See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. Even though he sought the blessing with tears, he could not change what he had done.
Hebrews 12:16-17
Making a pizza at home is either really easy or really hard. There’s not much in between. The really easy version is just that. We snap our fingers and someone else does all the hard work. They get the ingredients. They prepare everything. They put it together. The easy pizza comes in two basic varieties.
Frozen. The pizza was made somewhere far away, and maybe a long time ago, by some really great 21st century machines. They’ve gotten a whole lot better than they used to be. The good news is that we control when it’s made and it comes out piping hot. The bad news is that we have no options about topping. It is what it is, and maybe that’s OK.
Delivery. While this pizza is also made somewhere else, it’s closer. When ordering your pizza by phone or in person, you have a lot of choices about toppings. Someone then quickly puts your pie together and slides it into an oven. Once cooked, there’s the mad rush to get the pizza home so everyone can enjoy it hot.
The really hard way to make pizza at home takes time. The bad news is that we’re responsible to buy and assemble everything. If it’s burned, or something is missing, there’s no one else to blame. But the really good news is that it’s exactly what we wanted. When we wanted it. How we wanted it.
Life is the same way. There’s the quick and easy way, or there’s the long and slow way. The quick way is where we can’t wait. It’s got to be now. Everything’s got to come to us immediately. Satisfaction and pleasure are the instant goal, so everything else is thrown to the side. Into the gutter.
The writer reminds the Hebrews and us that we have the same choices when it comes to our lives. There’s the instant “on” button way of living life where it’s got to be right now. There’s no waiting. There’s no earning. There’s no putting in the time to get better and improve skills. It’s now, and that’s all there is to it.
Instant sex is the first example. It’s where we want it now and with whoever we want. In any way we want. It takes God’s high and precious view of sex and throws it into the mud. And why? For the high-sounding goal of moral and sexual freedom[1]. This is like stealing and smashing the Hope Diamond[2] into a million bits so you can hold one tiny, sparkling piece
Instant food and Esau are the other example. He was willing to sell everything that he was guaranteed to inherit in the future for some food right now. To satisfy his cravings right now. To better understand what this was like, he gave up his rights for a huge fortune in exchange of getting some cold fries from a fast food drive thru.
Looking back, it’s really easy to jump up and down on people that make these kinds of instant choices. We point our holy finger at them and shout down from our high moral mountaintops. They’re an easy target. Even the writer calls them “godless. What they did is out in the open and there’s nowhere to hide.
But it’s not all that simple. Is it? Because I know what’s going through your head. While you’ve been reading these words, you’ve been trying not to remember the things that you’ve done. The reason I know that this is true is because it’s exactly what I struggle with too. The Apostle Paul also knew this. After a long and ugly list of terrible sins, listen to what he wrote.
And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
1 Corinthians 6:11
And if strict obedience to some list of do’s and don’ts was how we came to know God, we’re all doomed to fail. We’re all going to come up short[3]. That’s why this precious promise is nothing but really good news. Why? Because having our sins forgiven isn’t about what we do but what God has already done. God does the washing. God does the sanctifying. God does the justifying.
We’ve all failed. Some more than others. But God offers forgiveness full and free to anyone who will believe. But what do we have to believe? It’s not some long list of things to do or say. God’s kind of belief is that the death of Jesus was enough to take care of all our sins. That’s it. God knows that we can’t handle anything more than that. It starts when we admit that we can’t fix ourselves and look to Jesus to pay for what we can’t pay for ourselves. It’s instant for us but cost everything Jesus had.
Noodling Questions
Do you naturally drift towards the easy or hard ways of life? Explain.
What’s the attraction of the quick and cheap answer to life?
How have our past failures set us up for more of the same?
[1] Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means
[3] Romans 3:23
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