Revenge (Exposition of Genesis 34)

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The daughter of Jacob is ravaged by a pagan prince and her brothers in turn ravage his entire city in recompense. Sin is awful, but not hidden in scripture. Sermon Title: Revenge Sermon Text: Genesis 34 Preaching: Keith Foskey, Sovereign Grace Family Church

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If you would, please take out your Bibles.
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Let's turn in our Bibles to Genesis chapter 33.
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And we're going to look at verse 18.
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And then move right into chapter 34.
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And look at verses 1 to 31.
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And before we read, I want to make a few comments.
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Last week, we got to look at the beauty of reconciliation.
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When Jacob and Esau came back together after two decades of separation.
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And that was beautiful.
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Well, today we are going to look at something not so beautiful.
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We're going to go from the beauty of reconciliation to the ugliness of rape.
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And the act of following revenge.
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And it is a reminder to us that not every story has a happy ending.
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We began with the ravaging of a young maiden.
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And we will end with the plundering of an entire city.
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And while we may understand what motivates men to take this form of initiative.
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And enacting vengeance.
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We must conclude ultimately that in this story, there really are no heroes.
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In fact, I want to make a note.
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If you read commentaries, which obviously is something I do in preparation for messages.
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When you read commentaries, you'll notice sometimes that the commentary writers are very verbose.
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And they say a lot.
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There's two or three pages.
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I mean, just go to 1 Corinthians 13.
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There's a thousand commentary pages.
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But when you get to Genesis 34, not so much.
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In fact, A.W.
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Pink just skipped it.
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He's like, not even going to deal with this.
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Actually, what he did say, he said, we will allow the readers to turn to it themselves.
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That was his words.
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And H.C.
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Leopold, in his work, entitled Homiletical Suggestions.
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Which was basically words to pastors on how to preach texts.
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This is what he says.
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He says, quote, we may well wonder if any man who ever had proper discernment ever drew a text from this chapter.
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And he goes on to say, we cannot venture to offer any homiletical suggestions for its treatment.
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That's in a book about how to preach.
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So I want you to understand this before we read.
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One of the things that I'm doing today is I'm preaching on a text that is difficult.
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And it's difficult to read, it's difficult to hear, and it's difficult to preach.
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But one of the ways that I believe the Bible authenticates its own truthfulness is that it never, ever hides from us the sins of its heroes.
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The Bible presents our spiritual ancestors with all of their warts intact.
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We know of David's sin with Bathsheba.
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We know of Abraham's lying about Sarah being his sister.
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And we know the 12 sons of Israel will not only in this moment, but in several coming chapters, are going to demonstrate themselves to be not as heroic as maybe we might assume.
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But like I said, some of you, we may get to the point where they act, and you may give a hearty amen to their behavior.
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And I get it, because in one sense, a dreadful act occurs, and they respond as many of us may in our own hearts feel like is right.
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So we've got a lot to deal with in this chapter.
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A lot to think about.
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If you would stand, and we're going to begin in verse 18.
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As I said this last week, I think this connects to the story.
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It says, Genesis 33, 18, it says, And Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, on his way from Paddan Aram, and he camped in the city.
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Actually, it says he camped before the city.
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And from the sons of Hamor, Shechem's father, he bought for a hundred pieces of money the piece of land on which he pitched his tent.
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And there he erected an altar, and he called it El Elohe Israel.
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Chapter 34.
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Now Dinah, the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne 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.
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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.
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Now Jacob heard that he had defiled his daughter, Dinah, but his sons were with the livestock in the field.
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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.
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And the sons of Jacob had come in from the field as soon as they heard it.
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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.
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Please give her to him to be his wife.
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Make marriages with us, give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves.
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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.
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Shechem also said to her father and to her brothers, Let me find favor in your eyes.
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Whatever you say to me, I will give.
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Ask me for a great bride price and gift as you will, and I will give whatever you say to me.
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Only give me the young woman to be my wife.
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The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully because he had defiled their sister Dinah.
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They said to them, 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.
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Their words pleased 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 his father's house.
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So Hamor and his son Shechem came 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.
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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 the city listened to Hamor and his son Shechem, and every male was circumcised.
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All who went out of the gate of the city on the third day, when they were sore, just sort of pause there for a moment, two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords and came against the city while it felt secure, and killed all their 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.
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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, all their wives, all that was in the houses, they captured and plundered.
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Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, you have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites.
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My numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I will be destroyed, both I and my household.
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But they said, should our, excuse me, should he treat our sister like a prostitute? Father, I thank you for your word.
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And Lord, for even the most difficult of texts, I praise you for Lord.
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We know in this is your truth.
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And your word tells us that all of this is given for our instruction.
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Lord, let us learn from your word today.
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Keep me from error as I preach.
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Open the hearts of your people to hear and understand and believe.
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And Lord, for those who do not know you, though this message may come to them almost in a difficult way, Lord, may they see the wretchedness of sin and the beauty of the Savior.
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In Jesus name.
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Amen.
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It has been said that the line between justice and revenge is razor thin.
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In fact, Thayne Rosenbaum, who is a law professor, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, now this is not some small piece of literature.
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This is a well-known book, well-known chronicle rather.
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He writes this.
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The distinction between justice and vengeance is false.
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A call for justice is always a cry for revenge.
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Now that's Thayne Rosenbaum's opinion.
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But it is an opinion that often people will at least somewhat agree to.
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Others would say no, there is a definable difference between justice and revenge.
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Justice is defined as moral rightness based on the rule of fairness, ethics, equity, and law.
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While revenge is taking matters into our own hands.
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And justice is observed by the courts while revenge is enforced by the individual.
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But what if there are no courts? What if there is no police to call or judge to ask? It's a difficult question and really becomes somewhat of a moral question, a moral conundrum.
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In our academy, many of you know this, we have Sovereign Grace Academy and in our academy, one of the courses that we do over the two years of study is Christian ethics.
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And we talk about the ethic of violence.
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The ethic of self-protection and vengeance and how that relates to the concept of justice.
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You know, how does God describe justice to us in the Bible? An eye for an eye.
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And so there is a sense in which there is retributive justice in Scripture.
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And yet when we come to the New Testament, we are told if our neighbor slaps us on the right cheek, we're to turn to the left and give him the other cheek.
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And so it seems as if it's more complicated than simply if a man stabs me, I'm going to stab him back twice as hard.
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But that's often the way we are.
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And the thing is, when we begin to talk about the subjects of vengeance and justice, really that line does become somewhat blurred.
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And I'll give you a great example of what I mean.
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In 1984, Gary Plausch made national news when his son's karate teacher kidnapped him.
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Gary Plausch's son was a champion martial arts student and his karate teacher kidnapped him and abused him.
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Well, he was caught.
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And as he was caught, he was being led back through the terminal.
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And this is on television.
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The news cameras are all trained on this now disreputed karate teacher in handcuffs being walked down the terminal.
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And what people did not realize is that Gary Plausch, the father, was standing incognito, sunglasses, a hoodie and a hat.
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And he had his face buried in the pay phones.
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And as the cameras watch the karate teacher being brought by, Gary Plausch reaches into his boot, retrieves a handgun and on national television shoots and kills the man who had abused his son.
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No warning or anything.
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Now, this was obviously a planned act of vengeance.
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Gary Plausch did not spend one day in jail.
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He went before the judge.
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The judge gave him a seven year suspended sentence, 500 hours of community service.
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So somewhere, someone thought he did right.
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And that's the point, right? Is we understand that that line between justice and vengeance is sometimes a difficult line to govern and to manage.
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And any one of us, especially the fathers here, who have daughters, when we read this story, we get it.
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Don't we? And mothers too.
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I'm going to leave the mothers out of it.
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But we understand.
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So with that in mind, I'm not making excuses for sin.
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Don't take that as my point.
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My point is we understand what the desire of the sons of Jacob was.
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The last words of this chapter have rung in my ears all week.
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Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute? You know, that's the last words of the story.
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They get the last word because the father, why did you do this thing? Don't you know they're going to come and kill us? He should not have done that to our sister.
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We get it.
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So with that in mind, I want us to understand this is difficult.
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But in one sense, we get it.
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But I want to, before we read the text and begin going through the exposition, I do want to throw out one more thought.
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There is actually a bigger issue here than Dinah's mistreatment.
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What is it called? Dinah's rape.
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There's actually a bigger issue here.
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Because what is actually in danger is not just one young girl's virtue.
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But it's actually the threat that is coming against the promised seed.
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Because what we're going to see in this story is what the sons of, or what the people of the land want from Israel is not just one girl, but all their girls.
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It's not just the one that's been raped, but it's the intermarriage of all of them.
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That's the danger.
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And understand this.
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Every chapter that we have gone through, there has been a threat to the promised seed.
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Whether it was Abraham lying about his wife and her being taken into the house of Abimelech, or whether it was the son who God said, go and slay him on the mountain.
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It seems like every chapter we go to, there's something that the promise of God is being threatened.
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But God will not let His promise fail.
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And so what we're seeing here, as wretched as this story is, we are seeing God's faithfulness in ensuring the promise will not fail.
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Even when it is protected in puddles of blood.
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So there's more to this story than just justice for Dinah.
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Honestly, if it happened today, it would be hashtag justice for Dinah.
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That would be the whole story.
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And there's nothing wrong with saying justice for Dinah because that's important, but that's not the whole story.
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There's more to this than that.
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So if you would, Nate, pull up the outline.
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This is the outline.
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And I did my best MacArthur impression by giving you all D's this week.
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We have the decision to stay in Shechem, the dire consequence of Dinah's venturing, the discovery of Shechem's crime, the desire for Dinah's hand, the deal to unify under the sign of circumcision, which is going to be a very important part of the story, the men use the sign of the covenant as the weapon of war, which is in itself a great blasphemous sin, and then the dreadful taking of revenge and finally the dispute over the consequences.
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So let's quickly just walk through what we see here.
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The first thing is actually in chapter 33.
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It says, and Jacob came safely.
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That word means in peace.
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He came in peace to the city of Shechem.
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He didn't come to start any problems, and he certainly didn't come with war on his mind.
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That's why I think chapter 33 verse 18 connects to chapter 34, because it says when he came, he came in peace.
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He came safely to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, on his way from Paddan Aram, and he camped before the city.
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Interesting, that phrase, he camped before the city, is very similar to the phrase, he pitched his tent.
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In fact, that's what it says in the King James.
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He pitched his tent towards the city.
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And if that rings in your ears, it's somewhat familiar, it should, because if you go back to Genesis and the story of Lot, he pitched his tent towards the city as well.
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He pitched it towards Sodom.
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And think about what happened with Lot and Sodom.
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Not only was he taken captive and had to be rescued by Abraham, but he was also in the midst of everything that was going on with their terrible, sinful lifestyle.
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Well, the same thing is happening here with Jacob.
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Like his great grand cousin, I don't know if that's a thing, but his ancestor Lot, he is pitching his tent toward an evil city.
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Now, one of the things that Bruce Waltke says in his commentary about this passage, and I do think it's important, is he says that actually, he should have been going toward Bethel, because Bethel was where he had made the vow, and he was to come again and worship there.
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But he had stopped in this place.
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And notice, he didn't just stop for a night or two nights or three nights, but he bought land.
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He was intending to stay, and this was not where he was necessarily supposed to be.
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And isn't it oftentimes the case that we wind up in the worst of situations when we put ourselves where we ought not be? He erects an altar there.
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He calls it El Elohe Israel, which means God the God of Israel.
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So he is at least in this sense expressing his faith in the God who gave him the new name, which is Israel.
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So there is some positive in the fact that he's worshiping and he's creating an altar, but the negative is that he hasn't gone all the way.
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He hasn't gone where he should be.
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He stopped in this place.
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He's pitched his tent towards this pagan city, and now he's going to begin to deal with the consequences of that decision.
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And by the way, just throwing this out there.
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We always have to deal with the consequences of our sin, even if the sins are forgiven.
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Even if our sins are forgiven, that doesn't mean that they don't come with consequences.
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When we do things that that incur consequence just because we believe in Jesus, just like a guy on death row, guy on death row, if he believes in Jesus, he's still on death row.
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It doesn't.
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It might save his soul.
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It will save his soul, but it doesn't necessarily mean he gets let out.
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So sin has consequences, and where we put ourselves have consequences.
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This is kind of off the subject, but it's kind of funny.
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In my self-defense classes, inevitably, when I teach self-defense, somebody will say, hey, Mr.
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Foskey, if I'm in a dark alley somewhere and a guy jumps out, my first question, what are you doing in dark alleys? Why are you even there? How often do you go? And why? Well, it's sort of this, you know, why are you camping outside of Shechem? Why are you building your house here? All right.
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So I've said enough about that.
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Moving on to chapter 34 now.
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Oh, by the way, one more thing about 33.
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It goes ahead and mentions the two men who are going to become very important.
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Hamor, the son of Shechem.
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Those are the two men that are going to become very important in the next part of the story.
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So it's showing you the setup for what's about to happen.
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All right, so 34.
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Now, Dinah, the daughter of Leah.
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Remember, Leah was the first wife of Jacob, the wife that he didn't really want.
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But gave him six sons and a daughter.
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It says 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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Now, I have to stop here and I'm not going to stop at every verse, but this first part is so important because when it says she went out to see the women of the land.
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There are certain things about that that we can at least not read into it, but we can at least come to a few understandings about what's happening.
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First of all, Dinah is the only daughter mentioned.
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That doesn't mean it's the only daughter that they had, but she is the only daughter mentioned.
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So if at this point she's the only daughter that she had, just think about eleven boys.
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Benjamin's not born yet.
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So you got eleven boys and one girl.
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You imagine her desire to have interaction with other ladies.
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You can imagine the desire to be around girls rather than guys.
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But there's something else about the text that we have to think about.
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I thought about bringing my whiteboard in this morning, but I'll let you guys imagine it.
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Dinah is at an undisclosed age, but we can kind of conjecture how old she is.
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Dinah is less than 20 because he's only been gone a little over 20 years, right? But we could say there could be some years in there that we don't, you know, maybe this is a telescoping situation and a little older because I do think the boys might be a little older, right? So it could be that there's a few years here not mentioned.
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But we know he had seven years that he worked for Leah, seven years he worked for Rachel and six years is how he got his fortune.
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So that's 20 years.
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And he mentions that just a few chapters earlier.
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He gives us that breakdown.
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So we know 20.
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I'm thinking Dinah is teenager or less.
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I mean, as one commentator said, as low as 11.
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So she goes out to see the women of the land and she goes by herself.
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Now, I am in no way blaming her because she's the victim.
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But in one sense, there is there's something to be said for foolishness.
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So the Bible says foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, right? She's a child.
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And if she does a foolish thing, we understand it's not it's not.
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It's because she's a child that she does a foolish thing.
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So we're not again, not blaming the victim here, but she's going out as a young, at least a young teenager.
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And she goes into the land.
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And by the way, the term women of the land.
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Has been connected, and this is this is be careful.
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Don't you throw rocks at me because this is important.
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The term women of the land is connected in several places with the idea of prostitution.
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So some have conjectured that she was she was intrigued by the women who looked.
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Who adorn themselves in a way that was very flashy.
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And again, that's the way the prostitutes would have had that look.
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So she gets engaged with wanting to see the women of the land.
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And she goes.
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And here she is now with prostitutes.
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Probably doesn't even understand what that is.
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And along comes Shechem.
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And he sees this young.
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Virgin.
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And decides.
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That she is going to be.
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The object.
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Of his attack and the three phrases that are used here.
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It says when Shechem, the son of Hamor, the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her three phrases, three verbs.
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He seized her.
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He laid with her and he humiliated her.
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Some translations, I think the NIV just says he raped her.
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Which is true.
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So I'm not saying that that's a wrong interpretation.
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But it's not all that the text is saying.
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The text is using a threefold expression that he seized her, that the idea is taking her.
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She didn't want to go.
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And he lay with her.
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And then the next word.
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He humiliated her.
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That is the expression for forced sexual assault.
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This is not.
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Dinah's desire or will, no matter how foolish it may have been for her to leave her house unaccompanied without a chaperone, no matter how unseemly it may seem that she may have been intrigued by the women of the land who may or may not have been prostitutes.
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No matter what.
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This man has done evil.
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In fact, we know that because later when the brothers hear of it, they say such a thing is not to be done in Israel.
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But such a thing may have been common in Shechem.
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So.
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You get to verse five in the discovery of the crime.
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It says now Jacob heard 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.
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Now, immediately we see somewhat of a passivity in Jacob.
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Jacob does not act, which bothers me.
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Just be clear.
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You say, well, he's waiting for the brothers to get home.
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Well, even when the brothers get home, he doesn't act.
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He still engages in somewhat of a commercial exchange with the father, because that's what happens.
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If you notice here in verse six, it says Hamar, the father of Shechem, went to Jacob to speak with him.
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So this is a dad to dad conversation.
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And I want you to know the dad to dad conversation.
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Of the man who raised my daughter.
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Would not be pleasant.
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Or passive, but that's what we see.
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They basically have a business discussion, but the sons of Jacob, verse seven, they came in from the field as soon as they heard it and they were indignant, very angry because he had done an outrageous thing.
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By the way, notice this.
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Shechem is there.
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So is Hamar, but there's one thing absent.
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Dinah.
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If you read the text further, it seems as Dinah still in the home of Shechem.
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Verse 17 and verse 26, I believe, bear that out.
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Because both of them indicate having to go get her.
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So they come.
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Essentially having her back at the house and they come with no apologies.
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They don't come and say, look, my son has sinned against heaven and against you and we are begging your forgiveness.
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Now, as horrible as this is, we know that there could be an extension of forgiveness.
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But there's no desire for that.
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There's no sense in which they feel like there's any wrongdoing.
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There's no sense in which they have called out in repentance.
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No, she's still back at the house.
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He's here and he ain't here to say sorry.
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He's here to offer.
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Hey, what do I got to do to keep this thing going? Now, some people say, oh, well, he loved her.
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Well, slow down, because it does say in verse three, his soul was drawn to Dinah and he loved the young woman.
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He spoke tenderly to her.
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By the way, three threefold.
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First, he seized her, laid with her and humiliated her.
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But then he loved her and he spoke tenderly to her.
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And he was drawn to her.
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So was drawn to her.
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Somebody says, well, that's that's that's the positive, right? That's his repentance.
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Doesn't say he repented.
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And in fact, the word love there, it's interesting because in the word in the Greek language, the word love, there's several words for love.
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There's agape, there's philos, there's eros, and there's even a word which refers to the love of a parent to a child.
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I can't think what that word is right now.
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Was it? So there's different ways of using the word love.
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But in Hebrew, the word love is sort of flattened out.
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And so it can it can reference true agape sacrificing love.
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It could also refer to lust and that type of like passionate love.
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And so I tend to think he enjoyed what he got and wants to keep doing.
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You might say, well, you have a sure low opinion of this man.
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Well, yeah.
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I mean, the text doesn't give me a reason to have a good opinion.
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So, yeah, I'm not going to read into it any positivity here.
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I will say this, though.
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If you compare this to 2 Samuel 13, there's a major distinction in 2 Samuel 13.
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The daughter of David was raped by Amnon, who was the son of David.
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David's son raped his half sister Tamar.
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That's a terrible.
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That's a terrible story.
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But the interesting thing is after he raped her, he hated her.
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It says his soul hated her and he kicked her out of the room and like locked the door, bolted the door behind her.
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It's a much different scenario.
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Both are rape and both are horrible.
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But Shechem wants to continue the relationship.
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And Amnon was once he got what he wanted, it was over.
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Just an interesting parallel there or a juxtaposition, if you will.
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All right.
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So we're down to verse eight.
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They began to discuss what they got to do to get Dinah's hand.
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It says Hamor spoke with him, saying the soul of my son Shechem longs for your daughter.
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Please give her to me to be his wife.
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Make marriages with us.
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Give your daughters to us and take our daughters for yourselves.
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Again, a threat to the seed.
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And they say, tell us what you want.
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We'll do anything.
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Then we get to verse 13.
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The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully.
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That's an important Hebrew word there.
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The word deceitfully there, it brings in the concept of craftiness.
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It's not just lying, but it's lying sort of like you think of like a car salesman who's got that sort of ability to not only lie, but, but, you know, convincingly lie.
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And it says that's sort of the idea here.
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It says they answered Shechem and his father in a conniving way because he had defiled their sister Dinah.
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They said to him, 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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On this condition, we will agree with you that you become as we are.
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Every male among you must be circumcised.
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Now, this guy is willing to do this.
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He says, OK, OK, you've given us.
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You said what you wanted.
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You didn't want money.
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You don't want power.
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You don't want land.
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You want foreskin.
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OK, weird.
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But yeah, we'll do that.
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So.
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By the way, that's a biblical term.
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Don't get mad.
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David had a bag of foreskin.
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Don't send me an email.
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The point is, what is happening is a plot.
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These brothers have no intention of giving up their sister.
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They have no intention of marrying the women of the land.
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They have no intention at all.
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What they are doing is they are setting up a position where these men will be in a situation of weakness.
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And they're using.
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Here's the thing that they should strike your heart.
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They're using the sign of God's promise as a weapon of destruction.
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I'll tell you what it made me think about.
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Many of you may know this, but some of you don't.
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I love history, and I particularly church history and the last 500 years of church history are very important to me.
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Reformation and those things.
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But during the time of the Reformation, there was a group called the radicals.
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They were the Anabaptists.
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They were the first ones who made the argument that we shouldn't be baptizing infants, but we should be baptizing believers, professed believers.
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Many of them were killed for that.
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By the way, if anybody ever wonders why I'm so committed to believers baptism, one, it's biblical, and two, I'm not going to roll over on something my ancestors died for.
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That's it.
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And you know how they died? Many of them were taken out in boats and had stones tied to their necks, and they were drowned because, and I quote, and this wasn't just the Catholics, but I quote to you, against the water of baptism have they sinned, so with the waters they will be punished.
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So the early Credo Baptists, many of them were killed with the sign of God's promise, which is baptism.
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What a horrible thing.
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Stepping back now, now you get the idea what I'm trying to point out.
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These men are taking the sign of God's promise and they're using it as a tool of war.
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This is blasphemy.
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No matter how much you may agree with their desire for vengeance, this is blasphemy.
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Now, verse 18, their words pleased Hamor, and Hamor's son Shechem.
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They didn't know that they were being connived.
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They didn't know they were being tricked, and the young man did not delay to do the thing because he delighted in Jacob's daughter.
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He was sharpening the knife before the sentence was finished.
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But I want you to notice something here in this paragraph, because they go back to the city, and by the way, imagine you're a citizen of Shechem, and here comes king and prince, and says, alright guys, you all probably know what happened, and you know they were upset with us, but we figured it out.
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We got a business arrangement.
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Here's what we're going to do.
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We're going to all be circumcised, and every one of the guys said, say what? We're all going to be circumcised.
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Now, they knew what it was.
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Circumcision was not unique to the Jews.
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What made the Jewish circumcision unique was that it was given to every man at birth, where much of the circumcision that was done in Egypt and other places was done in a religious nature, oftentimes for priests and people like that.
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So what made the circumcision among the Jews distinct was that it was done for every man, and it was a sign of God's promise to every child, every male child.
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It wasn't just held among priests.
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So they knew what circumcision was.
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He gets back and says, okay, we're all going to be circumcised.
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Okay, why? This is the key, and I want you to notice this.
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Verse 22.
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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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Verse 23.
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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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Understand what Hamar's motivation is here.
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Hamar is the father.
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He doesn't care as much about his son having the wife of his lustful desires.
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He cares about the fact that he's about to inherit the property of a man who is obviously very wealthy.
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All of their livestock, all of their women, all of what they have is going to become ours.
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Keep that in mind later when they lose everything.
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Because what's motivating Hamar is the desire to plunder Israel.
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And God turns out on its head.
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And Hamar becomes the one who is plundered rather than the one who plunders.
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Verse 24.
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And all who went out of the gate of the city listened to Hamar and his son Shechem, and every male was circumcised.
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All who went out through the gate of the city.
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Alright, verse 25.
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We get to the part.
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On the third day, which apparently was when it really hurt.
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They knew that on the third day when they were sore.
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Two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers took their swords, came against the city while it felt secure and killed all the males.
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Now, two brothers.
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Only two.
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And remember what I said.
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Leah had six sons and one daughter.
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So these are the ones who are connected to Leah.
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Not just through their father, but through their father and their mother.
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These are the full brothers of Leah.
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But notice all of the brothers do not go.
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Only two.
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Simeon.
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And Levi.
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Go.
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Leah also had Reuben, Judah, Issachar and Zebulun.
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But only these two go.
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And people say, well, maybe the others were a little bit.
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Maybe they just were a little bit less inclined to this.
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We don't know, but I know this Reuben later does seem to have less inclination towards violence.
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You know, the whole story with Joseph.
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He's the one doesn't want Joseph to get killed, but he is not above sin because when his story with Bilhah comes along, you'll be like, OK, he's a sinner too.
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So don't think that they're righteous.
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And if you don't know what I'm talking about, we'll get there.
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He's a sinner.
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Judah also.
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The story with Tamar.
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That's going to be bad, too.
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Not Tamar.
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Who is it? Is it Tamar? Yeah, OK.
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A lot of names.
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I have a finite brain.
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So these guys aren't sinless, but the two that decide they're going to enact this action are Simeon and Levi.
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And here's the thing.
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They take a scorched earth approach.
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And if you're not familiar with that means they leave nothing behind.
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They go in, they kill every man, including Shechem and his father.
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And you've got to imagine Hamor and Shechem.
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Just what in the world's going on? Didn't we have an agreement? No, we had a farce.
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I have fooled you and you are now unable to protect yourself.
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And we're going to come in and we're going to level you and we're going to level your men and we're going to take your women and we're going to take your children.
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We're going to take your animals as plunder.
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Now, again, so much, so much.
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Oh, it's so hard sometimes.
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It's hard to think about these stories.
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But y'all, there's a lot of these in the Bible where these things happen.
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And often they were commanded by God.
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Again, going back to the ethics class I teach, one of the classes is all about these difficult things because we live in the 21st century.
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We live in a time where many of us have been, quite frankly, many of us have had our minds messed up with modern philosophy and things like that.
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And so we can never see where anything like this would ever be righteous or good.
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And yet God does command these things throughout the Old Testament.
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Go in and destroy every man, woman, children and animal.
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Leave nothing left.
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People say, well, God's not fair.
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If every one of us received fairness, we would all get this exact thing.
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That's the thing you don't understand.
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God is never unfair to bring justice against the center ever.
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And whatever tool he uses to bring justice against the center is his righteous will to do so.
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So I don't think that's fair.
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If you want a fair, go find yourself a Ferris wheel in a carousel because that's a fair.
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God deals in the realm of justice and mercy, not fairness, because fairness is not a legal term.
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Justice, guilt, mercy.
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Those are legal terms.
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And we are guilty.
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We deserve justice.
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God gives us mercy.
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Get there in a minute, but that's just before we get indignant.
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In one sense, these men are a tool of God and there is a protection of the seed happening here.
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As hard as it is to understand that there is something there is something that is right about this in the midst of the evil.
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And we'll see this later, too, because you remember what happens with Joseph and his brothers.
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His brothers sell them into slavery.
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They do evil.
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And what does God say later? What you meant for evil, God meant for good.
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So there is a good in the midst of the evil because God has a purpose.
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God has a decree.
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I watched a debate last night between Dr.
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James White and Tim Stratton on the subject of Molinism.
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And Molinism is I don't want to go there.
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Never mind.
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They were talking about the concept of God's righteousness in regard to evil.
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What's called theodicy.
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How do we justify the righteousness of God in the face of evil? And at the end, the answer at the end of the day is God decrees all things for his glory, even the evil acts of men.
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Because in the end, God is going to bring about his own glory and punishing the evil acts of men and glorifying in the grace upon those whom he has lavished his grace upon, otherwise known as the elect.
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Every man will glorify God, either as an object of his wrath or an object of his mercy.
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You will glorify God.
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You walk out here today, you're not saved.
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And you go to you go to your death in that condition, you will still glorify God.
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You will glorify God as an object of his wrath.
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I pray that God would make you an object of his mercy.
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But just be clear, you will glorify God.
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All right.
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Last thing.
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Verses 30 and 31.
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Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, you have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land.
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Notice what he doesn't say.
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He doesn't say you were wrong.
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For killing and bringing vengeance, he says you're wrong because now we're in trouble.
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You guys went out and made us an abomination.
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That's what the word to stink.
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You made us an abomination to the people of the land.
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We're now in trouble.
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You know, the brother said, we don't care.
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We will not have our sister treated as a prostitute.
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Now, I said earlier that was the last word.
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That's actually not the last word.
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If you want to see the last word, turn over to Genesis 49.
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Jacob does get another word in.
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And I think it's important just to point this out because at the end of their lives, Jacob is pronouncing the blessings on the brothers.
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And I want you to hear the blessing.
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Well, the words that Jacob pronounces over Simeon and Levi.
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Just hear this because it's important because it ties back to the story.
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This is Genesis 49 verse 5.
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Jacob does get the final word and this way says Genesis 49 verse 5.
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This is in the midst of all of his blessings.
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He says Simeon and Levi are brothers.
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Weapons of violence are their swords.
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Let my soul come not into their counsel.
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Oh my glory be not joined to their company or in their anger they killed men and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen.
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Cursed be their anger for it is fierce and their wrath for it is cruel.
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I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel.
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What I say earlier, sin has consequences, right? And while we may see what they did as a part of God's will and bringing about the protection of the promised seed, they still did something that in and of itself has consequences.
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And the consequences are given to them in the words of their father when he calls them violent men.
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Men in which he will take no counsel.
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Men who will be scattered.
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So however we may feel about the actions of these two, it is certain that their father never forgot this behavior.
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I've got two very violent sons.
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Men of war.
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So what do we glean from this? I actually want to give a word of...
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They're not here today, but the Deckers, I want to say something about Anna because this past week, you know, they were sick and had an opportunity to stop by, give them something, and Anna was there.
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And I just happened to mention the sermon because it was Tuesday or something.
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It was early in the week and I was still preparing my notes.
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And I said, I said, isn't this story terrible? You know, we're just talking about the text.
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And she goes, yeah.
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And I said, I'm really still struggling on the application.
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You know, where do we make application? And she just looked at me.
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She goes, sin is off.
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And I said, that's it.
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That's the application.
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I was thankful because, I mean, that was just such a simple thing.
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But it's so true.
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And the more I thought about that, I thought that's so true because what we're seeing here is the presence of sin, the awfulness of sin, and the consequences of that sin.
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Sin destroys families.
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Sin corrupts nations.
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Sin produces fear and hatred.
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Sin brings people into the pit of despair.
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And sin is everywhere.
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You understand what happened to Dinah? That happens every day.
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Every day in America, thousands of times a day, there are girls, little girls, who are being trafficked and raped.
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This is still happening today, all around.
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It's on every page of the newspaper.
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It's found on almost every page of your Bible.
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And its consequences are inescapable.
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And the sad reason is that people love it so.
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The reason why sin is so prominent is because people love it.
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We advertise using sin.
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We make our businesses thrive through sin.
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And if we don't understand that that is why Jesus came, we don't really understand the gospel because Jesus came to deal with the greatest enemy we have, sin and death.
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Stories like this remind us.
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That we, as a people, are desperate for a savior.
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None of us.
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Are without sin.
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I want to say to you, if you think that you are without sin, if you have a sense of self righteousness, you need to come down off that high horse and get down on those knees and pray to God for humility because your pride is going to eat you alive.
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And you might look at Shechem and Hamor and you might say, look at those evil men, or you might look at the two sons of Jacob and say, look at those violent men.
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But you know what the Bible says? The Bible says we all are by nature children of wrath and the same seed of wickedness that existed in Adolf Hitler exists in you.
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The same seed of sin that was in Hamor and Shechem resides in you.
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The same seed of violence that existed in Simeon and Levi exists in you.
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This is why many of you feel like they were right.
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Because we have that same seed of sin.
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You say, well, our sins aren't the same as theirs.
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Well, we are guilty nonetheless.
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And we need a savior just as much.
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I want to end with words of Jesus.
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My favorite, and I know I often say it's my favorite passage, and I have a thousand favorite passages.
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The whole Bible is my favorite.
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But this is legitimately one of the passages that strikes me to my heart, and I'll leave you with this.
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Two men went to the temple to pray.
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One was a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
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The Pharisee stood by himself and he prayed like this, God, I thank you that I'm not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or this tax collector.
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I fast twice a week.
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I give tithes of all that I get.
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But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift his eyes to heaven, but rather he beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
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And Jesus said, I tell you that it was that man and not the other who went home justified, beloved, whoever exalts himself will be humbled.
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And whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
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When we come to the Lord, we don't come with anything.
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We come to him for his righteousness, not bearing our own.
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So I encourage you today.
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Go to Jesus for his righteousness and stand not on your own.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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And I thank you for the reminder that sin is awful as it is.
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And Lord, while there are many other things we might could draw from this passage, Lord, that is an important reality for us all to consider.
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Sin is awful.
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I thank you for the people that you have in my life that remind me of those truths.
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And I pray that, Lord, we have all been reminded of that truth today.
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And as we come to the table, we are reminded of what Jesus did to take sin upon himself.
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He went to the cross and died a guilty man's death when he was innocent.
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When he was righteous, he died for the unrighteous.
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And Lord, I pray that today that those under the sound of my voice would call out to him and trust in his righteousness alone.
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In Christ's name, amen.