Let's turn now in our Bibles to Genesis chapter 34. Genesis 34, this is on page 28 of your Pew Bibles. And as you arrive there, I invite you to stand out of respect for the reading of God's holy word. Now Dinah, the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the women of the land. And when Shechem, the son of Hamor, the Hibite, the prince of the land, saw her, he seized her and lay with her and humiliated her. And his soul was drawn to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob. He loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her. So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor saying, get me this girl for my wife. Now Jacob heard that he had defiled his daughter, Diana. But his sons were with his livestock in the field, so Jacob held his peace until they came. And Hamor, the father of Shechem, went out to Jacob to speak with him. The sons of Jacob had come in from the field as soon as they heard it. And the men were indignant and very angry because he had done an outrageous thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, for such a thing must not be done. But Hamor spoke with them, saying, The soul of my son Shechem longs for your daughter. Please give her to him to be his wife. Make marriages with us. Give your daughters to us and take our daughters for yourselves. You shall dwell with us and the land shall be open to you. Dwell and trade in it and get property in it. Shechem also said to her father and to Hamor, Her brothers, let me find favor in your eyes and whatever you say to me, I will give. Ask for me for as great a bride price and gift as you will and I will give whatever you say to me. Only give me the young woman to be my wife. The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully, because he had defiled their sister Dinah. 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. Only on this condition will we agree with you, that you will become as we are by every male among you being circumcised. 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. But if you will not listen to us and be circumcised, then we will take our daughter and we will be gone. Their words pleased Hamor and Hamor's son Shechem. And the young man did not delay to do the thing, because he delighted in Jacob's daughter. Now he was the most honored of all his father's house. 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. Let them dwell in the land and trade in it. For behold, the land is large enough for them. Let us take their daughters as wives and let us give them our daughters. 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. Will not their livestock, their property, and all their beasts be ours? Only let us agree with them, and they will dwell with us.' And all who went out of the gate and of the city listened to Hamor and his son Shechem, and every male was circumcised, all who went out of the gate of this city. On the third day, when they were sore, 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 the males. They killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword and took Dinah out. of Shechem's house and went away. The sons of Jacob came upon the slain and plundered the city because they had defiled their sister. They took their flocks and their herds, their donkeys and whatever was in the city and the field, all their wealth, all their little ones and their wives, all that was in their houses, they captured and plundered. Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, you have brought trouble to me. by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites. My numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household. But they said, should he treat our sister like a prostitute? The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God abides forever. Amen. You may be seated. Genesis chapter 34 is one of the darkest chapters in the Bible. There are no heroes here if you're looking for them. just tragedies and people who make tragedies even worse. And in fact, this chapter is so dark and so sensitive that I need to assure the parents in this room right off the bat that I am going to be judicious in the way I speak about this. I am going to speak about it from the scriptures. We're not going to skip over this chapter as some commentators might suggest that I would do. The reason why, it's here in the word of God. This is here for a reason. It's here for our instruction. Why does God show us scenes like this? I'll go a step further. We believe that this is real history. Why did God write this tragedy, this story into history? Because tragedies like this bring us to cry out for the justice that God alone gives. Man's solutions cannot heal the wounds caused by sin. Only God's justice restores what sin destroys. That's the main point of this text. Only God's justice restores what sin destroys. That's what we're left looking for. That's what we're left lingering for. And we need to see this unfold through three steps in the unfolding of this text. We need to see the outrage of sin. Then we need to see the failure of man. And finally, we need to see what we've been longing for so much by the end of this passage, the justice of God. the outrage of sin, the failure of men, and the justice of God. And certainly there is a profound outrage of sin in this text, and it all starts when Jacob's family settles near the city of Shechem. Now that's not where he was supposed to go, where was it? He was supposed to go to Bethel. But in this kind of halfway obedience, and this is the first cue that things are starting to go wrong, He falls short and he settles near this city of Shechem, and his only daughter, Dinah, goes out amongst the women of the land. Now, a young woman wandering alone amongst a pagan people, what could possibly go wrong there? She catches the eye of a powerful man, the prince of the city, Prince Shechem. He sees her. He wants her, he seizes her, he lies with her, and he humiliates her. And the language here in this passage is aggressive and it's one-sided, suggesting force and violation. When it's used elsewhere in the scriptures, it's used of something oppressive, overwhelming, a man using force to take what he wants. And we understand what this means with respect to Dinah and the Prince of Shechem, don't we? What could be worse? There is something worse. When news of this comes to Jacob and he hears of it, he holds his peace. Do you know what that means? He keeps it to himself. He's silent. The victim's father does not give his daughter a voice, but he keeps the matter within the family out of fear of what powerful men might do to him. He squashes it. He keeps it close. This awful, horrendous thing that's been done to his only daughter, Dinah. But scripture speaks out where this girl's father is silent, doesn't it? Look at verse seven. I want you to look at verse seven of chapter 34. The sons of Jacob had come in from the field as soon as they heard of it, and the men were indignant and very angry because he had done an outrageous thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, for such a thing must not be done. Who here is calling this an outrageous thing? Who here is saying that this must not be done? It's not Jacob. It's not even Jacob's sons, though they're properly outraged at it. It is the scriptures, the narrative, the narrator. It's Moses, inspired by the word of God, who is going out of his way to call this for what it is. It's an outrage. This is a wrong. It's a wicked thing. It should never be done. It's an evil. Scripture speaks up. It gives a voice to Dinah. It gives a voice to the wrong that's been done. And isn't this part of what we long for? This side of glory. We long for someone, anyone to see the evil that's been done to us. The violations that have happened to us, that have happened to those near to us. The things that have been done in our neighborhoods, the things that have been done in our churches. and to call evil for what it is, and to not stay silent or downplay its heinousness. It is an outrage and someone ought to say it. And doesn't it just heap tragedy upon tragedy when something horrible has been done and then everyone just says, shh, quiet, don't talk about it. See, when we call this kind of wickedness an outrage, when we call the violation of Dinah an outrage, and the similar things that have happened that happen every day an outrage, what we mean is this, that sin violates the image of God in others. It twists what is beautiful. the beauty of a young and pure daughter of Jacob like Dinah. And sin sees her and sin wants to rob what is beautiful in her and take that beauty for itself. It steals from others to satisfy, to feed its selfish desires. That's what sin does. It's an outrage. and it ought to grieve us. You see, Dinah's brothers have the right instinct here, and we're gonna come back and give them a hard time in a bit. But right off the bat, we need to see, they come in from the fields, they stop what they're doing, and they head home because this has caught their ear. Their father hadn't even spoken up about it, but they're saying, we gotta do something about this, this is wrong, this is an outrage. They've got the right instinct. Such things should never happen. Indeed, they're so outraged that they take sin seriously. Do we? Do we take sin seriously? There's a few immediate takeaways from this passage, and I'm just going to list a few to exhort the body here. The first is this, that we must be sober-minded. We've got to be sober-minded. The world is not safe. Now, I know that there are those who spend their every waking hour aware of that fact, and they fret of even going outdoors. And I'm not counseling that. But I'm also warning us against this approach that says, Such things would never happen here. They'd never happen in my home. They'd never happen in my church. They'd never happen in my city. What a horrible thing in Genesis chapter 34. I guess that's what there's awful things in biblical narrative and yet would never stop with this sober minded sense to say it happens every day behind closed doors. And I've heard of it happening in churches. The church must cultivate an approach that protects the vulnerable and promotes holiness. This is why we take serious attention to policies and protections for those who are the most vulnerable in our midst, because we care that these kinds of things would not even be named amongst us. And we need to have this kind of sober-mindedness when we think of our kids and where they go and where they're going out and how we train them and the things we teach them to do and the kind of protections we provide for them. Again, not this kind of sheltered, I'm never gonna go out my front doors, but a sober-minded, this world is sinful, this world is not safe. And we need to be cognizant of that fact and honest about it. It means something else. It means that we must not minimize or excuse sin, especially sexual sin, which uniquely damages and distorts. We cannot minimize it. We have to give it its full weight. And this means in part that we give it the seriousness of turning it over to the civil authorities, to the proper authorities, so that they would deal with it and deal with it quickly. We must not stay silent. Silence is not godliness. Not in this case. Speaking up, bringing attention to the outrage of abuse. That is the posture we must take as a church. And all of this is part and parcel of just leaning into the fact that sin demands justice. We long for justice, we need to pursue it, shouldn't we? And yet sinful people aren't very good at achieving justice, are we? That's the second thing we see in this text. The outrage of sin. Are you outraged? Well, then you long for a justice and yet you see that men fail, fail miserably. A failure of man is clear in this text, and there's two dominant failures. We've already seen one. One was just the silence of Jacob. He's supposed to be his daughter's protector. He's supposed to be the leader, and he's silent. But there's another. Negotiation without repentance. Negotiation without repentance. Shechem and his father, Hamor, come to Jacob to smooth the situation over. And it turns out that Shechem loves Dinah after violating her. Isn't it twisted in this world how you have someone who's so confused about what love and intimacy is that one minute they're taking advantage of this young woman, and then the next moment they're saying, oh, I love her, I wanna marry her. It's disturbing, and yet I've seen it more times than, in, in life than I care to admit. After violating Dinah, he believes proper amends can be made by marrying her. Name your bride price, whatever you want, Jacob. And then his father, Hamor, goes even further. Let's become one people. This little incident can become the happy occasion for bringing our clans together in one big, beautiful marriage. What's missing here? What's missing? Repentance. Repentance is missing. You see, sin is not a problem to negotiate. It is a violation of God's holiness. The world is full of powerful men and their wealthy parents who will trample over others and then try to manage the situation with money and resources. The world is full of people who will try to negotiate their way out of what they've done to others without ever coming out and owning the consequences for what they've done. Churches can fall into this, too. Churches can pander to this kind of approach. Seeking peace without holiness. Seeking amends without dealing with the consequences. There is only one way forward in the face of abuse, in the face of violation, in the face of that kind of sin. It's this repentance that fully acknowledges wrong and faces the consequences. There's no sidestepping that. Repentance that fully acknowledges wrong and faces the proper consequences. Negotiation without repentance. This is the first perverted approach to justice that we see offered in this text. But there's another, isn't there? Violence without righteousness. Violence without righteousness. Simeon and Levi's response is at first understandable. Someone ought to do something about this. There's a wrong that's been done here. Who's going to call it out? Who's going to deal with it? And they say, well, our dad's not doing anything. We're going to take matters into our own hand. But their response falls far short of biblical justice too. What do they do? What do Simeon and Levi do? They act in deceit. They lie. They twist. And in fact, notice how they do it. They do it using a sacred thing of God. They take Israel's most precious symbol, precious sacrament, the covenant sign of circumcision, and they use it as a weapon, as a trap. They take the holy things of God and they use it for violence and for vengeance. They convince the man of Shechem that if their people are going to join together as one family, they must first undergo the very delicate surgical procedure of circumcision. And then when all the men are immobilized by this most sensitive of procedures, just at the time they know they're going to be very sore and quite unable to move quickly, what do they do? They take their swords and they enter the city and they let loose their outrage by murdering and plundering the city in a crazed bloodbath. and their crying violated sister, Dinah, is hauled out of the city amidst a sea of blood. What did I tell you? This text is full of tragedies and people who commit them and people who make tragedies worse. They turn justice into vengeance and vengeance into genocide. You see, there's something we need to admit about sinful man, total depravity, the fact that all of us is poisoned by sin. It means that even our zeal for justice can be corrupted by sin. I'm not making this up. Look at Romans chapter 10, verse 2. It speaks of the people of the Jewish people at the time having a zeal for God. And yet what? What does Paul say? A zeal, but without knowledge. Do you know that you can have a zeal for God, a zeal for justice, a zeal for righteousness, and yet be completely misguided and corrupted in that zeal? True justice cannot be achieved by sinful means. Righteous ends do not justify wicked means. And if you're wondering if this is at all true today, if this is anywhere to be seen, just glance for 10 minutes at Twitter, 10 minutes at social media. And you will see thousands of people who call themselves Christians, but who have let their outrage against our culture's sins overshadow the righteous requirements of God's law. They're so angry at sin that they'll quote the Bible to justify their belligerent attacks on unbelievers. They will lie and deceive and twist and attack and use profanity. And then when someone calls them out for it, what do they say? Don't attack me, attack the unbelievers. What are you doing? They're our enemy. These are Simeons and Levi's who have it wrong. Do not follow them. This is not the way. Anger at sin is not the same as righteousness. The church must pursue justice God's way. Through what? Through truth, through holiness, and through righteous restraint. The way of Jacob leads to injustice. The way of Shechem and Hamor leads to injustice. the way of Simeon and Levi perverts justice. So what is the way? If human justice fails, I'm talking about both the soft justice of negotiation and the hard justice of violent rage, where do we turn? And this is exactly where our passage leaves us, isn't it? He calls out his sons, and you get the obvious sense that it's because, not because he has some profound problem with how they've done things, but because he's worried about his own reputation, and he's fearful about what people are gonna do to him. And he calls his sons, he says, look at what you've done, and what do his sons say? Should he treat our sister like a prostitute? And that's where the passage ends. With this question just hanging over the end of the text and it goes unanswered. No one answers it. No one speaks up. It's just silent. And it's the thing we're asking. We're saying, who's gonna actually deal with it? And who's gonna deal with it in the right way? Simeon and Levi, they had the right instinct, but they took matters into their own hands in such a way that they just brought more tragedy upon the situation. Who's going to do this? And who's going to deal with it? Who's going to speak up for Dinah? Who's going to care for the oppressed? Who's going to speak for the afflicted? Who's going to love them? Who's going to bring true justice to those who pervert it? Is anyone going to do something? There's no resolution in this chapter, is there? In this chapter. But scripture leaves us in this very moment longing for the time when a Redeemer will come to fix what is broken in and around us. At the end of this passage, with that question hanging over us, we're left with this, O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel. who mourns in lowly exile here until the Son of God appears. You see, Jeremiah 23, five spoke of one who would come. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. We need a righteous branch. We need one who will administer God's justice, not Jacob's justice, not Levi's justice, not Simeon's justice, not Shechem's justice, not our justice. We find true justice in Jesus Christ, the righteous judge and the compassionate savior. And doesn't this just come so beautifully together on the cross? The cross is where God shows us how seriously he takes sin. He, for the first time, treats sin for what it should be as an outrage. We fail to do that, but he gets it right. God treats sin as the outrage it really is. He who is perfectly holy cannot overlook sin, cannot keep silent about it. He must confront it. He will confront it with eternal punishment that it deserves. And he treats it as what it is, not just a violation of the image of man, but the very image of God. He treats sin as eternal rebellion against him and against his image bearers. And the cross is this dramatic statement. I have seen sin and I will not stay silent. And yet the cross is where God's tender mercy toward oppressed sinners is also on full display. You see, on the cross, God himself became the substitute to save us from what our sin has done to us. God laid the penalty that that sinners deserve not upon us, but upon Jesus upon the faithful substitute, upon himself. Cross is also a reminder that God will one day right every single wrong. Soon our Savior will come again to punish the unrepentant in perfect vengeance and to lift the head of the oppressed who have taken refuge in Him. Have you taken refuge in Him? Sinner that you are, there is refuge in the Savior. And as Tolkien once so beautifully said, on that day when Christ comes again, everything sad is going to come untrue. When will someone speak about this? When will someone acknowledge it? When will someone right this wrong? When we see Jesus come again, all of that is going to be fulfilled. Till then, what do we do? We speak up against injustice as God's people who bear his name. We of all people should speak against injustice. We of all people should trust that vengeance belongs to the Lord and not take that vengeance into our own hands improperly, but trust that the Lord will right wrongs in this life through his magistrate who bears the sword, but perfectly when he comes again, in perfect justice to right every wrong. You see, Christ is the judge Jacob never was. He is the better brother that Simeon and Levi should have been. And he is the righteous branch who will fully and finally deal with every injustice. Sinner, suffer. May that be a comfort to you as we wait for his return. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, We pray that Christ would come again and he would come quickly. We live in a very dark chapter in which people continue to cry out and yet there are few answers heard for those who have been violated. We pray that we would be a people who are very separated from that, that we are a people who will defend those who have been taken advantage of, who will speak up for them, who will love them like you do. And we pray, Lord, that we would represent you well, not by taking matters unduly into our own hands, but Lord, by trusting you, by trusting those that bear the sword in your stead, by trusting you ultimately, who alone brings perfect justice. Lord, we pray that we would trust you, that we would represent you, that we would love you. In Christ's name we pray, amen.