Rape and Revenge

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Don Filcek; Genesis 34 Rape and Revenge

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Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.
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This message is by Lead Pastor Don Filsack and is a part of the series Beginning with God, Walking Through the
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Book of Genesis. If you would like to contact us, please visit us on the web at recastchurch .com.
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Here's Pastor Don. I'm Don Filsack, I'm the Lead Pastor, and I hope you're glad you were here, too, by the time that this message is over this morning.
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We'll see. Genesis chapter 34 is a pretty intense passage of scripture. But, here at the beginning, if you'd be willing to fill out your connection card that you received when you walked in, you can turn that in in the black box that you find on the table back there underneath the clock.
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If it's your first time with us and you turn in one of those connection cards, then we'd please ask that you do us a favor and take one of the free coffee mugs that's on that same table.
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Just our way of saying thanks. We're glad that you joined with us this morning. And then any offerings that you would choose to give, go in that same black box back there.
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An envelope's been provided for you. We don't pass an offering plate if you would choose to give. That's between you and God, and so we don't want anybody to feel that pressure of passing an offering plate.
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Like, oh no, I've got to give something. That's up to you. And so if you're not going to use that envelope, we would ask that you please recycle it.
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We can't just reuse those again next week if there's nothing in them. And so you can put those in the plastic. There's an acrylic holder back there labeled recycle back there.
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Remember that there's coffee and donuts over here, and there's another station over here. You can get up at any time during the message and help yourself to that.
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And then bathrooms are out the door to the end of the hallway. Men's upstairs, women's downstairs. We want you to use the bathrooms on this end of the building over here.
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With all that out of the way, let me just state something just generic about Recast Church that some of you maybe know and some of you don't, and that's that Recast Church, our name is actually an acronym, the
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R and the E for replicating, the C for community, the A for authenticity, S for simplicity, and T for truth.
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And T is last but not least. The T, the truth, holds all of it together.
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And a major way that we express truth here at Recast Church is through believing and trusting in God's Word to be sufficient for our lives.
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That as I get up on Sunday morning and I preach, I want to be focused on the Word of God, and that is that I'm therefore dedicated to preaching chapter by chapter, verse by verse, and going through the text of Scripture.
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Now, how many of you know that there are some texts of Scripture that make you uncomfortable? Raise your hand if you knew that already.
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Because if you didn't, you're gonna know that by the end of my reading this text this morning, that there are some that make you feel uncomfortable.
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And at the same time, it is indeed the Word of God that we're looking at today. It is something that He desired for us to know.
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This might not be, if I were just in a mode of topical preaching, I probably would never get to this passage in my lifetime.
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I probably would never pick this one out and go, okay, we're gonna look at Genesis 34 today, just because I felt like it.
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So it's, there's something about going through a book of the Bible that forces us to look at all of the texts that God has for us, that He desires for us to take in.
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I'm convinced that all of Scripture is inspired by God, and therefore when a challenging passage like this one comes up,
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I am convicted that it is exactly what God wants for His people here at Recast to hear this morning.
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And I will not be ashamed to preach what God has seen fit to reveal through His prophets to humanity.
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But those of you who have read ahead, you know that this morning, this text is indeed a bit of a mess, and if we shy away from texts that make us uncomfortable, we will avoid some of the things that God desires to communicate to us through His Word.
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You agree with me on that? We would miss something that He has for us if we shy away from things like this.
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God, as our designer, is concerned for human sexuality. God, as the divine judge, is concerned with justice.
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God, as the creator of a covenant relationship with Abraham, is concerned for His people in this text.
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But man, but humanity, as fallen and sin -cursed people, take issue with God's concern for our sexuality.
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And man, as fallen and sin -cursed, is a very poor stand -in for the judgment and the justice of God.
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Illicit, abusive, improper or improperly ordered sexuality is a hot topic in our world today.
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Raise your hand if you agree with me on that. Is that a hot topic? It is. Significantly. And I find it ironic that our text comes up against both sexuality and judgment.
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We will see the pagan people behaving poorly, and we will also see the people of God behaving poorly in this text.
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But as we dive into the mess, we need to remind ourselves that God is indeed on His throne.
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So let's open our Bibles to Genesis chapter 34. I will read from the English Standard Version. Follow along in whatever you have available.
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If you take one of the paperback Bibles, you'll find it on page 24. If you have young children, and you have some concern about this,
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I would encourage you to have a conversation with them as they're sitting in here, and they're hearing this. And there may be some questions that they have for you on the drive home or on the way.
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And I would encourage you as parents to take that opportunity to answer at whatever is age -appropriate for them at the point where they're able to interact with you.
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But follow along as I read Genesis chapter 34. Now Dinah, the daughter of Leah, whom she had born to Jacob, went out to see the women of the land.
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And when Shechem, the son of Hamor, the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he seized her and lay with her and humiliated her.
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And his soul was drawn to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob. He loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her.
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So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying, Get me this girl for my wife. Now Jacob heard that he had defiled his daughter
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Dinah, but his sons were with his livestock in the field. So Jacob held his peace until they came.
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And Hamor, the father of Shechem, went out to Jacob to speak with him. The sons of Jacob had come in from the field as soon as they heard of it, and the men were indignant and very angry because he had done an outrageous thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, for such a thing must not be done.
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But Hamor spoke with them, saying, The soul of my son Shechem longs for your daughter. Please give her to him to be his wife.
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Make marriage with us. Give your daughters to us and take our daughters for yourselves. You shall dwell with us and the land shall be open to you.
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Dwell and trade in it and get property in it. Shechem also said to her father and to her brothers,
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Let me find favor in your eyes and whatever you say to me I will give. Ask me for as great a bride price and gift as you will and I will give you whatever you say to me.
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Only give me the young woman to be my wife. The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father
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Hamor deceitfully because he had defiled their sister Dinah. They said to them,
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We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one who is uncircumcised, for that would be a disgrace to us.
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Only on this condition will we agree with you that you will become as we are by every male among you being circumcised.
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Then we will give our daughters to you and we will take your daughters to ourselves and we will dwell with you and become one people.
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But if you will not listen to us and be circumcised, then we will take our daughter and we will be gone. Their words pleased
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Hamor and Hamor's son Shechem. And the young man did not delay to do the thing because he delighted in Jacob's daughter.
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Now he was the most honored of all of his father's house. So Hamor and his son
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Shechem came to this to the gate of their city and spoke to the men of their city saying, These men are at peace with us.
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Let them dwell in the land and trade in it for behold the land is large enough for them. Let us take their daughters as wives and let us give them our daughters.
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Only on this condition will the men agree to dwell with us to become one people when every male among us is circumcised as they are circumcised.
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Will not their livestock, their property, and all their beasts be ours? Only let us agree with them and they will dwell with us.
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And all who went out of the gate of his city listened to Hamor and his son Shechem. And every male was circumcised, all who went out of the gate of his city.
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On the third day when they were sore, two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brother, took their swords and came against the city while it felt secure and killed all the males.
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They killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword and took Dinah out of Shechem's house and went away. The sons of Jacob came upon the slain and plundered the city because they had defiled their sister.
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They took their flocks and their herds, their donkeys and whatever was in the city and in the field, all their wealth, all their little ones and their wives.
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All that was in the houses they captured and plundered. Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, you have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land, the
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Canaanites and the Perizzites. My numbers are few and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both
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I and my household. But they said, should he treat our sister like a prostitute?
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Let's pray as the band comes to lead us. Father, that text does not feel like an introduction to worship.
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It doesn't feel like something that we can just naturally flow straight from what we have just read into bringing honor and glory and praise to you.
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And yet this is your word and it demonstrates to us what a mess our lives really truly are.
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That, Father, we can look at this text and go, that's a mess. But, Father, if we are honest about ourselves, if we are genuinely taking an assessment of our own heart, we see what a mess lies within.
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And so, Father, I pray that you would see fit to move our hearts to worship the one, you and your son, who have bought back a people for your name who are messed up and jacked up.
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And, Father, that you are a God who is long -suffering and patient with us in our messes and in our failures and in our sin.
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And you have made a way for us to be reconciled to you through Jesus Christ. That we would rejoice because we see the mess and in seeing the mess and acknowledging the mess and recognizing the brokenness and fallenness in our own hearts that we cannot help but rejoice because of the great and awesome love that you have shown to us.
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So would you move in us in that way, that from a place of our recognition, our humility, recognizing our depravity, that we would lift up our voices to do to you in praise because you have forgiven us in Jesus' name.
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Amen. Amen. I'll encourage you to get as comfortable as you can as we dive into the text.
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Remember, if you need to get up at any time during the message and stretch out in the back or the chairs get uncomfortable, you can get up back there, use the restrooms, the, again, coffee, donuts.
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But whatever it takes to keep our focus on the Word of God here this morning as we dive in. I'd also encourage you to make sure you have
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Genesis chapter 34 open in front of you in some format so that you can follow along and see that the things that I'm saying come from the flow of the text and that really is my outline, is the actual words of God this morning.
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Set a little bit of the stage before we dive in. A few weeks ago Jacob was reunited with his brother Esau and we saw this amazing reconciliation that was really against all odds that they would come back together.
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But Jacob had followed God's command to return from exile. He had been exiled and fled from his brother for his life.
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His brother was threatening to kill him and he, God said, go. And so he trusted
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God, obeyed God, and God has now brought him back into the land that God had promised him as he departed the land at Bethel.
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But Jacob didn't go all the way back to Bethel. He had promised God at that point, I will return to this place.
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When God met him there and the whole stairway to heaven thing and the the angels going up and down and he said
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I'll come back to this place and worship you. But he doesn't make it all the way back. Instead, he sets up shop just outside of a little village called
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Shechem. Okay, the name of the town is actually known as Shechem and it was all the way until the time of Jesus it had it bore that name.
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But he sets up shop just outside of that village. He built stables, a lot more of a permanent type of residence than we're used to seeing during this era.
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Stables for his flocks, a more permanent residence for his family, and there he set up an altar to worship his
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God. Remember that throughout the life of Jacob, we've been seeing Jacob come to the place where he actually has a
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God. He, when he left the land in exile, he was not yet sure whether God was going to be his
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God or not. And he actually put him to the test and said if you will provide for me, you'll keep me safe, you'll bring me back to this land, then
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I'll worship you. And we saw the last time we were in the book of Genesis that he built an altar and named it that you are my
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God basically. And so that kind of sets the stage for where we're at and that brings us to these words in verse 1 of chapter 34.
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The words, now Dinah the daughter of Leah went out to see the women of the land. They're just camped outside of or to have just set up residence just outside of the city of Shechem.
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Now Dinah was mentioned just in passing during the accounting of the birth of the sons of Jacob.
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Now I want to point out that it's quite likely that Jacob had other daughters, okay? There's only one that's mentioned by name and I think it's intentionally because of this account that we we found out where she is in the birth order and how that works out.
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But when it really comes down to it, unfortunately, we see that throughout the pages of Scripture often the male descendants are recorded in genealogy and the women are not.
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And so it's quite likely that she is not the only sister of the 12 tribes that we that we've seen spelled out for us.
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She was mentioned though in that order and in the culture of the ancient Near East it would be very uncommon for a young lady to have the kind of freedom that we see her afforded in chapter in verse 1.
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Dinah the daughter of Leah whom she had born to Jacob went out to see the women of land that she would go out unescorted, unchaperoned in this culture would grab everybody's attention reading this in ancient times.
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They'd be like, something's not right here. Okay, this is that right away we would get the notion that okay, someone is not looking out for her.
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Somebody is not protecting her. Most historical scholars believe that there is at least some subtle indication that Dinah herself is walking close to the fire.
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And most scholars see at least at the bare minimum some lack of protection for Dinah early in this text.
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Okay, so that she goes out and she's going out to see what does it say in the text? She's going out to see the women of the land.
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Well, what has anybody ever thought that maybe as she goes out to see the women in the land one of the women in the land might introduce her to one of the men of the land.
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Like is that possible? Like maybe that would happen or you know, and so what is the what is actually going on in Dinah's heart is hard to tell.
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I would say at the bare minimum what I'm able to discern from my study this week is that Dinah at least went out with some level of curiosity in her heart.
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You see that? She's going out to check out that which she does not understand or does not know. Now I want to suggest to you though that there was likely a level of innocence and naivety about Dinah.
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She's young, she is, she's been with her tribe for her entire life, and so she is going in to this village to meet some of the
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Canaanite women and get to know them. And as innocent and naive as she may be we find that she is indeed in a place of danger.
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Even though she doesn't know that at this point, she is in a place of danger. Now one of the princes of the land saw her.
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The text gets just, the verbs in the text are just just boom -ba -boom -ba -boom. He saw her, he took her, he lay with her, and by laying with her he humiliated her.
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Humiliating her is not a secondary thing. By laying with her he humiliated her according to the
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Hebrew text. Now I want to be up front with all of you. Certainly just even talking about this everybody can kind of get a little, you know, shifty or whatever.
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But I've wrestled significantly with this text this week in trying to figure out what is actually being recorded for us.
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It's not as straightforward as you might think. Now the order of events here in English seems like a case study that we can just clearly say what happens here is rape.
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And many have called this episode in Scripture, like the subheading in our English Standard Version is the defiling of Dinah.
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Some of the translations actually put there, by the way, that's not a translation. That's just us putting a heading there.
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But some have actually called it the rape of Dinah. Have you, some of your translations actually have that in front of you? Maybe a couple people.
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Yeah, so some some people have a version that actually calls it the raping of Dinah. But let me state directly that what happens here is very unclear.
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It's it's muddy and it's it's it's vague for us to actually figure out what actually happened in this situation.
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But let me um, let me just state that directly. It's unclear. The word translated seized in the
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English Standard Version is used tons in Scripture of somebody taking someone to be their wife. Okay, so do you see how that's fuzzy?
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Now translators have translated in a more aggressive term, seized her, because the thought already, they go into it with the thought that this is a rape that's occurred here.
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And so they use the word seized as a more derogatory and powerful word in that context, but it means he took her.
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What happened there is not as cut and dried. It could be as simple as he sent someone for her.
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He saw her. He's a prince of the land. He sent a servant. The servant goes and gets Dinah and brings her and says would you like to come to meet my master?
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And she says sure, I'm curious. Completely absent from this text, painfully absent from this text is anything about how
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Dinah feels at all. Anybody notice that as I was reading it? Especially I see a lot of ladies heads going up and down.
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There is no indication about her emotion, about her connection, about how she felt and what was going on in her heart at all from beginning to end.
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No mention of her feelings. That's painful and we won't, we want that and that would, how many of you think that would be helpful to us to know like it would clarify some things in the text for us if we knew how she felt.
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But I feel very comfortable saying this phrase is true. I believe that Shechem took advantage of Dinah.
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He took advantage of her. Whether or not this is a situation of violent rape or not is unclear, but how many, sexuality is complex.
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Would you agree with me on that? It's a complex thing. That's just not easily defined by these categories.
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I believe that some level of coercion took place. She was young, she was naive, but I want to point out carefully to you that a person can be both willing and taken advantage of simultaneously.
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Did you realize that? A person can be both willing and taken advantage of. That's why in our nation we have a law against statutory rape.
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Right? A person can be willing and say yes and still be taken advantage of because of their age or whatever or because of their inability to actually make a wise, willful decision.
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Now one of the wrestling points for me is found in verse 6, verse 3, I'm sorry. But there's multiple wrestling points throughout and I'm not going to point everyone out that I had to kind of wrestle through this week.
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We'd be here all day. But one in verse 3 is the response of Shechem to this event is not the psychologically common response of a rapist.
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Okay? There's a pretty common psychological response to rape. We see that with Amnon and Tamar in that situation and he kicks her out and hates her and despises her immediately.
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But here we see his soul was drawn to Dinah. He loved her. He tried to win her heart.
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He spoke tenderly to her though. The phrase that's used there for spoke tenderly to her is he tried to woo her heart.
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He's buying her chocolates. He's writing her notes in her lunchbox.
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He's getting flowers for her. Guys are taking notes. Those are some good ideas.
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Do some of those things if you're trying to win the heart of your woman. But we do not find out until way down in verse 26.
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We'll get there. But way down in 26 that Dinah remains in the house of Shechem during this entire text.
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She's there the entire time. She never leaves. Now, is she a prisoner? Is she there willingly? Do you see how vague some of the nuances of this text are?
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But my question is did he win her heart? I wouldn't rule that out in this text that Dinah is staying with Shechem and he has won her heart.
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He's trying to, right? He's trying to win her heart and that's quite possibly what we're looking at here.
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But I want to take a long moment to expound on the sexuality revealed to us in this text because it's blatant and it's in our face and it's right there.
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Shechem was drawn without restraint, without self -control towards Dinah.
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He saw her, he wanted her, and he took her. It's reasonable that our minds begin to characterize
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Shechem early on in this text as a spoiled brat who gets what he wants when he wants it.
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And I think that's a pretty fair assessment of him as we move forward. Observing the way he interacts with his father, observing the way he interacts with Dinah's brothers and the demands and the way that he is just used to having his way and getting it.
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On the other hand, Dinah appears in the text to be precocious, curious, unprotected, and unchaperoned.
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Not quite guided in the way that a young woman, especially in this era and in this age, ought to be treated.
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I would never for a second blame Dinah for this incident. Please hear me carefully. It is a horrible, horrendous thing when the victim is accused because she was available.
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That is a despicable, horrible thing that happens in our society. She is the victim, but I believe that we must be careful to recognize who she is the victim of.
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She is indeed the victim of Shechem, but I believe she is also the victim of her father.
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Jacob was not watching out for his daughter. Talking, carrying forward the thought of the sexuality in the text, sexual engagement complicates things immediately.
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If you're taking notes, I want you to write that down. I want to say it again. Sexual engagement complicates things immediately.
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Even those of you who are married, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Sexual relationships complicate things immediately.
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It's a complex thing. That Shechem's soul, hear me carefully, that Shechem's soul was drawn to Dinah is the logical conclusion of sex.
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That makes sense. His soul, his soul, his immaterial part, not his body, not physically he was responsive, his soul was knit to Dinah through that physical act.
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Sex was created and given to us as a gift, as a significant human soul bonding.
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Not just as something to stave off boredom. Okay, like our culture, like watching a movie, or reading a good book, or you know playing a board game together.
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It's just something, oh you're bored, so that's you know what else you're gonna do. You can, you're allowed to laugh once in a while.
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It's okay, and if it's not funny, then I'll get the hint, okay. But um, it's not something that's just trivial.
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It's not just to fill some time. Sex has the power to knit souls together.
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And without an established commitment from both people involved, all kinds of brokenness is the logical result.
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Not just the judgment of God on the situation, but the logical result of an imbalanced sex life is brokenness.
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Think about this in general terms. I'm not just talking about Shechem and Dinah here. What happens when her soul becomes attached and his isn't?
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What about when he becomes attached and she doesn't? How many of you acknowledge that there's all kinds of psycho things, people get psycho quick over the subject of sex?
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Does that happen pretty quick? And there's all kinds of stalking that happens, and all kinds of creepy things that happen, all because sex hasn't been kept in the proper boundaries.
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The commitment needs to come first for sex to do what it was given for, to us to do, and that is to unite, cement, and fuel an already -existent healthy commitment to one another within the covenant relationship of marriage.
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That's what it exists to do, is to take that which is already committed together and to be the mortar and the cement for it, to strengthen it, to fuel it.
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That's what it's intended for. Without question, what Shechem has done is deplorable in his culture, for sure, but also deplorable in the eyes of God.
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A covenant commitment is meant to precede any sexual relationship. Because sex is such a powerful gift from our
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Creator, it truly complicates and often, hear me carefully, it often destroys relationships.
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What often people in our society and culture think is going to be the great basis of a good relationship often consumes the relationship itself.
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Are you getting me on that? Think of two, think of this, I don't think it's crazy to use a nuclear reaction in order to convey the power of sex to the human psyche.
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Think of two different nuclear reactions, okay? One is contained within the controlled environment of a nuclear reactor.
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There's thick concrete barrier around it. There's all kinds of security measures in place.
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There's an entire extensive safety system with all kinds of, you know, water and a cooling system to make sure that that reaction is under control and there are protocols for if things start to get out of hand.
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Right? It's got the boundary of safety around it. Is that a powerful nuclear reaction going on inside of a nuclear reactor?
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Yeah, enough to sometimes fuel portions of a city, right? A very powerful reaction.
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And how is that different from the same type of nuclear reaction unleashed over Hiroshima or Nagasaki, just allowed to run its course without any safety measures around it?
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Think about the destructive force of that when it does not have the parameters that the safety features in place around it.
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Sex outside of marriage devours love. But marriage is like the safeguards around that nuclear reaction.
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Sex outside of marriage devours love, it consumes relationships, it clouds judgment and often results in much more pain than pleasure.
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Awakening a sexual relationship outside of the confines of a covenant marriage relationship is indeed bound to cloud judgment, to consume and destroy objectivity and skew, hear me carefully, it will skew the patience and love that is required for a long -term commitment.
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I just couldn't wait. I just couldn't be patient. Well, some of you are going, oh, wow, that's heavy.
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And all of us are broken. And so now you go, is there hope for me? Oh, praise God, there's hope for all of us.
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Even as we look at this, even as we acknowledge that there is a properly ordered sexuality and all of us are messed up in some way, shape or form.
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Every single person in the room bears the scars of brokenness on your sexuality in some way and God is gracious to give us fresh starts, to forgive.
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If we will bow our knee in humility and say we are broken, we are messed up. The problem is when we go around acting like we're all okay or you know, looking down our nose at those who have this type of sexual deviance or this type of, well,
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I'm not that bad, right? Do we have a tendency to do that? But dealing with our own brokenness and the way that we are messed up and coming for God and humility and bowing our knee and saying
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God, help me to overcome, help me to to follow the way that you desire for things.
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And some of you in this room might be involved in an illicit sexual relationship. Right now, you are actually, you know, planning on that this week and you're thinking it through and you know where you're at and you're going, whoa, this is a time for a fresh start on that.
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This is a time to come clean with God and say I'm gonna end this. I'm gonna stop this. I'm not gonna go through with this.
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You know where you're at and if you need to seek help, please come and talk with me or Kyle or one of the elders and we would love to walk through that, not in judgment, but to help you to come to the foot of the cross and to leave those things behind.
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Shechem further shows himself to be a spoiled brat in the text by going to his father and demanding that he get this girl to be his wife.
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He doesn't speak pleasantly. He doesn't use the word please. None of the, none of the cultural formalities that we expect during this era of writing.
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Everything is just demand go get her for me. Verse 5 takes us out of Shechem. So all this has taken place within the village, but now we go outside of Shechem back into the camp of Jacob where Dinah's father catches wind of these events.
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Now we don't know how he finds out, but we anticipate his reaction. He finds out his daughter has been taken advantage of.
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He is back there in his camp loading the shotgun. His blind rage is driving him to the brink of doing something that he regrets.
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Do you see the aggression in Jacob in verse 5? Let's read it together. Look at the text. Get ready. He's gonna, he's gonna roar like thunder here.
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Now Jacob heard that he had defiled, that he had defiled his daughter Dinah, but his sons were with his livestock in the field.
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So Jacob held his peace until they came. Now you might go, okay
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Don, don't be so extreme. You know, not everybody loads their shotgun right away. Not everybody gets aggressive. Not everybody is angry. Ladies, is that the way you want your father to act if you've been taken advantage of?
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Yeah. Just keep my peace, wait for the boys to come in from, from the, from the field.
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And you got to understand, you got to recognize the context here. This is the Old Testament, okay? Where the
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Old Testament law was that there was an avenger of blood. You, you know, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, that kind of justice.
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And it's like, it's completely reasonable that he sheathes his sword and heads out to take care of Shechem. That was, that's the, that's the
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Old Testament law, okay? If she's been taken advantage of, it's, it's go time.
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But he is there holding his peace. And I don't believe this is a time for calm.
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This is a time to confront sin. This is a time to go and take care of business.
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Now whether, don't, don't quote me because we're gonna get there here in a second about the way that the Old Covenant interfaces with the
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New Covenant. I'm not saying go load your shotguns, man, okay? Be careful with that. Because the
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Old Covenant, God is setting up a literal nation that entails military involvement and sometimes physical force for the preservation of his nation and of his people.
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And so what we see happening in this text is a little bit different. It's a, it's a little bit Old Covenant. Now there's some continuity between the
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Old Covenant and the New Covenant, but there was certainly a different culture and a different law. And so understanding that the law during this time included that concept of an avenger within the family going and taking care of business.
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Now, we're gonna see this gets very out of hand very quickly. Should Jacob have gone and slaughtered the entire village?
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Should the sons go slaughter the entire village? No, but should they take care of the one who has indeed bring him to justice, whatever that system looks like?
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Yes. New Covenant response we're gonna see in the application at the end looks quite different than this response.
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Because of some of the things that Jesus taught us about how to treat our enemies. But here in this text
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Jacob comes off as at least unconcerned. Would you agree with me on that? He's at least unconcerned.
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He sends for his sons, waits for them to come in from the field. But Hamor and Shechem show up about the same time as the boys arrived home from their work.
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They've caught wind, he sent a messenger, and the boys knew about it and their entire walk back they had time to stew.
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The sons have enough anger to cover for their father's, you know, disconnectedness.
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They are indignant and the text says very angry. It goes over the top to express the rage in these brothers for their sister
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Dinah. Our author Moses, in explaining the anger that comes from the brothers, he even steps out of character, the author does, and actually makes an editorial comment about what
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Shechem has done. He calls it particularly egregious, a horrible thing that ought not to be done in Israel.
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This is an outrageous thing. It must not be done. I don't believe that he's justifying the anger and the response of the brothers, but he is indicating what a horrendous thing this actually is.
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Often a marriage was needed to unite clans, and so Hamor comes to Jacob and his sons with him and proposes a wedding of Shechem and Dinah.
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Notice there's no mention in the text of Hamor acknowledging the defilement that's already happened. Doesn't even bring it up, would you?
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He just said, hey, you know, my son is in love with your daughter. Can we have a wedding here and maybe we could just unite our clans and come together?
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And Hamor emphasizes the financial benefit of uniting. Jacob's family can have free access to the land and they will trade together and they can intermarry their children.
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It's a win -win. I mean, we just keep winning, right? And so Shechem showing how much he was head over heels for Dinah offers a bride price as high as Jacob is willing to set it.
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I want to be clear that this is not just some mere infatuation that Shechem has.
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Everything in the text indicates that he is smitten. He is head over heels with Dinah.
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He wants to win her heart. He wants to marry her. He is thoroughly and completely smitten.
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So Jacob's sons take advantage of the situation and it says in the text directly that they deceitfully respond.
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Note that the brothers take over the negotiations. Jacob, father of Dinah, not even involved in her wedding plans.
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The brothers take over. They hatch a plot to demand the village of Shechem circumcise all of the males.
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The deceit itself, though, is not found in verses 14 and 15, but rather down in 16. What they say in verses 14 through 15 is at least partially accurate as they talk about circumcision.
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For the people of Jacob to unite with another people, they should be circumcised and come under the covenant of God, converting to the worship of Yahweh.
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Now, that's what the sons leave off, the most important part. For anybody to unite with the clan of Abraham, to join in with the promises of Israel, they needed to be, all the males need to be circumcised.
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But first, before they show that outward sign, they needed to give their hearts over to Yahweh and take him as their sole
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God. We see illustrations and examples of that happening throughout the Old Testament.
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We see Rahab, who was a pagan idol worshipper, she converts to the worship of God, and is saved and is integrated into the people of Israel.
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We see Ruth, she's got a book of the Bible named after her. She was from Moab. She was not from Israel, and yet we see her integrated by taking
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Yahweh as her God. She becomes integrated into the people of God.
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So, is it okay for the people of Israel to unite with somebody else? If they will adopt
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God as their God and come into covenant relationship with Yahweh, then yes. This plan, by the way, was not for Israel alone.
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Throughout the entire Old Testament, there are multiple examples of where God is trying to win the nations through Israel.
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I want to be clear about that. It is not that it was just for the Jews alone. All along, it's been a plan that God would win the nations.
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And he ended up eventually winning them through Jesus Christ and through us as Gentiles now being in the kingdom.
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But that's been his plan all along. But the deception, so they say, well, your whole clan, if you're gonna join with us, you need to be circumcised.
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Half -truth, they really need to accept and adopt Yahweh first, and then be circumcised as a sign of that.
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And remember that that was the sign given back in Genesis chapter 17 to Abraham as a sign of his covenant to his people.
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But the deception is found in verse 16, where Jacob's sons say, if you undergo circumcision, your entire village, then we will give our daughters to you for marriage, and we will become one people, liar, liar, pants on fire.
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They have no intention of following through on that at all. They are deceiving intentionally.
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If the people of Shechem refused to become circumcised and the brothers threatened to remove Dinah, showing one more time that she is indeed still in the house of Shechem, she has to go, they would have to go get her.
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She's still there. But Hamor and Shechem were the leaders of the village.
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It's very clear. And I would suggest to you that even as the leaders of the village, they have an uphill battle getting the entire village to be circumcised.
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Anybody want to have, anybody want to be leading that town meeting? Okay, how many of you think they've got an uphill battle?
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You think, you think they've got their work cut out for them to convince an entire village to be circumcised?
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I mean, I imagine some people in the meeting were like, can we, I'm moving to Damascus. I'm out. You know what
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I mean? It's like, I've got a cottage up in Jerusalem, and we're going there for good.
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So they all gather at the city gate, the place where village meetings happened in this era, in this time, the largest space available.
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Hamor starts off with the winning. Okay, he's gonna start with declaring what's good about this.
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He's a salesman. He's gonna make an awesome sales pitch for this. A new wealthy people have moved in.
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They've set up shop just outside of our town. New business opportunities, new wives for our sons, and they're only asking one small thing.
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I imagine some of the responses being along the lines of, you want us to do what? To what?
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With a knife? Are you serious? But the major appeal, the major appeal is for a significant financial gain, and Hamor and Shechem certainly oversell the agreement.
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They've just, we get to see both sides of the conversation. We get to see, read the conversation that he had with Jacob, which sells it on Jacob pretty good.
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But then, now we get to see how he sells it even harder. You've seen all their flocks out there on the horizon.
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You've seen them outside of the village gate. You've seen how they are like a multitude of sheep, and cattle, and camels, and you've seen their wealth, and all their animals will be ours.
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Shechem and Hamor are selling them with financial gain, and there's a huge irony in this statement, because in a few short verses, that phrase is going to be turned on its head.
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All of the animals of the Shechemites are going to belong to Jacob. The exact opposite of what is promised.
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But according to verse 24, every male in Shechem was indeed circumcised. Anybody, like, your jaw drops at that?
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Like, they won the day. And, I mean, it almost seems incredible to me that that's the outcome.
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And I ended up doing just briefly a little research that led me to the conclusion that this just seems completely logical afterwards.
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All you have to do is just do a quick Google search for people who are willing to sell body parts for money.
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Horrendous, horrible thing. But there is a significant interest, a whole sordid interest, in making money by selling body organs.
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Money is a crazy motivator, and it was no less true back in the day, and the guys go, yeah, sure, we're gonna get all those animals.
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We're gonna get that far ahead that we can just sit back on easy street. Okay, sure, circumcision, we'll take it.
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But two of Dinah's brothers, Simeon and Levi. Levi.
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Levi, who is going to be dedicated to the service of the Lord in the temple. Levi, whose lineage is going to be the ones who carry the tabernacle through, for the
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Lord, through the wilderness. That Levi. At the point when the pain and recovery would be most incapacitating, they attacked and killed every single male in Shechem.
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Every single male in Shechem. Now, even that might sound incredible until you consider that they're all lounging around.
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Maybe, you know, the number one anesthetic during the time was booze.
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Probably pretty easy to roll through the village and take care of all of the males going on there.
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The treachery in this act is undeniable. It's awkward. It's uncomfortable. The depth of the deception and the lack of justice is stark.
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Anybody see that as I read it? Anybody kind of like, that doesn't look just. That doesn't look.
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Were you there with me? Is anybody, I really want, I really want you to raise your hand on this one.
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Does anybody say, that looks unjust? Anybody? Okay, and some of you are like, no, that looks, that's pretty fair.
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That's pretty fair. Slaughter the entire village, you know, you take care of, you take, you know, you, you take advantage of one of my daughters.
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I'm gonna kill your whole village. Okay, is that? We're gonna have to, maybe
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I'm gonna have to camp on that one a little bit. We'll do a topical message on justice, but um,
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I think the treachery is undeniable. To our ears, to our ears, to our modern ears, the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth seems extreme and barbaric, does it not?
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You knock my tooth out, I get to knock your tooth out. Does that seem a little bit barbaric or an eye for an eye, you gouge my eye out,
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I get to gouge yours out? Sounds a little bit gruesome. But that law was a huge step forward compared to vigilante justice.
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Okay, think about how vigilante justice, some of you got in these practical jokes or pranks.
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Did any of you get in prank wars when you were in college? How quick did those get to injury? Those things lead to the emergency room like that, right?
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Some of, I hear some laughter, some of you know exactly what I'm talking about. You know, vigilante justice looks like this.
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You slash my tires, so I take a sledgehammer to your hood, so you burn my house down while I'm asleep.
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Right, isn't that, I mean that's about the acceleration that you expect. You take advantage of one of my sisters,
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I kill your whole village, every single one, they're mine. Does that sound just?
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Does that sound right? Does that sound good? Not so much. In verses 30 through 31,
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I'm sorry, I skipped a couple. Dinah's full blood brothers came to her rescue and retrieved her from Shechem's house.
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They rescued her. I don't even know if she wanted to be rescued. I'm not confident from the text that she needed rescuing, but she's rescued.
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And all the sons plunder the city, taking the women, the children, the flocks, and everything of any value.
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And I truly believe this is a super ugly blight on the family of God. Nothing in this text justifies the actions of the sons of Jacob.
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And some of you are already, your mind is already rolling. What about Joshua? What about the conquest of Canaan?
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What about them coming through and the genocide that happens later? I want to be clear that in those circumstances,
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Israel was never given carte blanche, kill anyone you want anytime. Never. Never in the history of Israel were they given carte blanche, just slaughter everyone that you find until they're all dead.
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They were told that specific cities were devoted to destruction and God spoke clearly that this is a judgment on those people that you go in because their sin has risen up to me and for 400 years
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I have been patient with the Canaanites. And now you can go take
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Ai, now you can go take Jericho because their sins have risen to an accumulation beyond the stench that I can stand.
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Are you getting me? Is there any indication in this text that this is a situation similar to that Joshua situation?
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It is not. They were not given any injunction by God to go commit Shechem to destruction.
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They just did it. They went out on their own on this one. Even the word deceit, the word that's used for deceit in verse 13 implies sinfulness on the part of Jacob, Jacob's sons.
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I believe that this episode is recorded in part to intentionally declare that Levi and Simeon were sinful.
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It's intentionally there to convey some something of the sinfulness of the 12 tribes here and all of their brothers who take advantage of the situation and go on in plunder.
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I think some of us want our Bible characters more good than they are and we look to try to find interpretations or ways to get around it to make them look better than they are because we like our heroes to be perfect, but there's no such thing.
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We still see Levi and Simeon used by God to head up two of the 12 tribes of Israel down the road because God does not have any good people to use.
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He has to look down on this earth and choose to use sinful people because if he's waiting for one of us to rise up and be perfect, it's just not gonna happen.
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In verses 30 through 31, we wrap up this telling with a conversation about this mess and it's a bizarre and strange conversation that happens between Jacob and his sons.
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The patriarch Jacob is concerned about this situation. Wouldn't you be? You'd be concerned too. But I hope you'd be concerned for some different things than Jacob is.
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He's concerned for the wrong things. He isn't concerned to comfort his daughter Dinah. No indication that she receives any comfort.
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Whichever way this happened, how many of you know that Dinah's hurting? Whether she was willing and in love with Shechem or whether she was raped by Shechem, she needs help.
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But she doesn't receive any help in this text. It's tragic. And it's meant you are supposed to see the tragedy in that.
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You are not supposed to go, oh, this is all everything working out the way that God wants it and the design and the...
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This is meant to be a mess. We are supposed to be reading a mess in this. He isn't concerned to call out the immoral behavior of his sons.
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He doesn't even say what you did was wrong in the eyes of God to slaughter all those innocent people. He doesn't ground them to their rooms for killing a whole village or take away their swords and say you can't get, you can't have your swords now for a month.
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You used them inappropriately. Sometimes humor is good to just kind of break the tension a little bit.
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But instead he reprimands them for putting him in a difficult situation.
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You have made me a stench to these people. Now what? Way to go, sons. You put, look at the situation you put me in.
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Great job, Jacob. Jacob still has a streak of fear in him.
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Even though he is indeed learning to worship God, we still see him falling and waging war against this fear that has owned him his entire life.
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And he knows that the other Canaanites, if they catch wind of this destruction of Shechem, then they join forces.
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They could easily destroy him. And he's right. But his sons call him to task.
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The response of the sons in verse 31 is poignant and clear. Dad, get a hold of yourself.
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Let the chips fall where they may, dad. Are they, should we just let people treat our sisters like prostitutes?
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I think in part the aggressive response of the sons was fueled by the lack of response of their father.
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I think in part their going over -the -top in aggression was because he was not there as a governor for them.
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He was not there as one who put the brakes on the situation and bring some sanity to it. They are the ones who are angered.
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They are the ones who make the marriage arrangements. They are the ones who try in their own sinful way to defend their sister's honor.
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And so we come to the end of this text. This has been a huge text with a lot of darkness.
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No questions. But I believe that there are four primary applications for us in this text.
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God may have already addressed something to you. And that's one of the beauties that, I mean, Kyle and I pray every Sunday morning as we're getting ready.
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We walk the hallway upstairs and pray a lot. And I am just always praying that God would work in your hearts through the
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Holy Spirit to convict you. I can throw out a lot of applications. I can throw out to you how the text has hit me or what
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I need to do different. But when it comes down to it, there may be as many applications as there are people in this room of what you need to take from this message.
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So I throw these four out. Don't consider yourself off the hook. If one of these doesn't apply to you, the
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Spirit still asks for him to put a finger on what he wants to communicate to you as an individual this morning.
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But let me say first, let me state clearly as our first application that sexuality is a dangerous tool when applied outside of marriage.
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This entire situation began with one man's uncontrolled passion and desire. I don't mean to overstate this as if all premarital sex results in the death of your entire village.
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But Scripture in this text clarifies what I have indeed seen to be true in real -life situations.
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Sex outside of the protective boundary of monogamous heterosexual marriage clouds judgment.
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It inhibits true love and often devours true love. And it will always certainly interfere with what
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God has designed sex to be for you. Always. The second application is regarding revenge under this new covenant.
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So now we get to a new covenant perspective on this type of vigilante justice. Should we be loading the shotgun?
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Should we? What's the situation? Jesus told us to love our enemies, to live with meekness and kindness, to turn the other cheek.
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This is a nuance and a balance thing that I can't, I can't tell you what to do in your life right now.
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I can tell you the principles for you to apply. And that's what Jesus did. He told us to leave vengeance up to him.
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Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. His vengeance is much more severe than ours.
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And we ought to give a long hard thought to the reality that he is indeed a God of justice.
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Nobody will escape his final judgment. And as often as that has been used to scare people, sometimes in life it becomes a comfort to us.
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Sometimes when we contemplate and consider the horrible crimes of people like Hitler or Stalin or some of the just really horrible things that we've seen in life, is there not a time when the judgment and the justice of God becomes a comfort for you?
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Where you recognize that he's going to figure it out in the end and he is just and he will meet out justice accurately.
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But I would suggest to all of us that we err on the side of leaving judgment in the hands of God. And let forgiveness be a driving principle in your life.
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Let forgiveness be what drives you. Now, I want to be clear. Being driven by a life of forgiveness does not mean that you can never turn a situation over to the government for the legal process of justice to take place.
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Sometimes that's what is the right thing for you to do. And certainly for those of you that are are sitting here kind of contemplating and thinking about well, how far do
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I accept abuse and forgive? The answer is none. If he's hitting you, run.
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Come and see somebody and talk with us. And I'm not talking about well, you know, he he hit me and then he said he was sorry and I really love him and you know, we'll get it.
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We'll get we're getting it squared and he promised to never do it again. No, come and talk with me. Come and talk with Kyle.
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Come and talk with Rob. Come and talk with Zach. And we want to help you. We can't help you if we don't know about it.
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And you need help even if it's once. So no, living a life of forgiveness doesn't look like just accepting physical abuse and just being like, well, you know,
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I'm just forgiving. I'm just doing what Christ said. No, he needs help too. And you're not helping him by staying in that situation.
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I hope that that final illustration that's not in my notes doesn't overcloud my injunction, my my encouragement to all of us to work out what it means to live a life of forgiveness because that's what
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I want us to walk out of here with. But my goodness, if there's something else going on, come and talk with us.
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Let us know. The third application is particular for you fathers who have daughters.
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I don't even for a second want anyone to to just close down because you're kind of like, well, I don't have any daughters or I'm not married or whatever.
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Just want you to listen in then. I want everybody to hear this. Fathers, fight for the dignity of your daughters.
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Fight for them. I'm not talking about strapping on a sword. I'm not talking about loading the shotgun.
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I'm not talking about shackling them so they never go out. I'm not talking about putting such crazy restraints on them that they can't breathe or live.
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I'm talking about fighting for them with your love. Fighting for them with your attention.
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Fighting for them with your affection. Fighting for them with your purity. I do not believe any man can be fighting for the dignity of their daughters while slumming it on the internet with pornography.
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You cannot say I'm protecting my daughters. You are putting them in harm's way by putting that junk in your mind and in front of you and on your computer at home so that they can find it later.
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You are not protecting them if you are engaged in that behavior.
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I'm also pretty sure that you cannot be a workaholic and be what your kids need from you.
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You cannot put job number one and be what your family needs.
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I'm confident also that you cannot leave the Bible on the shelf and leave all the spiritual teaching to mom and say you are a champion for your kids.
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Open the word with your kids. Let them see that a relationship with Jesus Christ is manly.
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That it's not feminine. It's not just something that ladies do. Let them see what it means to be a man after God's own heart.
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That means admitting to them when you fail. I'm not calling you to perfection. I'm not calling you to that you can do everything just perfect.
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As a matter of fact, you can't. So bow your knee before God. Let them catch you bowing your knee before God in humility and saying help me.
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I can't do this on my own. Get in the word and dig in for yourself.
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Fathers, our kids need our purity. They need our affection. They need our attention. They need our affirmation. I am shocked at how many adults, how many children arrive at adulthood and have not received affirmation from their father at all.
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Like I don't even know if my dad likes me. Never says I love you. Never says
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I ever did a good job with anything. Fathers, that is abuse.
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If your kids don't know that you delight in them just because you are their kids. Not because they scored a goal in soccer.
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Not because they got good grades or they did their homework on time. But what about just loving them because they're yours and they're a gift from God to you.
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How many of our kids are just learning performance? That's the only thing they're getting is boy when I do that dad likes me. Get a little carried away.
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Men, let's be men who protect our daughters with our kindness and with our love. This text is a serious mess and in the middle
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Jacob is being concerned more for his own skin than he ever is for the dignity of his own daughter.
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His sons are driven to an extreme response because dad chooses to sit this one out. The last application as we close is an understanding of how a mess like this drives us to the foot of the cross.
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We may not have quite the mess in our family that Jacob had but that's part of the beauty of a story like this that's recorded for us.
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If God can put up with this family, use them for his purposes and set in motion his plans through this rabble, he can use anyone.
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He can use this mess. He can use anyone. God is not endorsing the lives of these people saying live like this.
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I think it's funny when atheists like throw these types of passages at us and go see that like what what kind of junk is in your
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Bible? We have to agree with them. Yeah, there is a bunch of junk in our Bible because it's written. It's written about God working with real humans, of course.
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Of course, it's a mess. That's what I would expect to find in there. If God is genuinely engaged in this earth with fallen humanity, there's gonna be messes.
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Instead God is holding them as an example of the kinds of people who need grace, who need forgiveness, who need a way of salvation other than themselves.
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Rather than look at the story and say I've never raped anyone. I've never taken advantage of anyone. I've never tricked a village into circumcision so I could slaughter them during recovery.
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I'm so good. We should look at the story and recognize in humility that God only has sinful people to work with and he is still in the game because he's working with us.
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I love that. As a matter of fact, he loved us so much that he sent his son to die for sin -cursed people like you and me.
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And as we come to communion this morning, we remember how bad and awful sin really is. That's the point of the cross.
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What a mess. It's worthy of ultimate vengeance and ultimate wrath from God.
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Our sin it necessitates that God's wrath is poured out.
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But if you think about the wrath of God like like rain of flame falling on us, there is an umbrella that has been given to protect anyone who would come under that level of protection and his name is
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Jesus Christ. He absorbed, he took the wrath of the Father that you and I deserved.
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He made a way for us to come under the protection and shelter us from the righteous wrath of God.
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His name is Jesus and he took the wrath of the Father on himself that we deserved and I hear me carefully as I close.
01:00:25
I know that it's possible to zone out. You heard me say communion and your mind is already shifting gears, but hear me carefully.
01:00:31
No amount of sexual ethics, no amount of pacifism, no amount of religion, no amount of attending church, no amount of giving to the poor, no amount of giving to the church, no amount of service, no amount of walking little old ladies across the street can take care of our sin problem.
01:00:53
The only hope given to humanity is that we hitch a ride with Jesus. Like beggars with nothing to offer, we come to him in humility and say based on what you did on the cross, forgive me and take me with you.
01:01:06
That is our hope. If you believe Jesus died on the cross and have asked him to save you from your sins, then get up at any time during the next song and take the cracker and juice to remember the sacrifice of Jesus for us.
01:01:20
This very sacrifice that we remember is the one that removes the wrath, that removes the judgment, that removes the vengeance of God from us.
01:01:28
Let's pray. Father, I thank you for grace.
01:01:36
I am so unworthy of it. And as I read this text, it's very easy to be judgmental about the characters and the things that happen in this text.
01:01:43
And yet as I delve into my own heart, I see wickedness and evil that is equally deserving of your wrath, is equally deserving of your judgment.
01:01:53
And yet, Father, we believe. We believe in Jesus Christ, and I believe that his sacrifice takes away the penalty of my sins.
01:02:04
And so as we come to communion, I pray that we would genuinely remember him lifted high on the cross, dying for us, and yet that he did not remember remain dead, but that he rose again three days later.
01:02:17
And that we have hope of new life in him because of his sacrifice for us. Father, if there are those here that are struggling and are wrestling, and some here are just even cut to the quick regarding their sexuality.
01:02:28
Some here are cut to the quick just in regards to the way that they're raising their children. There's all different kinds of potential applications.
01:02:36
Father, I pray that you would help us to all bring those concerns to the foot of the cross now. And that if there needs to be ongoing conversations with me or Kyle or Rob or Zach, Father, that you would allow those conversations to happen.
01:02:48
That you would give people boldness to step out and trust that we're not going to come to them with judgment.
01:02:53
We are going to come with a reminder of the cross of Jesus Christ, and it's in his name that we pray.