Articles
Do You Want to Trade?
She was as cute as a button (I don’t really know how that saying came about, but I have
heard it all my life). She couldn’t have been more than three years old as she stood in front of me
ignoring the basketball game behind her and eating her candy. I was immediately drawn to her
because I have a little great-granddaughter about the same age and size. But the thing that
brought a smile to my face was the T-shirt she was wearing. It said, “I will trade my brother for a
cupcake.”
Contemplating such a trade in a small child brings only humor and laughter, but adults find
serious consequences in some of the trades they make. The writer of the book of Hebrews calls
Esau ‘immoral and irreligious’ for selling his birthright for a single meal (Hebrews 12:16).
Esau had come in from the open country and was famished. His brother Jacob was cooking
some stew. Immediately, Esau said to Jacob, “Quick, let me have some of that red stew!” Jacob
replied, “First sell me your birthright.” and so the trade was made (Genesis 25:27-34). It was not
until later that Esau knew what a bad trade he had made. He then lifted up his voice and wept.
Jacob got the birthright; Esau got the stew!
Thomas Whitelaw observed, “Esau is the type of many who accept the devil’s bargain of the
world (mostly an infinitesimal fragment of it) for a soul.”
Everything old seems to be new again. Consider the world of the apostle Paul’s day. It was a
time when men suppressed the truth. “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to
impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged (traded)
the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who
is blessed for ever! Amen” (Romans 1:24-25).
Are we sure we want to trade?
