why was Esau unable to find repentance? He saught it diligently with tears.

[Blade]

Hmm well some say .. he never really repented.. tears don't mean you repented.. You don't think JUDAS was sorry? Don't kill your self if you did something good and feel great..

 

[this is not my name]

I have read that God needs to grant repentance. a hardened heart, I am thinking, is out of the person's control to soften. if your heart is willing to be disobedient, how do you will yourself to be obedient? if a hardened criminal is decensitized to killing people and stealing, often times they don't feel sorry for it, even if they feel gross inside, and they can't turn from their ways even if they tried. if a drug addict goes to jail, goes through a program, is set free from addiction, their heart is still wrong, they go out, and then get addicted again, even if they try to stay sober. sometimes.

 

[Sound Doctrine]

I have read that God needs to grant repentance. a hardened heart, I am thinking, is out of the person's control to soften. if your heart is willing to be disobedient, how do you will yourself to be obedient? if a hardened criminal is decensitized to killing people and stealing, often times they don't feel sorry for it, even if they feel gross inside, and they can't turn from their ways even if they tried. if a drug addict goes to jail, goes through a program, is set free from addiction, their heart is still wrong, they go out, and then get addicted again, even if they try to stay sober. sometimes.

To add to what you said, the Bible teaches that when we sin a sin, it gets easier to repeat the sin until we feel nothing at all in doing it. "Having our conscience seared with a hot iron," where the nerves go bad from repeated searing, such is with the conscience. It takes the Father's will to give us saving faith by grace in order to approach Jesus and repent of our sins. We must first be drawn by the Father to the Son, and we cannot come to the Father but by the Son. With our will, it is a catch-22, so God wills it for His elect, not for everybody, and not based on our works.

 

[david shelby]

and any thoughts on why Esau could not repent, and if he could repent after all, but was just not willing to trust or something like that.

It wasn't his own repentance but his father's repentance that he sought. I.e. he sought to have his father take back giving the blessing to the wrong person. Remember the story, how that Jacob had already tricked Isaac and received the blessing. THEN Esau came in to receive the blessing, and his father was all like "Sorry, too late." He couldn't convince his father to change his mind (aka repent) about it being too late.

Edit: After I typed this and posted it, I looked at some translations other than the KJV. This is what I found. The NRSV has a footnote "Or no chance to change his father’s mind". The ASV translates it in the text itself "For ye know that even when he afterward desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place for a change of mind in his father, though he sought it diligently with tears." So this isn't some crazy interpretation idiosyncratic to me; other people have noticed this before. And translators no less.

 

[Alynn]

How are you feeling now?

 

[mgistinger1]

I read the Bible every day. thanks for the advice, it is a good idea to keep it up anyway, like eating your vegetables, you develop a taste for vegetables. I think I see many things that I did wrong. and I do see a lot of the problems with the hypocrites in my life. I decided to follow Christ after a guilt from a sin that I fell into, and decided to accept Him as my Lord, kind of rededicate, but I would never have the assurance I was looking for. I would often afterwards do the sinners prayer. but I kept resisting to do God's will in one area of my life, and now it seems that that may have been a root of bitterness. and I felt called by His Holy Spirit to surrender and submit to Him several times, and kept resisting, and then felt like His presence left (many other things happened too). and like convictions stopped, lost a lot of my thinking ability, felt like a hand reached into my head and pulled out all of the scriptures. and then the most awful emptiness in my heart, like someone blew a black hole in it, and set it on fire. love, patience, self control, peace, joy, even hope seemed to leave, and I was in severe stress, anxiety, unease, and terror took the place of the good stuff. so it got so bad that I ran to food to try to fill that spot. now it feels like my heart is so hard that I can't control it. I can try to seek God for Him, but seems like my motives themselves have been set in an improper place, and I choose to believe that can be fixed, then I can seek God with a true, pure heart.

I’m trying to get ahold of “this is not my name” please if anyone knows this user can you message me

 

[prophecy_uk]

Why would a place of repentance be found, when it is the cunning craftiness of people, that God has defeated ?

Esau is in the whole teaching of God, how the elder serves the younger, as as the least among all shall be the greatest, is it not time everybody realized that, and also know that any exaltation talk at all, is all too easy to recognize, and too late to repent of too..



Hebrews 12:16 Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.
17 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.


Luke 9:48 And said unto them, Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me: for he that is least among you all, the same shall be great.