We have two portions of scripture we're going to be looking at today, but I want to look first of all at Hebrews and then we'll go back to Genesis. Hebrews, Chapter 12. I want to read a couple of verses there, and then we're going to look back in the Book of Genesis.

This is speaking about Esau and it says this in Hebrews, Chapter 12, Verses 16 and 17.

"v16 - Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. v17 - For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears."

Let's bow our heads together in prayer, if you would please.

Again, Father be with us now as we study Your Word together, and may Your Holy Spirit illuminate our hearts and our minds and that Father, as we study today, we might learn how we can be better prepared to serve You, and we do pray, Father, that You would be with those who perhaps are here who have not, as yet, received Christ, as Savior. That today will be the day that they accept Christ, and each one of us who know You, might be drawn closer. For we pray, in Jesus' name; Amen.

There's little doubt that in life there are many choices and we know that. There's little doubt that in life there are many difficulties. Now, I've never had any difficulties in my life, because being a preacher I've never had any financial problems, I've never had any problems, because we walk about three feet off the ground.

Now the fact of the matter is, we all have problems and also there's little doubt that the choices we make when difficulties come, can either make or break the quality of our life.

The problem that I see with most people, including Christians, is not the problems themselves, but the choices that we make when these problems come.

Again, we've already established the fact that we're going to have problems. We all have them and what we do with those problems is very important. Now good preparation will help prevent us, when problems do come, in procrastinating, or the pain of making the wrong choices.

I heard of a story about Lord Joseph Devine, and he was the head of an art firm that bore his name back in 1915. Now the reason that's significant for this message this morning, is that he wanted to send one of his experts to England to examine some pottery, some ancient pottery, and he booked a passage on the Lusitania, and then, as soon as he did that, the German Embassy issued a warning that the liner might be torpedoed and so he wanted to call the trip off.

He said to the young man who was the expert that he was sending over to England, he said, "I can't have you risk your life."

And the young fellow said this, he says, "Don't worry. When I heard about what was going on, I started preparing myself."

He says, "What are you talking about?"

He says, "Well, there's a lot of icy water between here and England and so what I've been doing, I started sitting in a tub of ice cold water." And he says, "And the first time I could only sit in that ice cold water for about five minutes." He says, "But now I'm up to two hours"

And, Devine just kind of laughed a little bit. He said, "That's ridiculous."

He said, "Well, listen, I don't mind going." He said, "I'm a good strong swimmer and if... no problem."

Well, of course, he went on the ship and the ship was torpedoed and they picked the young man up in the water after five hours in the icy water and he was perfectly in great health because he had prepared himself.

I was thinking, we Christians, we need to prepare ourselves with devotional discipline, with behavior discipline and with the discipline of just doing right because there's going to come a time in our lives when we're going to have to make decisions. You know as well as I do, that if you aren't prepared for whatever eventuality might come, you're going to be in trouble.

A lot of people, for instance, are not prepared financially when difficulties come. We've for some reason, gotten away from the idea that you ought to save money and a lot of people, when the least little bit of a problem comes, they go into a panic, because they are not prepared. Well, we need to prepare our selves for the same eventuality for spiritual things that may come upon our lives.

So here's what the Bible teaches. That we need to be prepared and it's short-sighted not to prepare our hearts for the things that may come into our life. So I'm going to talk about this very, very briefly this morning. I want to talk about difficult circumstances. That's the first thing. Difficult circumstances.

The first word that comes to my mind and going back, we're going to go back to Genesis now, to Genesis, Chapter 25, is the word "prayer," because like his own father and mother, Isaac and his wife, Rebecca, were childless. She was barren. Like his father Abraham, Isaac truly loved his wife and he was concerned about her and so he started praying that God would allow them to have a child.

I told you that not too long ago, recently, about a year ago, I was asked to pray for this couple that couldn't have children, and my niece up in Stockton asked me to pray and I prayed and the girl just had triplets. So you see, now there is something to prayer. So don't, if you don't' want to have triplets, don't ask me to pray, because you know these things, okay?

But anyway, there's nothing more important than when we face the difficulty, that we face it with prayer. The only right thing for Isaac and Rebecca to do was to pray and it's so important when difficult circumstances come into our lives that we have the proper focus. We need to focus on what God would have us to do.

I read this the other day, someone said that it seems that more people today have a greater desire to live long than they do to live well. I heard a scientific thing the other day and they said that they've discovered the aging gene in human beings and they say now that it's entirely conceivable for a person never to die. Well, they can reverse this aging process and so, let me just say, don't wait around for that. The fact of the matter is, that a lot of people want to live longer. We want to live longer, we want to look better and there's nothing wrong with either one of those things. But the fact of the matter is, there are too many people that are wanting to live longer, but not wanting to live well.

We are living longer today than we've ever lived, except for the beginning of mankind when they lived for 800 years. In America today, people are living a lot longer. It used to be if someone was 100 years old, it was an anomaly, but now you find just numbers of people that old. A person just died the other day that was 115 years old; think about that.

I was reading a magazine the other day and they had all these artists in it, photographers. And every one of these photographers were 85 and over and they had one lady who was 100 years old and she's still actively taking pictures and making money on doing it and she's really good and so people are living longer. But the thing is this, are we living properly?

God's reward for Isaac and Rebecca, through their proper focus here was that she became pregnant and not with just one child, but with two children. Now here's the problem that comes in. I always have to think of the problem. I can't imagine to have more than one child at a time. These people that have five or six of them at a time, I tell you, I don't know. But twins, my wife has always wanted twins. I say, "Too late now." But anyway, she's always wanted twins and my mother was a twin, so there was a possibility that we could have had twins. Yet as you think about this, the problems came even with answered prayer. There were some problems that arose. In fact, you look in the Bible. A lot of people think when God answers our prayers, we're not going to have any problems anymore. Remember in the New Testament when Lazarus died? The Bible says that Lazarus died and that Jesus raised him from the dead and you know what happened immediately after that? The Jewish authorities started to try to kill Lazarus. This poor guy just got raised from the dead and they were trying to kill him. They had an answered prayer.

Well, Rebecca noticed something. She said, "These children in my womb are fighting." You women who have been pregnant, you know what it is to have one child kicking. These two kids, these two boys, she said there was a problem there. They were kicking. So she went to the Lord about it and she realized maybe there was a problem here.

She had been confused though. She said, "Well, I can't understand, Lord, if you blessed me with these babies, why am I having problems now?" But how many times have we reacted like that. We pray about something and then God answers that prayer and we think that everything is going to be smooth sailing and then something else comes up.

You see, God doesn't say it's always going to be smooth sailing. Life is a string of facing difficulties, and how we tackle each one of those determines the quality of our life.

If you want to go to a church, a lot of churches preach this way today: "Let me tell you something. If you become a Christian, you'll never be sick, you'll never be broke, you'll never have any marital problems, just turn your life over to Jesus and you'll never have another problem." That's not what the Bible says. One of the biggest misconceptions in the world today is that if you are a Christian and you love the Lord, you'll never have a problem.

You see, having a successful life is not having a life that is devoid of problems. Having a successful life, marriage or whatever, is facing those difficulties and acting and reacting properly. An answered prayer does not necessarily negate future problems and at such times, we need to evaluate each situation as we go along.

I heard this the other day, and it's true. Someone said that the Lord is always voting for mankind, and the devil is always voting against mankind and it's up to us to break the tie. If you think about that, that is true. Satan wants us to go one way, the Lord wants us to go another way. It is really up to us. God has given us a free will so that we can decide which is the right way.

Then secondly, I want you to notice some destructive choices as we look at this. When we talk about destructive choices, the word "pitfalls" comes up, because in Chapter 25 of Genesis, in verses 27 and 28, there were some problems. The Bible says, "As the boys grew and Esau was a cunning hunter and a man of the field and Jacob was a plain man and dwelling in tents, and Isaac loved Esau because he did eat his venison, but Rebecca loved Jacob."

Now there's a real problem coming up right here. It was very obvious, from the time that they were born, these two boys were entirely different. I don't think they were identical twins because the Bible says that Esau was a hairy man, he was hairy when he came out of the womb, and Jacob was smooth, it says. One was an outdoorsman, and the other was kind of a homebody. Unfortunately, Isaac and Rebecca really caused some problems because Isaac favored Esau, and Rebecca favored her other son, Jacob. It was a cause of stress in the family.

One of the worst things, in my opinion, that people can do in rearing children, is to show favoritism in your children. To say, "I like this one more than the other one."

I remember when I was working with my mother-in-law, and she asked me to come down and we were talking about her will and she asked me about giving things to different people and so forth. I'm not only her son-in-law, I'm her pastor, so she has a pastor on staff. So I said, "Listen, give it to them all equally." I said, "Don't give one more than the other. Be equal with every one of them or you're going to cause problems for the rest of them." And I believe that that's really true.

You see, unfortunately, these two parents, Isaac and Rebecca, they showed favoritism and as a result, it caused a lot of problems. This pitfall that we can see in Isaac's life, we see in Esau's life, and the same thing is true with Jacob.

Let me read you something I read just the other day. You see, what we do will affect our children, all the way down the line. It will affect generations. There was a man called Max Jukes. He lived in New York. He didn't believe in Christ, he didn't believe in God. He wouldn't allow his children to go to church, even if they wanted to. He had 1,026 descendants: 300 of them were sent to prison for an average term of 13 years; 190 were public prostitutes; 680 were admitted alcoholics; his family had, thus far, at that point, cost the State an excess of $420,000 dollars, and that was way back when.

There was another man that was born and lived at the same time. His name was Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards was a famous gospel preacher. He loved the Lord and he took his children to church and taught them the things of God to the best of his ability. He had 929 descendants. Of these, 430 were ministers; 86 became university professors; 13 became university presidents; 75 authored good books; 7 were elected to the United States Congress, and one was Vice President of the United States. Now there's the difference in the way we live.

Rebecca learned about deception and she even wanted to deceive her own husband to get what she wanted. She wanted the right things, but she went about it in the wrong ways. Folks, let me tell you something. What we do will affect generations. You look at where we're living today.

There was a lady back in the 1960s, and she was an atheist and she didn't like the fact that we had Bible reading and prayer in schools. She was a brilliant lady -- I say, "was" because they found her bones just recently -- but anyway, she was a brilliant lady. Madeline Murray O'Hare. She was brilliant, but quite evil.

As a result of what that woman did, there has not been Bible reading since the sixties in public school. Prayer has been thrown out and we've seen, under the guise of separation of church and state, a tremendous decline in the morality among our young people.

Did you know this -- now some say, well, this is coincidence -- did you know the SAT scores have actually gone down since they took the prayer and Bible reading out of the schools? I don't know how that correlates, but I'll tell you one thing, it's amazing when you look at the schools today and what is considered to be wrong today as opposed to what was wrong even in the sixties. It's amazing, the degenerations we've seen in our society. Take God out, take the Bible out, take prayer out, and you're going to reap the benefits of that and I mean negative benefits.

Well, Rebecca did the wrong thing. You see, it's not enough just to want the right thing; you must do it the right way. Then comes the second thing, priorities. What were her priorities? The next part reveals the priorities that were learned by Jacob and Esau. These two young boys were raised by two parents that taught them some wrong things.

Esau comes back from a hunt one day -- you know the story, many of you do -- and he's hungry. Esau was a rough, tough guy, but his life was kind of judged by his stomach, and Jacob sees the opportunity to take advantage of his brother and he says, "I'll tell you what, Esau. If you sell me your birthright, you're the older brother, but if you sell me your birthright, I'll give you this bowl of porridge."

This is the problem: making wrong decisions. When you walk in the flesh, you're going to reap the things of the flesh. And so Esau, only thinking about his own immediate need, says, "That's fine with me. You've got my birthright. Just give me the food." Esau wanted what he wanted right now, and I was thinking about that.

So often we're living in a society that we want everything right now. Don't we? We have microwave ovens. I looked at a TV dinner the other day and I was going to eat it and I decided not to eat it. You know why? Because it wouldn't work in a microwave oven. It was going to take like 15 or 20 minutes and I'm thinking, "Who's going to wait 20 minutes for food?" So I put it back in and got something out that I could do in six minutes. I'm not going to wait that long! It's amazing. It's amazing how we want everything right now.

Someone said this: "The cards are ill shuffled until I have a good hand." You see, we want everything the way we want it and we want it right now. All sense of priority was gone with Esau. He just wanted, whatever it took; if he sold his birthright, fine. And Jacob took advantage of that.

I see this in our educational system today, too. I really believe that our education system stresses more learning of information over the really learning of wisdom so you can deal with that information. We're living in an age where, in fact, the Bible says in the Book of Daniel, in the latter days, knowledge shall increase.

In the last few years, I finally started using a computer. I know that I'm not really that good at it, but it's amazing to me. I've used it in the ministry, and it's amazing how much knowledge and information is easily accessible through the In- In- In- the what? Internet. That's right. I can't even say it. But you know, I don't even have to buy any books anymore, because if I want some information, I can just tap into a Christian college into their library and tap into the information I want out of the book. I can get into any commentary I want. I can get into the Greek text, I can get into the Hebrew text. I can get anything I want and knowledge is increased.

Here's the problem. We have more PhDs today, and I are one of 'em, but we have more, too many, all these PhDs, but the thing is this. A lot of people have a lot of knowledge, but they don't have wisdom. It's not enough just to have a lot of knowledge, you need to know how to use it. Someone said it's not the IQ that's important in education, it's the I Will. It's our attitude and how we deal with it.

Esau's priorities were misplaced and Jacob wanted the birthright, but he went about it in the wrong way. That brings me to my last point, real quickly, and that is a price tag. You know there's a price tag on anything, everything. Nothing is free. Even salvation is not free. It cost Jesus his life. In Hebrews, going back to Hebrews again real quickly, in Hebrews, Chapter 12, we see the reality of poor choices.

I want to give you some good news and some bad news. The good news -- I always like the good news first -- the good news is that there can be forgiveness of our sins. We can really blow it and still be forgiven. The bad news is that the consequences may continue throughout our lifetime.

I, a number of years ago, led a man to Christ, who was an alcoholic. And he turned his life over to Jesus Christ and stopped drinking immediately after becoming a Christian. It doesn't always happen that way, it happened with him. He loved the Lord. He married a woman who was an alcoholic who was saved and both of them were actively involved in church and they loved God, but she died prematurely because all the years that she had been drinking had caught up with her. He had constant physical problems and even to this day, he has physical problems because of the fact that he drank for the first 30-40 years of his life.

Now let me say, God has forgiven him and God has forgiven his sins, but sometimes we need to understand, we live with the consequences of our sins. If only people would realize that about sin, and the godless choices that people make. You're going to have to pay one way or another for them. God can forgive us our mistakes but, again, the problems will still be there.

I heard a story about this man who was taking his 11-year-old daughter to school one morning and as they were going to school, he made a right-hand turn illegally. And as he turned illegally, he said, "Uh oh." He said, "I just made an illegal turn." His 11-year-old girl, his daughter in the back seat, she said, "That's okay, Daddy. The police car right behind us did the same thing."

We were talking in Sunday School this morning about children stealing things, and I confessed. Did you know your preacher was a thief at one time? Yeah, yeah. I was 8 years old, and I stole some stuff out of a store and got caught and have never stolen anything since. We were talking about that and evidently I wasn't the only bad kid around because there were other kids in our class of children, of these kids, that have stolen things. Do you know what they do, these kids? A kid will take a pack of gum and just put it in his pocket and Mom and Dad found that gum and said, "Where did you get that?" And they confessed they got it from the store, and so what they did, George was telling about his son. I guess he picked something up he shouldn't have when he was a little kid and they took him back to the store and made him go up to the owner of the store and say, "I took this, I'm sorry, I'm bringing it back." George said that the store owner was really great because he looked at that little kid and he says, "You know what you did was against the law?" And he said, "The next time you do that they may throw you in jail for a long time," putting the fear of God in this poor little kid.

I'm saying that that's what we need to teach our children. We need to teach them, "Listen, what you're doing, if you do something wrong, you need to understand that there are some consequences.

Esau and Jacob paid dearly for their sin. If you look at the history of Esau and Jacob, boy, I tell you, they, both of them -- I don't have time to go into it this morning -- but both of them had a very bad life in many ways, even though God forgave them.

Now I was thinking, how different the quality of their lives would have been if they had just turned their lives over to God and not learned from a mom and dad the wrong things. We have, as parents, and as grandparents, an awesome responsibility not only by what we say, but by our actions to show our children what is right and what is wrong.

Someone said this, "As a rule, you will find those who complain about the way the ball bounces are usually the ones who drop the ball." And I think there are a lot of people today that are blaming everything in this world on everything else except on themselves.

Life is full of choices. Yes, salvation is a choice. It really is. You can decide, because God has given us that free will, you can decide to say "Yes" to Christ, or "No" to Christ. You can't blame the fact that you're not receiving the Lord on your parents, on anybody else, because you have a decision to make.

Jacob and Esau had some bad role models in those areas, but they still had some choices. They had a free will. They could have said, "No, I'm not going to do what's wrong, and yes, I'm going to do what's right."

How about you this morning? What decisions do you need to make in your life? Those choices you make will determine to a great deal, the quality of your life. Let's bow our heads together if you would please?

I really believe that actually our choices will reflect our passions. All of us have passions. Some people love computers. Some people, like me, love cars. We all have a lot of things that we're passionate about, but more important than cars and computers and other toys that we may have, we need to love God and be passionate about him, in serving him.

May I ask you a personal question this morning? Are you passionate about your spiritual life? Are you passionate about what God would have you to do for him? If not, you need to get passionate about it, if you're a child of God and turn your life over to Jesus Christ and let Him have His will and His way in your life.

Father, as we come before You this morning, we come, Lord, thanking You for Your precious Word, and we have seen this morning from this Old Testament story how that making the right choices can be a blessing and a benefit, but making the wrong choices can literally devastate our lives. That may seem very self-evident and yet if it was so self-evident, it would seem that people would be making better choices.

So I pray that you would help us, Lord. I pray if there is someone here today who has never accepted Christ, that today they'll make the right choice and accept Christ and if there are some Christians here today that need to make some choices in their lives, maybe they need to come down to this altar and just get down on their knees and talk to You about it, that they'll make that choice to make that decision today. Have Your will, Lord, have Your way, in Jesus name, Amen.