Genesis 25:32 – And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?

Matthew 27:3 – Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders,

Matthew 27:4 – Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.

Matthew 27:5 – And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.

Matthew 27:6 – And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.

Matthew 27:7 – And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in.

Matthew 27:8 – Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day.

Hello readers, back with another new blog today, and today will be looking at how the value people place on things can be so different and carry such serious eternal consequences. Because different people see different value in different things. As the saying goes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Throughout the Bible we see littered a record of choices people made, God has given us all the ability to choose from the beginning to the ending. Adam and Eve chose to sin, and mankind has been marked by the ability and execution of freewill and choice. God doesn’t force us to love and/or obey him, he doesn’t force you to believe in his Son, but although you may freely choose, that does not mean you are not accountable and responsible for choices you make. And you will be judged, as will I, as will everyone. Choices determine the future, and lives can boil down to critical choices made at crucial junctures in one’s life. Of course these decisions are because of a whole lifetime where the path is set, where people reject God again and again, or whether they are softened to the word of God, and receive it. As much as we are all affected by the environment around us, events happening around and to us, situations we are placed in (fairly or unfairly)… we are all ultimately responsible for the choices we make. We are accountable for them. And God is the perfect, righteous Judge. Genesis 18:25 – That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?

Firstly, we see Esau, who had the birthright being the firstborn, but he placed no value on it at all. Esau was a man of the field the Bible says, the field is a picture of the world, and he was a man of the world, a worldly man. He cared for the things of the world, not for the things of God. He was a cunning hunter, he loved to hunt, to pursue pleasure, he had his priorities wrong. His birthright was worth NOTHING to him at all. He sold it for nothing. He valued such an enormously important thing so little. His birthright didn’t seem that beneficial to him at the time when his hunger, a very temporary issue, seemed far more important than his birthright, a very eternal issue. His birthright seemed to be having no benefit, it was something off in the distant future, with no real bearing on the here and now, and so often with serious things, they seem negligible at the time, but down the track the seriousness and consequences with neglecting serious issues come back to bite. Esau thought nothing of selling his birthright. He went his way.He thought no more on it. It was only when the payday came that he would regret selling it. And even then he didn’t regret selling the birthright so much as he regretted missing out on the blessing associated with it. Esau wanted the blessing not the birthright, but you get no blessing without first having the birthright. We have to be saved first, that is the first order of business for humanity. Repent and believe. You do not get heaven, eternal life, and future blessedness without dealing with sin first. That is the principle being taught here. Many people want God, but they don’t want the judgement, sin, repentance aspect that first must be addressed when dealing with God. Why do you think John the Baptist came before Jesus preaching repentance, because repentance is the preparing the way for Christ in your heart. There are no detours, there are no work arounds.

So Esau did not value at all, what Jacob valued so highly. These boys were twins, and yet their choices led them on different paths. They boys were born, and they grew, time passed, and two different paths emerged from the same starting point. Sure they had family issues with biased parents and so on and so forth, but ultimately their own choices made freely by themselves determined very different destinies. Esau placed no value on eternal things, he placed no value on Jesus Christ, which is what the birthright was all about and pointing to. It was through Jacob that Jesus came, Esau forfeited it for a bit of food. Esau couldn’t see any value, any profit! We may think that we couldn’t be as stupid as Esau, but we do what Esau did all the time, its very easy to be like him and see no value in being saved, in living right, in following Jesus. We often swap out eternal for the here and now, we swap out the unseen for the seen, we trade out faith, we trade out God’s word. Unbelievers seem to get a better go of it than believers, the wicked seem to be prevailing and prospering. What profit is it? Just wait and see. Look at the example of Naboth. He did what was right before the Lord. Look where it got him. He was falsely accused and killed, all for just refusing to sell that which was rightfully his. Naboth was the polar opposite of Esau, Naboth placed a high price on his vineyard which had been handed down from his dad that was from his dad and so forth and whhich he was going to pass on to his son. Naboth did not sell out. And Naboth in the context of eternity is the big winner, Esau is the bitter loser. It did not appear so at the time. Wicked Ahab got the vineyard, Naboth got a cruel death… but God writes the last and eternal chapter. People often get hung up on the “suffering” topic, but getting hung up on that shows a lack of ability to see into eternity. People live in terrible situations around the world, and it is easy to think where is God in this? How is this fair? It may not be. But in the context of eternity, the sufferings of now pale into insignificance. Of course it’s hard to see in the here and now, but eternity is a long time! God gets a lot of glory out of saving the worst sinners, out of the worst situations, God can and will turn it around. How well do you see into eternity?

We see someone else in the Bible who had his values in the wrong place. Judas Iscariot. A man who lived in Jesus’ time and not only lived in his time, but was with him as one of his disciples, he was around Jesus all the time, he was highly involved in the work of Christ. What an amazing opportunity! We surely wouldn’t do the same? But reality is we would, except for God’s grace. Judas Iscariot was a rotten egg, nobody but Jesus saw him for what he truly was. He had the other disciples fooled, they never suspected a thing about him. They didn’t know he was robbing the money, the other disciples didn’t know it was him that would betray Jesus. Judas had cast out devils with them! Judas had preached the gospel! And yet Judas’ heart was in a different place. Judas was a betrayer, a traitor, and nobody saw him coming, but Jesus knew all along. Judas is a pattern today of people who claim to be saved, but are not, Judas is a pattern of people who underneath a deceptively noble exterior, who despite being able to fool those around them, are rotten to the core, who betray Christ, who betray his people. Judas Iscariot loved money. That’s where his value was at. He wanted some money. He betrayed the Lord Jesus Christ for 30 pieces of silver. That had more value to him! Crazy! Judas sold the Son of God, and in the process he sold himself. He sold away salvation. He even had opportunity to truly repent, but all he did was repent of betraying an innocent person, he did not repent unto salvation just like Esau, he was just sorry for the consequences of his actions – that’s why he killed himself. The saddest part of the story is often missed. He came back to the priests who had paid him the money. He cast the silver at their feet. Think they cared? Not a little bit.  You see, the people of this world, the things of this world that you get your value from do not value you in turn at all, they don’t value your service, they don’t  value your track record or achievements, they don’t value the sacrifices you make, they don’t value your soul, they only get what they want from you and spit you out the other end. The people who Judas Iscariot consorted with to betray Jesus, who buddied up to him, who whispered sweet nothings in his ear, who flattered him, who told him he was doing the right thing, who told him it was his religious duty to betray Christ… were the same people who said to him when he was in dire straits… What is that to us? He hanged himself, they didn’t shed a tear for him, they didn’t care for him not even a little bit. The things that you place your value in, other than Jesus Christ, will betray you at the end. Judas the betrayer got betrayed, his soul was betrayed, and he is in hell today thousands of years later and with no different prospect.

But the story doesn’t end there. Because the Bible specifically records what happened to both Judas Iscariot… and the money which he used to betray Jesus. What was done with the money? It was used to buy a seemingly useless clay field. A field to bury strangers in! It was used to buy something seemingly worthless, seemingly of no value at all. But what they didn’t value, what the world didn’t value, Jesus does place an extremely high value upon. Jesus’ betrayal price bought a field, and we are that field, we are that clay field. He is the potter and we are clay. The Bible says we have this treasure in earthen vessels. We are clay vessels which carry such great treasure. We are Gideon’s pitchers that when broken have a light shining forth which leads to victory. Jesus values us very highly. We are the sons of God via the new birth when we simply believe on him. Jesus loved us so much he died for us, Jesus loves us so much that we who are a saved will reign with him, be with him forever, share eternal paradise with him forever! The field was called the field of blood. This is amazing. Because people from this field are people who are purchased with the blood of Christ. It is the blood of Christ which covers everyone who is truly saved, it is the blood of Christ that saves us. That is what the Passover was a picture of… when I see the blood I will pass over… the blood of Christ is the only thing between you and I and the death angel. But being saved might require you to see you for what you truly are. A sinner, a stranger, a foreigner, Jesus came to call the sinners, not the righteous, to repentance. We are the scum of the world, the offscouring as Paul wrote, we are the strangers that are buried in that field, which are raised with Christ in newness of life, we are purchased with the blood of Christ. They purchased the field to bury in, but truly the field may be for human burial, but it also has the promise and reality of divine resurrection. We are raised in newness of life with Christ. We can’t stay buried! The money went to a useless field, except it was anything but useless and worthless. The chief priests didn’t want it, those “lawful” people, Jesus value was found by strangers. The children of Israel didn’t value their Messiah, their king, and instead value was found of Jesus in the dogs of the world, the Gentiles, the Samaritans, people like the demoniac of the Gadarenes. Why is it this way? God has made it so that the foolish confounds the wise, the base confounds the esteemed, God has made it so. Sinners enter the kingdom of heaven, because they get saved, while the righteous do not, because they see no need to be saved.

It is possible to go all through the Bible and see the choices people made by what they judged was valuable to them. There were men of faith, men of God who valued the glory of God and lived and died for the glory of God, who placed a high value on eternal, heavenly things, and there are countless other examples of men who didn’t value things of God at all, and instead placed a high value on temporal, earthly things. Cain wasn’t interested in God’s way, his value was placed on his own self righteousness, his own religion, his way, and he went in his own way, and his path lead to destruction. Abel placed a high value on doing things God’s way, he brought the right sacrifice to God and was accepted. Daniel placed a high value on obeying God, to the point where he was chucked in a den of lions. Countless other eunuchs no doubt caved in to the lifestyle of Babylon, and they are not remembered in history. Things that are done for God’s glory are the only thing that will last. The only truly valuable thing in this world is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, but what value do you see in the gospel? Many people not only find the gospel worthless, but even offensive, they don’t just reject it, they HATE it. What you do with the gospel will depend on how much you value it. There are those that find the gospel of very high value, there are many that don’t… it is as simple as that. It is God that opens our eyes to what is truly valuable, that’s why we must pray that he would open our eyes and ears, that he would open our understanding. This is why we must be seeking truth. This is why the Bible says to look on the things that are unseen, not on the things that are seen. It is why were are to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and everything else will be added to us. Get the order right. God first, everything else second. Will you place value on the right thing? Jesus spoke about value in several of his parables in Matthew 13.

Matthew 13:44 – Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

Matthew 13:45 – Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls:

Matthew 13:46 – Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.

Where is the value at? The value is the Lord Jesus Christ. But how well do you see that? Do you see that? Will you ever see that? Will you value the right things, or the wrong things. Will you go in the way of faithful men like Abel, Noah, Daniel, or will you go in the way of men like Cain and Esau? Time will tell. The Bible says that in the process of time Cain and Abel came to offer their sacrifices to God, the Bible says that Esau and Jacob the boys grew, and there came a point in time where critical decisions were made, paths were determined. Their life leading up to their decisions culminated in their decisions, don’t expect to arrive at critical points and just make the right decision. Over the course of time, your life will reveal where the value of your heart is at. Jesus said where your treasure is there will your heart be also. If your treasure is in something that is not valuable, if your treasure is not Jesus Christ, then your treasure is in vain, it won’t last, it will fade away, it will disappear out your grasp. If your value is in Christ, then you can say and obtain the promise in 1 Peter 1:3,4 – Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you. That’s value that lasts. Where’s the value at for you today?

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