tried to make things right. He tried to receive his blessing and his birthright, but he could not get it back.
I want to jump ahead a little bit here and show you where I am going with this whole thing. If we look at the words of Christ, we can see why this changes from a simple foolish act to a godless and immoral person.
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”—Matthew 16:24-26
Let us take a closer look at what Esau did on that fateful day and the circumstances around him when he came in from the field. If you look at that event as an individual event, it does not seem like that bad of a thing. He was hungry and wanted some stew. It does not sound like that major of a sin.
But when you look at what Esau really had, it becomes much more of a problem. Esau was the grandson of Abraham and the son of Isaac—the firstborn of Isaac. Abraham had received a tremendous promise from God that had been confirmed through miracles. That promise was passed on through Isaac, and Esau was the inheritor of that blessing and promise from God.
The tribe of Abraham that Esau was living in was not much at that time. There were not a lot of children of Abraham, and there were not a lot of children of Isaac either. There was a very small group of people, some sheep, and some servants. There was no land to speak of. It did not seem like much of an inheritance.
But from a heavenly perspective, what Esau had was tremendous. He knew that the whole earth would be blessed by his family.
Just imagine being promised by God that your family—your children—would change the earth and bless the world. From your seed would come a tremendous blessing that would be remembered for ages.
Imagine knowing that you had seen angels, that you had been told to sacrifice your firstborn son, and then God had saved him miraculously. Knowing all these things and seeing all these things—that is what Esau had.
Esau had a promise and proof that his family, his lineage, would bless the world. I am a father. I have four kids, and at this point in my life I am just hoping that one day my kids leave the house.
I cannot imagine knowing that my children would bless the world, that what would come from them would be earth-shaking. I would feel like the most important person on earth if I knew that. It would completely change the way I lived. I probably would not drive fast anymore.
I would protect these kids and protect that inheritance, because that is the most important thing. That is the one thing in my life that is going to matter.
Esau had this knowledge. He knew, or at least he should have known, that the fruit of his seed would be earth-shaking. But Genesis and Hebrews say that he despised his birthright and sold it for a single meal.
What would cause someone to despise such a birthright? It is one thing to despise or neglect an honor that has been given by men, but this was an honor given by God Almighty. Esau turned his back on that.
When I first started thinking about this—what would cause Esau to turn his back on this—the first thing that came to me was that maybe Esau was just convenience-minded. When you say somebody is convenience-minded, you are basically saying that they are lazy.
He had come in from the fields exhausted, tired, and worn out. Kind of like me when I get home from work, I am tired. I just want to sit on the couch and not think another thought. Maybe Esau was just famished from working, lazy, and said, “Whatever. Give me some food. I will give you whatever you want. Just give me some food.”
But laziness is a sin, and it causes problems for the lazy and for those around them. Still, it seems like there was something else there. There was something deeper that really offended the heart of God. Esau’s sin did not just impact him; it has impacted ages since then. We still see it today.
As I went on considering what Esau’s problem could be, I reread the passage in Genesis that tells the story of Esau and Jacob. One phrase jumped out at me and really stood out. I think this is the key: what Esau said.
“Behold, I am about to die; so of what use then is the birthright to me?”
—Genesis 25:32
Obviously, Esau had enough strength to walk in from the field and carry on a conversation with Jacob about this. He really was not about to die. There is quite a bit of time between walking, talking, and dying from starvation. There are usually a couple of weeks involved there.
He was nowhere near death. But when he was slightly pressed, he tossed away that birthright and held on to himself.
Esau cared more about protecting his own life than he cared about protecting that birthright. He cared more about protecting his puny little existence as a shepherd than he did about a magnificent promise of an earth-shaking family.
I think this is what tilted the scales from Esau merely having a character flaw to Esau being a godless and immoral man. It is the whole issue of laying down your life for the purpose of God. Esau counted his life as more important than God’s purpose.
Surely Esau did not think he was going to die. He just did not want the immediate discomfort of not eating something.
The only reason I can think of that Esau would disregard this promise for something so trivial as a meal was that he probably did not believe the promise was going to come to pass anyway. He did not have faith that God was going to bring it about. So that whole thing meant very little to him.
If he had thought about it, his grandfather was told to sacrifice his father, but God saved him. His grandfather was told he was going to have a great family, and it took years. His grandfather was in his nineties and his grandmother was in her nineties before that first child came. The evidence was there that God was going to fulfill that promise.
It is almost like this situation with Esau and the inheritance is like if I came up to somebody and said, “I have just deposited one hundred thousand dollars into your bank account.” But you do not believe me, so you never go check your balance. You never find out that it is really there, and you never take advantage of that promise or gift that has been given.
So I do not think Esau believed that his birthright was worth a thing. Therefore, he did very little to protect it.
But later on Esau did value his birthright. He wanted it back. He was distraught when Jacob stole his blessing. Esau was a double-minded man.
James talks about a double-minded man who is like surf driven and tossed by the wind:
For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
—James 1:7-8
Esau had some faith and some understanding, but it was not enough to really impact his life on a continual basis or enough to get him through the small trials of life.
What we really see here, I believe, is the mind of Esau versus the mind of Christ. It is the difference between what Esau believed and what Christ believed. When I say the mind of Esau, you can just as easily substitute the mind of man, because the way Esau behaves is the way each of us in our natural state will behave.
We all have that instinct, that desire to preserve ourselves—whether it is taking food or, as I will talk about later, emotional preservation of ourselves.
The mind of Esau seeks to preserve its own existence. It does not believe that God is going to fulfill the promise given to it, so the mind of Esau takes matters into its own hands, knowing that doing so will cost it its birthright. But at that point, it rationalizes that the birthright is not worth anything anyway.
But the mind of Christ does not seek to preserve its own existence. The mind of Christ sees the eternal goal, the eternal purpose, and sets itself on that promise. It does not count any loss to itself as important compared to the gain of that promise.
The mind of Esau says, “I would rather stand around here all day and watch sheep do their business than expose myself to any kind of potential discomfort or potential loss. I would rather do that than reach out and get something I cannot quite see right now.”
It is the whole thing of a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush. In this case, it is a bird in the hand being worth a million in the bush.
The mind of Christ seeks to preserve the purpose of God, no matter what the cost. Christ was willing, and Christ did give up His life to preserve the purpose of God.
The mind of Esau only obeys and only goes along with the purpose of God as long as that coincides with what the mind of Esau wants to do. If God’s purpose diverges from what the mind of Esau wants to do, the mind of Esau will go its own way.
But Christ said:
“If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”
—Matthew 26:39
The mind of Christ obeys and sticks with the purpose of God all the way to death.
The mind of Esau considers the afflictions of this current life intolerable, no matter what the end result of that affliction may be. Almost anything is too much to bear. Going without a meal is too much to bear: “Just throw away my birthright rather than skip a meal.”
If Esau had just waited, he probably would have gotten the meal, or he could have gone out and fixed his own. But that momentary inconvenience was too much to bear.
But the mind of Christ considers it all joy. It considers the troubles in this life to be momentary light afflictions. They are momentary light afflictions in perspective of the heavenly promise.
The mind of Esau wants what it wants, and it will not wait for what it wants. But the mind of Christ is content to wait upon the Lord.
The mind of Christ knows that the inheritance—the promise—will come, and it will come at the perfect time.
The mind of man, the mind of Esau, does not take part in the purpose of God. It is either directly opposed to the purpose of God and will do anything it can to thwart it, or it will go along with the purpose of God as long as it is beneficial to the mind of man.
As soon as the purpose of God becomes less than beneficial or inconvenient, it says, “I do not want to have anything to do with that. I am going to go my own way.”
For all these things that a person with the mind of Esau does to preserve themselves—to hang on to their puny existence—what do they get for that? What do they get for all this accomplishment?
If you look at the lineage of Esau, you get a picture of what Esau received—what his inheritance was—for preserving his life.
Esau was also called Edom because of the red stuff he desired. I guess the lentil soup was red, and he wanted it, so they called him Edom.
Esau became the father of the Edomites. In a kind of weird way, there was a shadow of a promise fulfilled. Esau did become the father of a nation—not a great nation, but the father of a nation.
This nation continually stood in the way of God. When the people of Israel were leaving Egypt and going back to the promised land, they needed to cross the territory of the Edomites. The Edomites said, “No, you cannot cross.”
Throughout the history of Israel, the Edomites had skirmishes and battles with the Israelites. They were continually at each other’s throats, with the Edomites standing in the way of the promises God had given.
The final triumph of the nation of Edom was probably the most famous Edomite of all: King Herod. King Herod was an Edomite. This was the king who murdered untold numbers of babies trying to kill Christ, trying to stop the purpose of God.
When a person despises the inheritance and promise given to them, they become obstacles in the path of God. They continually fight against what God is going to do. They push against the inevitable.
But God’s promise is going to be accomplished no matter who neglects it and no matter who stands against it. He will accomplish His purpose.
But for the Christ-minded, what is their inheritance?
If we look at that verse in Hebrews, another thing that struck me was that right after it talked about Esau, it talked about what we have come into—what the believer has come into. That is Hebrews 12:18-24. There is no Hebrews 18.
Verses 18-21 first start by talking about what the inheritance is not. The inheritance is not the law. It is kind of a weird way to start off, telling somebody what they have by telling them what they do not have. That would not be considered good salesmanship. I do not think the writer of Hebrews much cared about salesmanship.
What we have not received—what the Christ-minded believer has not inherited—is a physical place. It is not a place we can go to, not a physical manifestation that we can look at and say, “There it is.” The inheritance transcends this life. It transcends what we can see and feel in this body.
Also, the inheritance the believer receives is not a burden, and it is not something that must be clung to out of terror. It is not the yoke of the law that we have received. This inheritance does not instill fear, and it does not instill terror.
Do not be mistaken: there should be some fear if you think about missing out on the inheritance. But there is no fear or terror in the inheritance.
What the Christ-minded have received instead is grace and glory.
Hebrews 12:22-24 describes this inheritance that we have received. When you look at it, in essence what we have inherited is citizenship in the kingdom of God.
I think 1 Peter talks about how we are just aliens on this earth. We are not citizens here, but we are citizens somewhere. We are citizens in the kingdom of God.
These verses describe what comes with that citizenship and what that citizenship means. This is our inheritance. It can be broken down into three aspects of the kingdom: the location, the society, and the right of entry.
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.
—Hebrews 12:22
This city is a city established by God. It is built upon the foundation of His Son, and it is the everlasting city. This city was described partially in Revelation, and the writers could not really get a grasp of what it was. I think we will probably spend eternity grasping all the facets and angles of this heavenly city.
So the Christ-minded person has citizenship and a home in a city established by God and built upon the sacrifice of His Son.
Then there is the society. There are actually four groups in the society described in this passage—the society of the kingdom of God.
First, there are myriads of angels. The word myriad here is the only time it is used in the New Testament. It talks about innumerable angels, without number. So the Christ-minded will be living in a society with innumerable angels, all worshiping the Lord together.
Another member of this society is the general assembly and church of the firstborn. This is those who believe in the Lord—the church.
I guess that is not surprising, to be part of the kingdom of God. But the third member is kind of interesting: God puts Himself in this society. God, the Judge of all, is in this kingdom of heaven.
Our citizenship with God means we can take up residence with the Father, and we can come into His presence. I know there was a message about the scepter and how the king had to point a scepter at somebody for them to come into his presence. God has pointed His scepter and called us into His presence.
Our inheritance allows us to come into the presence of the Lord, to be in His presence, and to come to His throne.
There is a fourth member: the spirits of the righteous made perfect. I do not really understand the difference between this and the church of the firstborn. Maybe somebody wiser can explain it to me afterwards. It is another group of believers—maybe it is overcomers—but it is the group also there with citizenship in the kingdom of God.
What it all boils down to is that this society is focused on God the Father, God the Creator, the Almighty. This society is not based upon struggle, status, or politics. This society is focused on the King.
The King it is focused on is completely just and completely true. Therefore, the society focused on Him is completely just and completely true. There is no struggle. There is no competition.
In the world today, we have to compete for everything, and it really wears on you. But in the heavenly kingdom, there is no competition. God has settled it all.
The third aspect of what we have inherited is the right of entry into this kingdom—what has made us citizens in this kingdom.
The first thing that has made us citizens is Jesus the Mediator. If not for Christ and what He did, we could never come into the presence of God or even live in the same city with Him. He will not tolerate sinful man.
So Christ came and covered our sins, came between us and God, and paid the price.
The second thing in our right of entry is, in a way, a little redundant, but it goes separately: the blood of Christ. That is what bought our citizenship into the kingdom of heaven.
The passage says that the blood of Christ speaks better than the blood of Abel. The blood of Abel cries out for vengeance, but the blood of Christ cries out for forgiveness and for peace.
The blood of Abel separated brother from brother, and it separated man from God. But the blood of Christ brings brothers together and brings God and man back together.
These are the things that the Christ-minded inherit. That is the promise. That is what it says we have come into.
That phrase, “you have come to,” in Hebrews 12:22 is in a tense called the second perfect tense, which, according to the commentaries, is basically identical to the first perfect tense. It means that it is done. It is in the past, it is complete, and there is no need for it to be repeated.
This inheritance has been promised to us. This gift is already ours. It is already available, and it is already in effect.
That is what we as believers have: the inheritance, the gift, the provision from God. You are probably saying, “That is interesting theology and an interesting story, but what is the practical application of all this?”
I would not go to a restaurant and even pay a dollar for a bowl of bean soup. I do not have a craving for a bowl of beans. So what does this really mean about selling your birthright for a bowl of beans?
I think it matters today because we are frequently—I think daily, continually—faced with issues where we are unknowingly, or maybe even knowingly, asked to choose between something trivial and God’s purpose. The choice is trivial: a bowl of beans or the eternal purpose of God.
Esau had the choice between a bowl of bean soup—we are not having bean soup for lunch, which is a good thing—and God’s promise. He probably did not see the bowl of soup as a trivial thing at the time, but it was trivial.
He took the one thing in his life, the one thing that really mattered, and traded it for something that did not matter. It did not matter worth a hill of beans, as the saying goes.
As I said before, he was not going to die if he did not get that bowl of bean soup. But his flesh rose up to the occasion. It really presented itself, and it turned that trivial thing into something huge, something insurmountable. It turned a molehill into a mountain, as the saying goes.
You look at our country today, and we are very rarely asked to make a decision where our physical existence is the outcome of the decision. We are a very safe society. We have done a lot of things to make it safe so that no one could possibly get hurt doing anything.
With the affluence and prosperity we have, we are really beyond struggling and being concerned about food and physical provision. But it is not physical provision, physical damage, or protecting the physical self that we need to be concerned about. It is the emotional self, I think, where the enemy attacks us.
We have risen above worrying about whether our neighbor is going to club us over the head for food. I think we are more worried about whether our neighbor likes us or not. We are often forced to choose between acceptance by other people and staking our claim in God’s promise.
We are faced with a decision like, “Do I acknowledge Christ? Do I talk about Christ at this point? If I talk about Christ now, she is going to think I am weird. She is not going to like me.”
That comes down to the decision between something trivial and something eternal.
We want people to say, “Yes, you are okay. You are a good guy. I want to be like you. You are okay. You are neat. I want to hang out with you.”
This desire to be accepted reaches physical proportions. Even this morning, I felt physical pain from worrying over whether y’all would accept what I have to say or not—the nervousness of being up here.
As a teenager, I remember being physically ill worrying about what people in school thought about me.
These little things of emotional acceptance rise up and blow things out of proportion. They make a mountain out of a molehill.
In school, it was really tough to acknowledge the Lord because my emotions wanted to be accepted so badly. I am sure the same thing happens today—in school, in college, and at work. It can be a tough situation.
You say, “I have got to live and speak with them. I have got to be with them every day. If so-and-so does not like me, if I do not get along with them, if I do not get to sit at that table at lunch, or if I am an outcast because they know I am a believer, I will just die.”
Well, good. Maybe you need to die a little.
I want to get really rational and logical. Hopefully, this may be a little offensive to some people, but I want to take this down to the brass-tacks level. I will use the young people as an example. I will use tenth graders as an example. Are there any tenth graders in here? Okay.
When you are in tenth grade and you are a believer, and you are faced with a decision—“Do I acknowledge Christ in this place, or do I try not to look like a freak?”—what are the two things you are weighing?
One is the promise of God and the blessings of the Lord. What is on the other side of the equation? Who are the people from whom you are trying to get affirmation or acceptance? They are other tenth graders, right? Maybe an eleventh grader. But it is a tenth grader.
Let us look and see what this tenth grader really is. Tenth graders typically do not have a job. They have not accomplished anything yet in their lives. They have no income. They have no money of their own.
They still live with their mommies and daddies. They get zits just like everybody else does—even us forty-year-olds get them sometimes. They cannot vote. A tenth grader cannot vote unless they fail many, many times.
They can do nothing of a legal nature. They cannot enter into a legal contract. A tenth grader is a complete ward of their parents or a ward of the state. In essence, a tenth grader is a nobody. Sorry.
But when you look at it in the grand scheme of things, they are nobodies. When you are faced with the question, “Do I acknowledge Jesus, or do I stay cool so I do not look freakish?” what you are really faced with is this: “Do I acknowledge Christ, the Creator of the universe, and the inheritance He has given me? Or do I seek the affirmation of a bunch of nobodies?”
When you choose the nobodies, you have just sold your birthright for a bowl of beans.
I know it feels like you will just die if you stand out from the crowd. I have had that feeling. I still have that feeling as an adult. But I know the Lord will not let me starve.
If I turn my nose up at the proverbial bowl of soup, I know He will provide nourishment beyond my expectation. If I acknowledge Christ and lose friends, I know He will provide friendship and companionship beyond my expectations.
If I am embarrassed because of Him, I know He will repay with glory beyond expectation, beyond our imagination.
So, you young people, I encourage you: when you are faced with this tomorrow at school, this afternoon, whenever, remember the bowl of beans or the promise of God.
Now, do not get me wrong. These nobodies—Jesus loves these nobodies. He loves these nobodies as much as He loves you. But they will never know that if you keep acting like them.
They will never know how much Christ loves them. Christ did not come into the world and save the world by acting like the world or by receiving acceptance from the world. He saved the world by dying for it.
This whole issue—the principle of trading acceptance from the people around us for the promise of God—also affects us adults.
When you really sit down and consider your situation, or consider the people you may be embarrassed to talk about Christ with at work, or be embarrassed if they knew you were a believer and knew you were sitting here today, if you really look at those people, they are probably in the same boat you are. They may be much worse off because they do not know the Lord.
Our fear or reticence to mention Christ, to acknowledge Christ in our life, can hold real power over us. It ends up holding power over them as well, because you never know: if you acknowledge Christ, that may produce an opening to share the gospel and bring them into the inheritance as well.
Just Friday, I went to work early. I was at the office all alone, programming away and trying to fix a bug. I had some Christian music playing on the computer, and one of the guys who works with me came in to ask me a question.
The first thought that popped into my mind was, “You better turn the Christian music off.” Thankfully, the second thought was, “No. He may need to hear this.”
So this whole embarrassment issue still comes up. I do not want to stand out from the crowd, even as an adult. But the Lord is dealing with me on that: “No, acknowledge Me first.”
This choice between trading beans for the purpose of God is not just when we are dealing with the world. It also comes into play in church life as well. There are probably some of you who never have to deal with the world, and you are very fortunate.
Oftentimes, we are faced with the choice of doing something to build the body and benefit the church, or doing something for ourselves.
We can take something trivial that we want to do, like staying at home and watching the race, and place a greater importance on that than helping one another, encouraging a brother, working on a lesson, volunteering to teach a class at conference, or calling somebody to encourage them.
It comes down to what we want to do right now compared to what the Lord wants us to do. What we want to do is frequently trivial. It is frequently a bowl of beans, and we are trading what the Lord would have us do—what would matter in eternity.
How do we get into this mindset of valuing the promise of God above valuing the trivial things of this life and this world? I think this mindset is the mind of Christ.
Christ gave up everything He had. He gave up His position with the Father to come and live with us and to give up His life for us. He counted all things as loss in comparison to the purpose of God.
So if we want to correctly choose between the beans of the world and the promise of God, we need to have the mind of Christ.
What are the keys to having the mind of Christ? What is the secret, the formula, for having the mind of Christ? Have you got your pen ready? I have no idea. I am clueless.
I do know what Scripture says, though, in 1 Corinthians 2:12-16. It talks about the mind of Christ.
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God,
which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.
But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.
But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.
For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.—1 Corinthians 2:12-16
Brothers and sisters, we have been given the mind of Christ. It is not a goal we have to seek for; it is something we already have. The issue comes down to living with that mind of Christ—allowing that mind of Christ to live in us and control us rather than our own minds.
I do not think living within the mind of Christ is something that can be learned from other men. We cannot watch another person or listen to their words and know what the mind of Christ is.
I think the Lord has to teach us the mind of Christ. As we listen to the mind of Christ, He teaches us with spiritual thoughts and spiritual words.
I think we can seek Him, and we need to seek Him, to teach us how to live with the mind of Christ so we can be instructed in His ways and ready for these decisions between beans and the promise of God.
I think we also need to ask Him to show us, to make us aware of, these decisions we face between beans and the promise of God. A lot of times, we are oblivious to these decisions that we make.
I know that I am very oblivious. Sometimes I do not realize what I have done until it is way too late and the damage has already been done. We need to ask the Lord, “Make us aware. Open our eyes to when we are faced with this decision between beans and the promise of God.”
Open our eyes to see what is trivial in this world and what is just a molehill blown up into a mountain.
I think if He shows us the beans, He will give us the grace and the faith to choose His promise instead of the beans.
That is all I have. Let us pray.
Father, I just thank You, Lord, for this promise, this inheritance that You have given us—this heavenly kingdom where we can approach Your throne, where we have Christ as our Mediator, and where our sins are covered by the blood of Jesus.
I thank You, Father, for that amazing gift, a gift that we are so unworthy of. Father, I pray that You would show us what is truly meaningful, what really matters in our life, and what is just beans—what is trivial and what does not matter.
I pray that You would open our eyes, Father. Show us Your purpose.
Father, I also pray that if there is anything I have shared today that is not of You, Lord, that You would just remove it. I pray this in Your most holy and precious name, the precious name of Your Son, Jesus. Amen.