FORGET NONE OF HIS BENEFITS, , volume 7, number 7, February 14, 2008

Thus Esau despised his birthright, Genesis 25:34.

Aaron Burr Or Timothy Dwight?

Aaron Burr and Timothy Dwight were cousins, the grandchildren of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards. Timothy was born in 1752 in Northampton, MA, his mother, Mary, being the third daughter of Jonathan and Sarah. His father was a successful and godly man of the community. Timothy was quite precocious, learning the alphabet in one sitting and reading the Bible by the time he was four. He was ready for Yale at the age of eight but they would not receive him until he was thirteen. He graduated at the age of seventeen and was part of the Hartford Wits, a group of poets and writers from Connecticut who were popular during and after the Revolutionary War. His poem, Columbia, was quite popular at the time, suggesting that America was the center of God’s righteous kingdom. He also wrote the hymn I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord which is still very popular today. He was the pastor of the Congregational Church in Fairfield, CT until 1795 when he was called to follow Ezra Stiles as the President of Yale.

Aaron Burr was born in 1756 to Aaron, Sr. and his wife Esther, daughter of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards. His father, the second President of Princeton, died when Aaron was an infant. Shortly thereafter, his grandfather became President of Princeton and also died from complications of a small pox inoculation. Within months, Aaron and his older sister, Sarah, also lost their mother and grandmother. Now orphans, Aaron Burr, Jr. and Sarah were sent to live with Uncle Timothy Edwards, a pastor in Elizabethtown, NJ. They were tutored by Tapping Reeve, who later established the first law school in America at Litchfield , CT. Tapping Reeve later married Sarah and Aaron studied law under his brother-in-law. By the time he was twenty-eight, Aaron Burr was elected to the state legislature. By thirty-five, he was elected to the first United States Senate. He was Vice-President under Thomas Jefferson by the time he was forty-four.

Both cousins were obviously very gifted men and both had the same remarkable spiritual privileges and pedigree, but they chose different ways of handling their pedigree. We see the same thing with even more significant implications in the lives of Jacob and Esau. Jacob, who was promised by God the birthright of his family, could not wait to receive it in God’s appointed time. Instead he conned his weak brother Esau out of the birthright. The birthright in question had both spiritual and material components. From Deuteronomy 21:17 we know that the first born received a double portion of property from his father. But more importantly the first born was given federal or spiritual headship over the family, taking over for the father upon his death. The household would include his wives, children, servants, and sojourners living among them. Esau, due to his physical hunger, gave up his birthright for a mess of porridge. We are told solemnly in the text that Esau thus despised his birthright. Such privileges! So little regard for them.

After Aaron Burr, Jr. graduated from Princeton he spent a year in what he called "busy idleness" reading and thinking. Burr was expected to follow in the Calvinistic ministry like his father, his grandfathers, his great-grandfather, and his great, great grandfather. So at age eighteen he began a concerted study of theology and at the end he said that he "forever and completely" rejected it. Thus Burr despised his remarkable privileges.

Did you grow up in a Christian home? Do you have children who have benefited from growing up in your own Christian home? I urge you not to go the way of Aaron Burr. I urge you to warn your children to not jettison their remarkable privileges. What are they? They have the Lord Jesus Christ and all He means and all He has done, is doing, and will do. They have a gospel preaching church and a church family which loves them, prays for them, and instructs them. They have parents who instruct them. You have the same. Are you moving away from these privileges? You are if you take lightly your attendance to the means of grace- public and private worship, the Lord’s Supper, family worship. I have observed in church history that far too many children who have benefited from the academic rigor of serious Calvinism, have later despised their birthright, always with damning consequences.

Timothy Dwight became President at Yale when the horrific implications of the French Revolution were unfolding, when Robespierre was sending hundreds to their deaths by the most efficient means of the day, the guillotine. In a series of sermons to the students of Yale in 1797, entitled The Nature and Danger of Infidel Philosophy, he showed the error of such thinking, driving home the truth of Christianity, the only system of thought and life which has merit. One student observed that there was, at the time, one Freshman, no Sophomores, one Junior, and less than ten Seniors who were followers of Christ. Iain Murray points out that Dwight, who had been preaching for over twenty years with no noticeable evidence of power or efficacy, began seeing the Holy Spirit fall on his preaching with unusual unction and power in 1805. The result was seventy-five of the two hundred and thirty students were converted that year and joined local, New Haven churches. Over the next several years hundreds of men went into the gospel ministry, being used powerfully by God in the Second Great Awakening. Dwight died at the age of sixty-four after a lengthy bout with prostate cancer. All his children walked with Christ, many becoming powerful preachers and theologians, physicians, and philanthropists.

Aaron Burr, Jr., as you probably know, killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804. He fled to Philadelphia were he hatched a plan with James Wilkinson to invade Mexico, and foment rebellion with surrounding border towns in order to set up a Napoleonic kingdom in New Orleans. He was acquitted of treason and fled to France where he met Napoleon, suggesting he invade Florida and allow Burr to run it for him. He lived in penury for a number of years before going back to New Jersey to practice law. Upon his death, he asked that he be buried at the foot of his parents and grandparents in the cemetery at Princeton, saying that he was not worthy to be buried beside them.

What you believe matters terribly. The same is true for your children. Warn them to not wander from the faith. Warn them to not despise their spiritual birthright. Teach them to fear God, to see God in all things, to trust God, never leaning on their own understanding. Pray and model such godliness to your children.

FORGET NONE OF HIS BENEFITS is a weekly devotional by Reverend Al Baker, pastor of Christ Community Presbyterian Church in West Hartford, Connecticut.

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