‘Lest there be any fornication, or profane person, as Esau, who for one portion of food sold his own birthright. For you know that even when he afterward desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place for a change of mind, though he sought it diligently with tears.'
This root of bitterness is now defined in terms of Esau who ‘sold his birthright' because it meant so little to him. He was a worldly person. He despised what was spiritual. He looked at present benefit not at future ‘pie in the sky'. Note the implication. What he lost had never been his in any genuine way, for he had always despised it in his heart. It meant nothing to him, and he had casually exchanged it for a dish of soup. He did not have a faith that dwindled, it was a faith that had never existed.
But later when he suddenly realised that it did matter it was too late. He had chosen his path and could not turn back. No amount of tears could change the situation. He had made an irrevocable decision and was now stuck with it. Compare Hebrews 10:26.
This does not mean that Esau was lost for ever. The writer is not talking about his eternal state. He is making a comparison between the loss of his birthright through folly, with the greater danger of others of losing everything through folly, and stressing how such a situation can become irrevocable. Esau could still repent of his sin and find forgiveness before God, but there was no way in which he could bring about a change of mind concerning his birthright. He had lost it permanently. The danger, however, for those who ‘despise' Christ is that they may truly reach a stage where they themselves are lost for ever.
‘Lest there be any fornication, or profane person.' Esau was never described as factually a fornicator, but he did marry a number of foreign wives, wives outside the covenant, which grieved his father and mother deeply (Genesis 26:34-35; Genesis 27:46; Genesis 28:8-9). He was unequally yoked together with unbelievers. That may be partly the idea here. That too demonstrated that, unlike Jacob, he had little concern for ‘the way of promise'. God's purposes were not important to Him. And that eventually was why he was able to dismiss his birthright so easily and with such disinterest. First he went wrong with his choice of women, and then he demonstrated his contempt for the promises of God. As it turned out he was concerned what his father thought about him, but he was not concerned with what God thought about him.
But moving from the example to the people he was writing to the writer probably has literal fornication in mind for them (compare Hebrews 13:4). Relationships with women have always been vitally important for the Christian, and fornication and sexual misbehaviour, is always a present danger. Wrong attitudes lead to wrong relationships. Thus they are to avoid fornication, the idolatry of the flesh; and they are also to avoid being profane and worldly minded, the idolatry of the spirit, that is, looking only at what is seen and putting such things before God.
For Let Them Consider What They Are Dealing With. They Are Not Dealing With Earthly Experiences But With Heavenly Realities.
Once again we are brought back to the comparison between the old and new ways, the old and new covenant, the old and new Law (Chapter s 7-10). His readers have less excuse for failure than Israel of former days, and more to be afraid of. For they have not come to something earthly, fearsome and awesome though it may be, and something which makes men tremble, and made even Moses fear and quake. As well as being a time of great import to Israel it was also a time of exclusion. God was there but they were not to approach Him hidden in the darkness. Only Moses could enter the cloud and even he trembled.
But rather they have come to the glory of heavenly realities, and the wonder of the new Mediator Who mediates the new covenant in Heaven. It is no longer the terror of Mount Sinai, but the glory of the heavenly Mount Zion, with all that goes with it. It is an entrance with joy. But it is still the dwellingplace of the Consuming Fire for those who have turned their backs on Him.