The Spirit of Esau and Legacy

In the series on the study of Esau, we’ve looked at The Spirit Of Esau and Why Did God Hate Esau. We continue the study looking at how Esau treated family legacies.

As said earlier on, the covenant inheritance that Esau had as occupational blessing was animal husbandry. It is noteworthy that even Pharaoh’s attempt to separate them from their animals was resisted by Moses.

Each family has an inherent occupational seed with which God blessed them. The Rothschild family have been trading in gold for the past 200 years plus. The Bush dynasty have been in public service for more than four generations. 

There are principles and processes that each family is blessed with. The Jews have been involved in the banking industry for years. There are families where you have up to four generations of clergymen. To ignore that family seed and go on a wild-goose chase is the spirit of Esau. There was a great American preacher and missionary who owned a University. His son decided to join a secular band to play music round the United States of America. He was a great source of distress to the family.

When you visit the Niger Delta, you see old parents whose businesses are dying before the death of the founding fathers. A lot of their children are overseas in pursuit of fantasies. An oldest child, who is not interested in the legacy of the family, is like Esau. Today, many parents in the Niger Delta are scared to send their children overseas.

The African elite and politicians are like Esau. They prefer to invest our wealth overseas, buy buildings in Dubai, while their communities are underdeveloped. Thank God for Aliko Dangote, Micheal Otedola, Mo Ibrahim, and a few others.

It is ironic to note that Isaac, who spent so much efforts reopening the wells of Abraham, encouraged Esau because of his appetite for wild animals. Rebekah, who watered camels as her interview for marriage to Isaac, loved Jacob. Remember, she had to fetch 1200 liters of water to qualify for marriage to Isaac. Remember also that the marriages Jacob contracted were from taking care of animals, and take notice of the fact that his wealth increased from the flocks of Laban. A lot of the animals Isaac had were trans-generational blessings from Abraham as covenant rewards.

As a preacher, school proprietor, medical doctor, and businessman, it grieves my spirit if any of my children seems to despise what God has blessed my family with. The level of poverty and underdevelopment and even unemployment are interwoven with this phenomenon of neglect of legacy and pursuit of wild game.

Esau, A Man Without Reserves

Esau went to hunt and came back hungry. Does it mean he never had reserve bush-meat at home?

Esau is the kind of person that finishes his resources and never plans for the future. They are the kind of people who will squander their resources when they are young and become dependent on people when they are older; such people never plan for the future. They live for the moment. They want to eat their cake and eat your own. They have no savings, and they always create emergencies for others. Why will you wait for your wife to give birth before you start begging for money to discharge her from the hospital? 

I always wonder why people expect people to bury their parents for them. You should anticipate that an 80-year-old parent can pass away any time. A man signed the cheque for his burial expense before he died. He gave explicit instructions about his burial including time allocation and hymns to be sung.

I got married at 26 during my national service without financial assistance from anyone. I paid my bills.

Esau lived a reckless lifestyle, although he later adjusted. The core issue with Esau was value system.

Esau Lacked Foresight

Abraham refused free land from Ephron to bury his wife, Sarah. So he bought the present Hebron and buried her in the cave of Macpelah, and ensured he collect a receipt for the the transaction in the presence of witnesses. He foresaw today and the struggle for land in the present-day Israel and the Middle East. Did Esay not realize, far in advance, that wild animals will become progressively more difficult to kill with depletion? That is the reason, I suspect, he came late from hunting and Isaac, who was at home, quickly presented the meal Rebekah prepared to Isaac.

Africans don’t plan ahead; that’s why we go late to ceremonies. We are used to living the lifestyle of probability and accepting interruptions of our schedule by Esaus. Why must African nations always borrow from developed nations to fund their development projects and even their wasteful spending? A people that depend on foreign aid will not have self respect. Esau had no self respect.

The developed economies think far ahead of their development needs. We are very disorganized in Nigeria because we live and plan like Esau. Nearly everything, including ATMs, are in limited supply. Why must people stand in line to cash money from an ATM even in suburban areas in Nigeria? Why wouldn’t we plan ahead for the retirement benefits of a civil servant who has served his nation for more than 30 years?

Esau Was A Desperado.

Why must you despise your birthright for a meal?

I know a young lady from a great aristocratic family who got pregnant for a young man outside wedlock. She forfeited all the glamour, gifts, respect, and positions she would have occupied for illicit sex. Today, she is passing through stress. She should have been patient.

One day of hunger would not have killed Esau. Why did he not go to the mother’s house to eat? After all, even after marriage, his mother was still keeping his clothes.

A young lady was adopted by a couple and sent to university. She despised the opportunity and ran after a wild and adventurous life. She missed the golden opportunity. She will regret it in old age.

Never ever sell your future for present temporary needs.

He Ate And Drank And Went Away.

Esau was given more than he asked for. He asked for lentil stew, but Jacob gave him bread and wine in addition. Jacob insisted that he signed off his birthright to him. He did not care. That’s how our ancestors sold our people into slavery because of mirrors, tobacco, alcoholic drinks, and clothes. That’s how we sell our people in auctions in Lybia. That’s why we are ready to die in the dessert and in the Mediterranean sea in other to become slaves in Europe. That’s why a rich man’s wife can have sex with her husband’s driver who takes drugs to bang her. That’s why we accept bribes from foreigners and sell our common wealth to them. Africans are known to sign the most stupid deals between foreign investors.

That’s why individuals will steal money meant to buy ammunition to fight Boko Haram. Our soldiers are killed because they use obsolete equipment. If a ragtag rebel group can have modern equipment, what is wrong with us as a people? sometimes, provision for basic things like water are not even made.

In the next post, we’ll look at The Spirit of Esau and Reckless Marriages.

God Bless You.

To read more about legacies, you can get my book, Don’t Drop The Baton: Keeping Legacies Alive, by following the link below.