City Life Starter

Written by Efe Abbe

The Word

When Esau was forty years old, he took Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite to be his wife, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭26‬:‭34‬-‭35

You are not the same as those who do not believe. So do not join yourselves to them. Good and bad do not belong together. Light and darkness cannot share together. How can Christ and Belial, the devil, have any agreement? What can a believer have together with a nonbeliever? The temple of God cannot have any agreement with idols, and we are the temple of the living God. As God said: “I will live with them and walk with them. And I will be their God, and they will be my people.” “Leave those people, and be separate, says the Lord. Touch nothing that is unclean, and I will accept you.” “I will be your father, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”

‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭6‬:‭14‬-‭18‬ ‭NCV

Reflection

Esau’s story is a lesson on how one can be so close to God’s work and promises but miss them by being careless with life’s weightiest decisions. We already learned that he “despised his birthright” for a quick meal (Genesis 25:34) and here we see him making another easy, yet unwise choice in who he chose to marry. 

Easy, because the Hittites lived close by (Genesis 23:3-20; 10:15-19) and we know that Esau was the kind of man who couldn’t wait for a measly bowl of stew; he was definitely not waiting for a wife-finding trip back to his parents’ family. So he settled again for the immediate and took not one, but two Hittite women as his wives.

Unwise, because the Hittites worshipped a pantheon of gods in occult rituals and practiced divination. These women “made life bitter for Isaac and Rebecca” because their spiritual allegiance was not to the God of Abraham and since people cannot help but become what they worship, their lives and conduct would have only reflected their spiritual darkness.

Esau’s short-sightedness in marriage was another step away from God’s wisdom and his choice would prove fateful not just for him and his parents in his lifetime but also for his descendants, the Edomites a nation who opposed God.

Application

In one of Paul’s letters to believers in Corinth, after explaining God’s reconciliatory work in Christ and their standing as the “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:11-21), he strongly urges them not to receive God’s grace in vain by instructing them not to be “mismatched with unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 6:1-18). It means that their lives were not to be enmeshed with non-believers to the point of no distinction.

His instruction wasn’t meant for us to completely dissociate from people who are yet to believe in Jesus but for us not to despise our present and future inheritance in Jesus by returning to the dead-end life of sin. Also, his instruction wasn’t to promote legalism but to remind us how our choices have eternal life and death consequences and to have the highest regard for God’s gift of Jesus to us which we should live out in every part of our lives.

Prayer

Dear heavenly Father, please help me not to take lightly the salvation and hope You have given me in Jesus by the life choices I make. I can only do this by the power of Your Holy Spirit. Help me to put my trust in You. Amen.