Genesis #38 - Unlikely Grace #10 - "Deadly Choices and Deadly Consequences" (Genesis 33:18-34:31)

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and studying the lives of Isaac and the majority of the study of the life of Jacob. And this morning we come to Genesis chapter 33.
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So like I said, Genesis 33, page 29 in the Bibles we give away, and we're going to be reading from verse 18 through to verse 2 of chapter 34.
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Genesis chapter 33 from verse 18 to verse 2 of chapter 34.
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We're going to make it somewhat short, so we'll just read these verses. Let me warn you in advance, this will not be pretty reading.
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That's all I will say for now. I'll say more when we get to the sermon itself. But if you're able to do so, can
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I invite you to stand with me one more time? We do this at this point in our service when we read this text, because we want to show our respect for the
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Word of God, even with our physical posture. So if you're able to do so, please stand. Genesis chapter 33 beginning in verse 18.
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Brothers and sisters, these are God's very words to us this morning. After Jacob came from Paddan Aram, he arrived safely at Shechem in the land of Canaan and camped in front of the city.
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He purchased a section of the field where he had pitched his tent from the sons of Hamor, Shechem's father, for a hundred pieces of silver.
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And he set up an altar there and called it God, the God of Israel. Leah's daughter,
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Dinah, whom Leah bore to Jacob, went out to see some of the young women of the area.
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When Shechem, son of Hamor the Hevite, who was the region's chieftain, saw her, he took her and raped her.
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As I said, not easy reading this morning. But it is God's Word, and so we trust that He will give us understanding of it as we come to it.
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Allow me to pray, ask for the Spirit's help, which I so desperately need for this text this morning. I'll pray, and then we'll get to working
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God's Word. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, even when we come to difficult portions of your
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Word, we are still able to thank you for it. As we've already heard in our worship gathering this morning, all
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Scripture is breathed out by you and is profitable. Even the parts that at first glance may not seem all that profitable.
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As a father, we simply ask that your Spirit would be at work helping us to understand the things that are given to us in the
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Word of God this morning. I especially pray for the Spirit's help as I seek to teach this passage and to draw out the lessons that are here for us.
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Father, I just pray for the work of your Spirit and the one who speaks and your people who hear. Father, it's our habit to pray for other churches in our area and take a moment to pray for our friends at Heritage Christian Fellowship this morning.
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Thank you for all that you are doing there. Thank you for the time that myself and our deacons were able to spend there this weekend with their training event, helping people to just read and understand their
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Bibles better. Father, we pray that you would bring forth great fruit from that time.
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Pray for Pastor Paul as he preaches in their series in the book of Daniel. That's a tough text in front of him, the 70 weeks.
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Pray that you would give him understanding. Pray that you would give him clarity of thought and clarity of expression as he opens your
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Word for the good of your people. I pray that for him and I pray that for us even now as we come to your
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Word. Ask it in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. Please be seated.
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As we read these words, even the words we just read this morning, and I'm not sure if you read ahead in our study of Genesis this week.
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As we read these words, did you get the sense that we are about to step into something that is less than pretty?
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Let's just be honest, this is not your typical daily devotional reading. And as I was studying this passage this week,
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I started asking myself, why does a passage like this feel so difficult? And I think there are many reasons why, apart from the leading obvious.
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I think part of the struggle that we encounter with texts like this is that they don't really fit the very therapeutic lens that our culture views everything through.
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Do you know what I mean when I say that? Our culture generally views things through the lens of our own personal comfort and our own personal ease.
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And for the most part, our culture tries to disciple us into this idea that says, essentially, everything in life needs to work towards the end of my own personal comfort and ease.
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And unfortunately, as my dad used to say, when the saints of God gather for worship, the devil comes to church too.
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And with that reality comes the fact that even when we gather for worship or we spend time in God's Word on our own, the danger is that the lens of the culture around us could unconsciously become our own lens.
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But what does it look like to read the Bible through a therapeutic lens? Well, essentially, it's reading the Bible to meet my emotional needs.
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And so, quite frankly, I will read the parts of the Bible that either meet my need or help me to meet my emotional needs.
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As I mentioned in my opening prayer this weekend, myself and our deacons were at a training event designed to help people read their
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Bibles better. And it was a joy to hear such teaching. My friend Dave Cartwright, who works for a wonderful ministry where this is their job, training preachers to handle the
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Bible better. One of the things that I so appreciated about his ministry this weekend was that he was teaching us to study
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God's Word on its own terms, not necessarily ours. Okay, Kofi, where are you going with this?
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Well, very simply, I have to wonder for folks who unfortunately do read their Bibles with kind of a therapeutic lens, what do you do with a text like this?
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Pastor and Bible teacher, Dr. Ian Duguid, I've recommended his resource on the book of Genesis a number of times.
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Dr. Duguid, who's from the UK like myself, he gets to the heart of the issue pretty well,
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I think. He says this, quote, what on earth is this whole sorry episode of Dinah and the
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Shechemites doing in the Bible? Absolutely honesty. If you are reading the
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Scripture to find inspiring and uplifting stories, this chapter is not what you are looking for.
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Perhaps this is why, this is one of those passages that rarely, if ever, gets preached on.
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If I can pause, that's one of the reasons we practice expository preaching here at this church, because naturally left to me,
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I would skip this and not think twice. But if it's in God's Word, then we need to know it.
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And if God in his wisdom put it here, then as we're marching through Genesis, I don't get the option of skipping it.
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We come to it and we deal with it. Dr. Duguid goes on, it doesn't appear in children's storybook
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Bibles for obvious reasons. Meanwhile, if you happen to come across it as part of your
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Bible reading and your personal devotions, you will probably say, oh my goodness, and move on, hoping to find something easier to cope with.
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Can this really be part of the all Scripture that Paul described as being inspired by the
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Holy Spirit and useful to equip the man or woman of God for every good work? If so, what can there possibly be for us to learn from such a sordid affair?
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I love the way he ends this. He says, quote, this is not exactly a WWJD sort of passage.
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We all clear on what that acronym means? Remember the bad way back when? WWJD, what would
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Jesus do? No, he definitely wouldn't do this. So what do you do with a passage like this, if that's your frame of reference?
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Of course, the temptation can be either to just kind of skip it. It's really weird. It's not speaking to me. So, you know, moving right along, or you say, well, this is just part of the reason why
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I don't read the Bible. Stuff like this, no one needs to hear this. Let's just forget this even happened. But if Dr.
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Duguid is right, and this is part of the all Scripture that's inspired by God, and he is because it is.
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If it is, then this passage is, first of all, inspired. It's given to us by God. And since it's inspired,
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Paul says it's profitable. It might not be the easiest to understand, or we may not see the profit immediately.
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As our fathers in the faith said, some things in Scripture are clearer than others. And some people understand the teachings of Scripture more clearly than others.
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Not everything in the Bible is equally clear to understand or equally straightforward. This passage may very well be in what they would have called the others category.
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But while it might be, I think with a little work, we can actually get to not just the point of this rather head -scratching passage of the
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Bible. I think we can also come away with some important and valuable lessons as God's people.
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Well, last time we were in Genesis, we ended on a note of relief. We saw the reunion of Jacob and Esau, and it ended thankfully on a brotherly note rather than a bloody one.
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Well, as you can gather, this episode in the life of Jacob is not going to be quite so pleasant.
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But what do the events of Genesis chapter 34 have to teach ordinary saints like you and I?
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What does it have to teach us as people who are on our own journey of faith with the Lord? Well, that kind of leads me to my big idea for the morning.
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It's my habit, as you know, every week to kind of boil down the passage that we are looking at to one central idea.
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Here's my big idea for this week. Beloved, simply put, shortcuts in pursuing the will of God never lead to anything good.
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Shortcuts in pursuing the will of God never lead to anything good.
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That's why I've titled our message this morning, Deadly Choices and Deadly Consequences. Jacob makes one, on the surface, very simple choice, but that choice will end up having some very massive implications for him and his family and for, unfortunately, an entire city by the time he's done.
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And as we come to this passage, we're going to learn that shortcuts in pursuing the will of God never lead to anything good.
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To kind of demonstrate this from our passage this morning, this sermon is going to be a little bit different from my usual sermons.
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It's going to have a very narrative feel to it because the best way to just walk through this is to just walk through it.
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To give you some handholds, as it were, to help us through this, I want to consider seven chaotic steps in this deadly shortcut that Jacob takes.
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Seven chaotic steps and some lessons that we can learn along the way. Seven steps, as you can tell,
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I will have to summarize and move quickly at points because we have a lot of material to get through. So with that in mind, let's start with the first step in this journey.
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Let's begin with Jacob's intended destination. Jacob's intended destination in the end of chapter 33.
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By the time that we come to these verses, Jacob is a day away from his final destination.
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The place he's trying to get to is Bethel. If you simply look on a map, which some of your
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Bibles have them in the back. If you look on a map, where he's landed right now in Shechem is about a day's journey from where he's trying to get to, which is
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Bethel. Now this place Shechem that he chooses to land to, this isn't the first time we've heard of this place if you've been following us in our study of Genesis.
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Shechem played a big role in Abraham's story. It was the first place he stopped after leaving his family home back in chapter 12.
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So when God gave that command for him to leave his family and to leave his land and to leave his people and to go to land, he will show him the first place that Abraham stopped and sets up an altar is
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Shechem. So we've encountered this place before. Now it's important to note that Jacob doesn't settle in the city itself.
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It's very clear that he doesn't intend to be here long term, but already we hit a snag as we come to that.
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Because the question becomes, yes, Jacob might not be planning to stay here long term, but is
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Jacob's choice to stay here, is this him hedging his bets and not being fully obedient, which we all know
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Jacob is infinitely capable of, or is this reasonable given that they've been journeying for a while and they need somewhere to rest?
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Honestly, as I studied this passage this week, I realized the text doesn't really give us room to be dogmatic one way or another.
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We can have opinions on that and that's fine, but the text doesn't say explicitly one way or another.
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And I think likely there's room for a little bit of both here. Yes, they've been journeying for a while and it's reasonable to want to take a break, kind of recharge and refuel before making the final leg of the journey home.
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Especially if you remember Jacob's a rich man, has a lot of flocks, has a lot of people traveling with him. There's some wisdom in that.
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That being said though, Bethel is only a day away and it's very clear that this is the spot where he needs to be.
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And you do get the sense that there's a sense of foreboding almost, that something serious is going to happen here.
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The fact that we've had to slow down the story and focus here, this is more than just a random pit stop near a city somewhere.
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Now some people criticize Jacob's decision to buy a plot of land here, but I have to be honest, if you're going to criticize that decision, then you also have to criticize
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Abraham, because Abraham does the same thing. He buys a plot of land where he doesn't ultimately settle.
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And in fact, fast forward all the way to the book of Exodus, Joseph will come back to be buried on this plot of land.
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This is within the boundaries of the land that God had promised, and just like for Abraham, when he purchased that plot of land, purchase signals ownership.
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But this isn't all bad. We also have to take into account the fact that the text tells us Jacob builds, or the
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Hebrew term here better could be rebuilds, an altar here. Abraham had established an altar here and it would appear
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Jacob kind of rebuilds this altar, renovates it, if you will. And in the testimony to the events of the previous episode, he calls this altar, this altar, excuse me,
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God, the God of Israel. I don't think
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Jacob's intentions are all bad here. I mean, we can all agree this is not the final destination, but it seems like a good place to rest.
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Unfortunately though, this will end up becoming the scene of, here's our second step in this story, it's going to end up becoming the scene of a very horrific defilement.
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A very horrific defilement. So now we're in chapter 34.
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Verse one starts up pretty simply enough. Dinah, like young women do, decides to go see the sites.
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They're in this new area, they've been traveling for a while, probably hasn't seen a whole lot. So she decides to go see, the text says, some of the young women of the area.
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Now I want you to pay attention to the fact that Dinah, nowhere in this passage, as we march our way through this chapter, you won't see it.
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Nowhere in this passage is she condemned for this decision. There's not even a hint of the fact that she should be condemned for it.
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There is no victim blaming here. Whatever is about to happen to her is very clearly not her fault.
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And I say that because unfortunately Dinah's visit to Shechem leads to her being spotted by the son of the local chieftain.
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Shechem appears to be one of these independent city -states that were kind of around in the ancient
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Near East. Shechem's the son of the local chieftain, Hamel, who we'll see more from later.
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And in a display of depravity, Hamel, excuse me,
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Shechem, excuse me, rapes Dinah. And this is made even worse in the text, if we can even say that.
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Because look at verse two, there's a very subtle way that the text points out just how bad this is.
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So look at verse two. When Shechem, son of Hamel the high vice, who was the region's chieftain, saw her, he took her and raped her.
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Please note with me that there are three steps in that verse. So it says that one, he saw her, two, he took her, and three, he raped her.
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Seeing, taking, and raping. Now you think, okay Kofi, where are you going with this? Those three steps, seeing,
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I put it in my notes like this, seeing, taking, and partaking wrongly. Where have we seen that before in Genesis?
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If you need a little help, chapter three. In chapter three, there's an event where someone saw something they shouldn't have, took something they shouldn't have, and partook wrongly of something they shouldn't have.
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In case you are still wondering, Genesis 3 .6, the text says, the woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom.
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So she took some of its fruit, so she sees it, she takes some, and she ate it.
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She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. I don't think it's by accident that Moses, who is writing under the inspiration of the
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Spirit, I don't think that it's by accident that Moses pulls those three steps and says the same thing happens in this instance.
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Jacob's decision to pause his journey here had now exposed his family to a very clearly depraved culture which had now touched his very doorstep, if you will.
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Let's pause for a moment before we move on. Did Jacob bank on this happening? Do you think that this, in his wildest dreams, he thought this would be the result of his decision?
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I think absolutely not. Did Dinah deserve this?
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I know it's a ridiculous question to ask, but did Dinah deserve this? Actually, I would argue that of all the characters we're going to meet in this story, she's the one innocent.
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So no, she didn't deserve it. But Jacob, through his poor decision -making, had now exposed his daughter to one of the most harrowing things that any woman can experience.
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He might not have asked for it, but by his decisions he had now exposed his family to unfathomable—here's our third step—unfathomable disgrace.
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Unfathomable disgrace. As if the rape of this young woman was not bad enough, as if it was not bad enough, in what can only be described as unmatchable hubris, the rapist becomes infatuated with his victim.
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Do you get a sense that whatever is going on in this place called Shechem is not good?
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The culture here is rotten to the core. And he becomes so infatuated with her, the text says he wants to marry her.
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Verse 4, he tells his father, get me this girl as a wife.
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And we also pause in the end of verse 3, it says that after he's done this horrific thing, and she's no doubt terrified of him, that the text says he loved the young girl and spoke tenderly to her.
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This is horrific on multiple levels. I gave this section the label of disgrace because honestly, if you think about it, there's a lot of disgraceful behavior to go around here.
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First of all, the thing that I notice in verses 3 -7 is the fact that Jacob is silent in the face of the rape of his daughter.
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He does not say a single word about it. That's disgraceful. It's disgraceful because he's apparently more concerned with the reaction of his sons than in caring for his daughter, who is the victim of this sexual assault.
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It's also disgraceful because look at verse 7 with me, it's disgraceful to me because he abdicates responsibility to his son.
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So look at verse 7, Jacob's sons returned from the field, apparently they were shepherds like their father and so they're out in the field, it says that they returned from the field when they heard about the incident.
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They were deeply grieved and very angry for Shechem had committed an outrage against Israel by raping
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Jacob's daughter and such a thing should not be done. You know that parallel with Genesis 3 we just made a moment ago?
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The parallels keep on coming because think back to Genesis 3, after they eat of this thing and they are made aware of their nakedness and they try and hide, remember what happened?
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God went looking for them and then this very weird interchange takes place, Genesis 3, 8 through 13, then the man and his wife heard the sound of Yahweh God working, excuse me, walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze and they hid from Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.
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So Yahweh God called out to the man and said to him, where are you? And he said,
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I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid. Then he asked, who told you that you were naked?
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Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? The woman replied, the man, excuse me, replied, the woman you gave to be with me, she gave me some of the fruit of the tree and I ate.
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So Yahweh God asked the woman, what have you done? And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. Remember this pattern of blame shifting?
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It's not my fault, they did it. Jacob by his behavior is now acting in exactly the same way.
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Instead of taking charge of this situation, because think about this, what should have happened is that Jacob took charge of this situation.
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What should have happened was an unequivocal rebuke to Hamor, Shechem and the men of the land.
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But that's what should have happened. What should have happened was Jacob packed up everything and said, it's not worth it for me to be here.
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Let's go. But that's not what happens in the passage, is it? Instead, he entertains
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Hamor, the local chieftain and the dad of the rapist. And to make matters worse, he allows him to speak with alarming, fourth step, directness.
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He allows him to speak with alarming directness. As you read verses 8 through 12, the thing that becomes very apparent is that Hamor and Shechem, father and son, are more direct in their approach than Jacob and later his sons will be.
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For all the faults of these men, and I think there are many in my opinion, they just come out and say what they want to see happen as a result of this.
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Hamor recognizes the infatuation of his son and more importantly, he recognizes that it presents an opportunity for business.
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So look at chapter 34, verse 9. So he says, verse 9, intermarry with us.
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Give your daughters to us and take our daughters for yourselves. Live with us. The land is before you.
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Settle here, move about and acquire property in it. Remember, Jacob's a very rich man as he comes back home.
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Anybody can see it. He's conspicuously wealthy, if you will. And Hamor's goal, you can really summarize what
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Hamor wants here in one word, assimilation. He wants Jacob's property and wealth to become part of the, can we say the
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GDP of this city state? Hamor wants
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Jacob and his vast wealth to essentially form an alliance with the city. And think about this, this would be a move that doesn't exactly benefit
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Jacob. He doesn't need it, but it would clearly benefit the city of Shechem.
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So it's bad business for Jacob, but more than bad business, I don't think that's actually that important in the grand scheme of things.
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The text doesn't explicitly say it, but do you get the sense that there's more to it than just this financial opportunity?
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There's a real threat here because notice that he doesn't lead with the business side of things.
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Verse 9, intermarry with us. Give your daughters to us and take our daughters for yourselves.
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Hamor promotes is not just business, but Hey, become part of our people. Why would that be a problem in the context of Genesis?
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Let's be clear. It's not because intermarriage in and of itself was a sin. Certain groups,
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Israel will not be allowed to marry, but that law doesn't come into effect until the law of Moses comes in. And Romans five is very clear.
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Sin is not credited where there is no law. So it's not because intermarriage in and of itself is a sin.
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Well, can I put it to you that the issue here is not racial or ethnic in nature?
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No, the issue here is spiritual and moral. Let me say that again. The issue here is not racial or ethnic in nature.
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It's not that they're not of Jacob's clan. It's because there is a spiritual and moral problem to marrying the peoples of the land.
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Actually, we've seen this alluded to already in Genesis a couple of times. So Abraham knows he's not got long left and he wants a son for a wife, excuse me, for his son,
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Isaac. So what does he do? Remember Genesis 24 all the way back tells his servant, in fact, makes his servant swear, says, grab my thigh and swear to me that you will not take
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Genesis 24, three and four. You will not take a wife for my son from among the daughters of the Canaanites among whom
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I live, but we'll go to my land and my family to take a wife for my son, Isaac. Same thing with Rebecca, remember, and granted there's some question whether she legitimately means this, but remember
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Genesis 27, she says, listen, after her son marries Canaanite women, says, listen, I can't stand these
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Canaanite women. I don't want that for Jacob. Send him away. Let him go marry somewhere else. The text doesn't explicitly say there's a problem, but it's alluded to multiple times that there's a problem.
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You see the problem isn't so much that they're not part of this new Hebrew nation, this new
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Israelite nation. That's not really the issue. It's the morality of the people in question. We already know they don't have good morals because the son of the local chieftain just raped
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Jacob's daughter. These are not values you probably want your kids raised around, but more than that, any marriage to them would place the very covenant purposes of God into very dire question at that point.
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So yes, Hamel is kind of pragmatic and says, look, we can make this all work for all of us. Shechem on the other hand, you get the sense he's not the sharpest knife in the circus.
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Look at verse 11. Then Shechem said to Dinah's father and brothers, grant me this favor and I'll give you whatever you say.
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Demand of me a high compensation and gift. I will give you whatever you ask me.
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Just give me the girl to be my wife. I like her. I want her.
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I will have her. He even offers. Did you catch that in verse 17?
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He says a high compensation and gift. Those are two different words in the Hebrew. One of them was closer to what we would understand as a dowry or bride price.
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You gave that to the family because they're losing a daughter in that day and age, all of the work that she would do.
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So you compensate them. But there was also a gift you gave to your bride. And he says, basically
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I will pay Jacob. I'll pay you and I'll pay her. Name your price.
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Blank check. Just give me the girl. Again, they're more direct in their approach than Jacob and his sons will be.
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Both sets of parties, Hamel and Shechem are honest and direct about their intentions. But can I put it to you that they're just a little bit, not a whole lot, just a little bit naive.
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I'm sorry you raped his daughter. At the very least, this guy cannot be happy with you, even if he's not saying anything.
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Common sense would suggest that, I don't know if I really want to go talk to this man right now, but apparently they're pretty naive.
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And that naivety opens the door for Jacob's sons, excuse me, to act with some incredible deception.
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Some incredible deception. Once again, there's a contrast that sets up between the camp of Israel, as it were, and the men of Shechem.
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And the contrast couldn't be more stark. So look at verse 13. Jacob's sons, and we're not told explicitly which of the sons yet, but it says verse 13,
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Jacob's sons answered Shechem and his father Hamel deceitfully, because he had defiled their daughter
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Diana. We cannot do this thing, they said to them, verse 14. Giving our daughter to an uncircumcised man is a disgrace to us.
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We will agree with you only on this condition. If all your males are circumcised as we are, oh excuse me, if all your males are circumcised as we are, then we will give you our daughters, take your daughters for ourselves, live 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 go. Before we get to why they do this, there's a bigger problem.
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And to understand the problem, you need to kind of think back to what circumcision is. If you want to know more,
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I don't have time to get into all the detail. Way back in our study of Genesis in chapter 17, I did a whole message called
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Covenant Relationship where I deal with this in way more detail. So if you want more of those details about why circumcision and what place it holds in the story of the
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Bible, go back to that sermon. But now let me keep it real simple. Circumcision was given by God as a sign and a seal of God's covenant promise to Abraham.
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So every man who was born to his line was to have this very visible sign and seal of God's promise applied to them.
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This wasn't something to be trifled with or just kind of thrown around to members of the covenant of people who, excuse me, are not members of the covenant, not without faith in God's covenant promises.
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In case you don't see the problem, the very fact that these boys were willing to use and abuse this covenant sign for their own very devious ends tells me something very simple and at the same time very sad.
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You know what it tells me? It tells me that these boys have no regard for God and they have no regard for his ways.
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To them circumcision was just a thing we did and we can use it to our advantage as and when we need it.
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And I'd like to say that that's a very unusual thing that never happened ever again. That folks would never claim
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God's high and holy name and use that name and his word for their own ends. We're in church.
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You shouldn't lie in general, but there's one place you really shouldn't lie. It's in church. And let's just be honest.
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The history of the professing church is filled with people who have used God's word, this book, who have used his word and his name for their own benefit.
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Just look at human history. The Bible was used to justify slavery in this country and in various other places. The Bible has been used to justify all kinds of racism.
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It's been used as a pretext for all kinds of wars and conquest. It's been used for all kinds of illegitimate government. I come from the
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UK. We had this concept in our monarchy for a very long time, the divine right of kings. They didn't pull that from nowhere.
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They claimed they got it from the Bible. I think our culture overdoes the narrative that Christianity hates women, but can we at least be honest and say that there have been some who have used the
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Bible to justify their dislike of women? You know, sometimes unbelievers,
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I think, trump up charges against the church. Sometimes I think, you guys are doing too much. And sometimes, we have to be honest, we have literally handed them the pen to write the charges with.
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I would like to say I'm surprised by the acts of these young men, but the history of God's people tells me that God's people can misuse things that he has given.
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We can misuse his very word that comes from his mouth for less than legitimate ends.
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I would say more about that, but I could really get myself in trouble, so let's leave that alone for now. Let's get back to our text.
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These boys essentially pull a ruse. And the men of Shechem, they don't know any better.
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This wasn't exactly a practice that was done by everybody in the ancient Near East. They can only see the benefits here.
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And so, verses 18 through to 24, they have a conversation among themselves. They're like, look, these guys are peaceful towards us.
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You know, this is kind of weird, but hey, think of all the benefits. Let's just go ahead and do this.
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So painfully, in more ways than one, they agree.
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And as I said, I think there's a little naivety here, because in doing so, they set themselves up for unspeakable disaster.
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I'm just going to read this section in its entirety. I don't think it really needs that much explanation. So verse 25, on the third day, when they were still in pain, ouch, two of Jacob's sons,
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Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords, went into the unsuspecting city, and killed every male.
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They killed Hamor and his son Shechem with their swords, took Dinah from Shechem's house. So apparently Jacob has agreed to this marriage proposal, by the way, because now she's living in the house.
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Took Dinah from Shechem's house and went away. Jacob's sons, so now the rest of the boys turn up.
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Jacob's sons came to the slaughter and plundered the city because their sister had been defiled.
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They took their flocks, herds, donkeys, and whatever was in the city and in the field. They captured all their possessions, dependents, and wives, and plundered everything in the houses.
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First of all, killing all the men of Shechem basically guaranteed the end of this city. Because it doesn't specify, the
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Hebrew word is very general, and the CSB picks this up, it just says male. It doesn't even specify if children were involved.
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Killing all of the men of this town basically guaranteed Shechem's end as an independent city.
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And it's a disaster for multiple reasons. Yes, there is the loss of life, which is horrible all its own, but there's also the loss of safety for Jacob and his clan.
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Actually, he'll speak to this later, but what's the saying? Bad news goes around the world before good news puts its shoes on.
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Word will get around very quickly. These folks are bloodthirsty. There's also the loss of reputation because the men of Shechem had entered into an agreement.
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They held up their end of the deal to their kind of credit, only to meet such a grisly end at the of Jacob's own sons.
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Honestly, I think there's a whole conversation to be had about whether the rape of Dinah was the real reason why they did this.
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We can talk about that on Wednesday if we want. But for now, they have brought unparalleled disaster to the people of this city.
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And Jacob understands the gravity of the moment before him. But remember, he's already set a precedent with this.
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He abdicated responsibility to them in the first place. And his abdication of authority gives the boys kind of room to just play dumb about this.
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Our final scene this morning is one of denial. One of denial.
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Did you notice that pretty much throughout this entire narrative, Jacob has not said a word.
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His silence is pretty deafening at this point. Finally, he speaks in verse 30.
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Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, you have brought trouble on me, making me odious to the inhabitants of the land, the
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Canaanites and the Perizzites. We are few in number. If they unite against me and attack me, I and my household would be destroyed.
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First of all, Jacob, Jacob, boss, bossman, I think you've got bigger issues than the nations around you.
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I have to imagine if I were in the room in this one, I would say, Jacob, I think you might want to check your sons first. It's concerning to me that his only concern seems to be for himself, not for the massacre that just took place.
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No wonder the boys can hide their words in verse 31, hide behind their words, excuse me, verse 31. But they answered, should he treat our sister like a prostitute?
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Their argument is basically the law is the law. And right now the law is, it is what it is. They touched one of ours, we blew them off the map.
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And just like that, the story ends. Did you catch this, how brutal the ending is?
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There's no resolution. The story doesn't close. It's unfinished. All we see are two responses, pragmatic weakness from Jacob and hardheaded outrage from his sons.
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I don't know about you. You know, the feeling I had when I finished studying this passage this week, neither of those responses genuinely satisfy, do they?
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Neither of them. Okay. You killed the men of the city. And what? Your sister is still there. Jacob, you're worried about the destruction that will probably come on you from all these other people.
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Okay. But I would be a little more worried.
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Maybe it's just the way I'm wired, but I'd be a little worried if I had sons with that kind of raging temper living in my house.
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But there's a question that this text raises and it doesn't answer it because we, I think, like I said,
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I don't know, maybe if you agree, but for me, this felt very unsatisfied. The question that for me was left hanging over this text is this, how should sin be dealt with?
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Our passage doesn't answer the question. You can't ignore it like Jacob does. And you can't basically say, we're going to bare knuckle fight it like the boys do, but we don't get an answer from this passage, do we?
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We don't get an answer to the question of how should sin be dealt with.
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But can I put it to you that the Bible story thankfully does not end in Genesis chapter 34. It would be kind of depressing if it did.
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We don't get an answer to how sin should be dealt with from this passage, but we do from the rest of the
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Bible, don't we? You see, the ultimate way that sin can be dealt with is not through kind of ignoring it and thinking it's not happening.
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It's not by being angry about it. The only way that sin can be dealt with is through an atonement.
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Ever since the fall of man, the only way that sin gets dealt with is when sin gets dealt with.
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You know what this passage sets us up for? It sets us up for the arrival of a sacrifice, an arrival of a shedding of blood.
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See the shedding of the blood of the men of Shechem can't satisfy what's happened to Dinah. That's happened.
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She has to live with that. Just like any acts that we can do will never atone for the sins that we have committed.
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Think of any sin that you've committed, you still have to live with the consequences of that. The only way that that can be dealt with is not through the shedding of wicked men's blood, but through the shedding of righteous man's blood, a righteous man's blood.
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Ultimately, this passage prepares us for the gospel by making us realize that the only way that sin can be dealt with is through a substitutionary sacrifice.
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And I'll let you in on the end of the story. The end of the story,
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God sends his own son into the world. And as he sends his son into the world, his son lives the life of perfect, entire, and exact, and perpetual obedience to God's law that we couldn't live.
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He lives that life. That life accrues for him a perfect righteousness, the only human being who's ever done it.
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And that perfectly righteous man then goes to the cross and he suffers the penalty for our sins. He receives in his body, the
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Bible says, the wrath of God. First Peter 3 .18, he died so that he might bring us to God.
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That's how sin gets dealt with. And so, no, this passage doesn't answer that question because guess what?
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You and I can't answer that question in and of ourselves. Only God can.
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And in the person of Jesus, he has. And Heavenly Father, we thank you that even in the face of the deadly choices we make and the deadly consequences that follow,
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Father, we thank you that even in the midst of that, you have provided an answer for the problem of sin.
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That you sent your son and our Savior to live the life that we cannot live and to die on our behalf.
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And that through him, through him, the problem of sin can be dealt with.
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That the wrath of God is fully satisfied in him. Father, may passages like this awaken us to our need for the redemption that only
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Jesus can provide. And Father, may we as redeemed people find life in him.
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And Father, on the off chance that anybody in this room does not know you, I pray that as the word of God has been preached and the gospel has been proclaimed, that your spirit would use that to draw people to the
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Savior. We ask you in Jesus name and for his sake.