Well, I invite you to turn to page 28 in your Bibles. Well, not your Bibles, but in the black Bibles that are provided for you. And if you're using your own Bibles, to turn to Genesis chapter 34. As today we return in earnest to our series in Genesis that we had left for the summer as we looked at the Psalms this summer. Last week we did sort of a Genesis 1 through 33 overview. And that brings us right up to the edge here to chapter 34. And although the harshness of chapter 34 made for a great place to stop the series in the summer, it makes for a rather awkward place to start the series up again. I've recently been reading a lot of Flannery O'Connor short stories. If you haven't read this author, she was a southern woman, brilliant short story, storyteller. She's a master of the English language that always draws me, if someone can be witty with their words. If you've never read any of her stories though, she is, she can, Well, they start sounding like they're just gonna be these sweet Song of the South stories. Even their titles sound so sweet, and yet all of her stories have really dark undertones. Actually, not even very under. They're just dark. She tells very dark stories. Even her principal characters are are shocking in their ugliness, in their cruelty, even in just the ways that they think about others. And she was asked one time about this, and this is how she explains herself. She said, the novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him. And his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural. And he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it. But when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock. To the hard of hearing, you shout. To the almost blind, you draw large and startling figures. In other words, people who have been numbed to the ugliness of the human condition They sometimes need the soothing gentle sounds of a megaphone to get through to them. And although God is not a fiction short story writer, God is an amazing communicator. And if Flannery O'Connor had to assume that people did not see themselves the way that she saw them, then we can be certain that God also must assume that as well, that we don't always see things the way he does. And so when he communicates to us, often he uses a megaphone and dark and startling lines. This is one of those passages. We might be tempted to skip chapter 34 for more pleasant moments in the history of God's people, more pleasant pictures of God's grace. But to be tempted to do that, we would be tempted to miss how absolutely necessary salvation by grace is. And so with that, I invite you, if you're able, to stand with me for the reading of God's Word. Genesis chapter 34. 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 Hivite, 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 Dinah, 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 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. 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 her brothers, let me find favor in your eyes and whatever you say to me, I will give. Ask me for as great a bride price and gift as you will and I will give 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 then 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 of his city listened to Hamor and his son Shechem. And every male was circumcised, all who went out of the gate of his city. 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. Then 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 in the field, all their wealth, all their little ones and their wives, all that was in the houses they captured and plundered. Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land, the 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 and the flowers fade, and yet the Word of the Lord remains forever. Please be seated. Sadly, this passage is so full of negative pictures of sin and sin's consequences that it actually overflows the edges of the chapter. The sin of this chapter actually starts even before the chapter begins. Before we look at anything specifically, I do want to make one thing as clear as possible from the outset. There are no innocent parties in the whole passage. There is nobody innocent. in chapter 34. Now, with that said, I have to be very careful and explain to you that that in no way means that anyone was deserving of being sinned against. Sin does not excuse or justify sin. And so before we even go into the details, that's the first point of this passage. Sin never excuses or justifies sin. A sinful response to someone is never what God is calling for. A husband acts in an unloving way toward his wife. In essence, a husband sins against his wife. This is not a call for the wife to stop respecting her husband. A wife treats her husband in a less than respectful manner. This is not a call for the husband to stop loving his wife. A child sins. It is never a call for you to scream and berate and belittle your child. Sin never excuses or justifies sin. The only way that we can ever have that view that your sin justifies my sin is when I completely remove God from the relationship. The only way that I can say, what you've done has earned what I am doing, is when I have completely ignored my relationship with God and that all sin, as the psalmist said, as we read today, all sin is first and foremost a sin against God. God. It is first and foremost a breaking of my relationship with God. And so if I had that view of my sin, that it's not against you, it's against God, against you and you only, O Lord, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. Only when I have eliminated God from the picture will I justify my sin by your sin. Shechem does not deserve to be sinned against, although it soothes our fallen sense of justice. Dinah does not deserve to be sinned against, although we might desperately want to know what did she do wrong so that we can avoid this situation. Nobody deserves to be sinned against. The writer and teacher R.C. Sproul, Jr., R.C. Sproul's son, obviously, he gives helpful interpretation guidelines, especially when you approach Old Testament passages, especially stories like this in the Old Testament, as we try to understand, how does this apply to me? How am I supposed to understand a passage like this? R.C. Sproul, Jr. points out that in many Old Testament stories, you'll notice that there's a good guy and a bad guy in most of the stories. And his explanation of how to interpret scripture is simple. You're the bad guy. Find the one who's sinning in the passage and ask, how am I just like that guy? How do I do that? He says, now sometimes, God gets really complicated and he'll put more than one sinner in the passage. Well, what do we do then? Well, he says it's simple. You're each of them. You're all of them. Find all of the ways that people are sinning and ask, how do I act just that way myself? This passage is easy because there's no good guys. It's all bad. So you're each of them. Every one of the people in the passage, you get to say, how am I just like him? How am I just like her? So with these happy guidelines, let's jump right in. I said earlier that the sin of this passage actually begins before the passage. If you remember last week, as we came to the end of chapter 33, we come to Jacob, returning from Paddan Aram, from far off, outside of the Promised Land. God had appeared to him. He reminded him, I am the God of Bethel. I am the God who appeared to you in Bethel, in the Promised Land. Remember, at the staircase I appeared to you, at the ladder, I said to you, I promised to you, I am your God, I will be with you wherever you go, and I will bring you back. And when I bring you back here to Bethel, you will worship me. He is the same God who met Jacob face to face and wrestled with him and blessed him and promised to be with him. And so Jacob returns to the promised land, yes, but he stopped shy of Bethel. He didn't go all the way back to Bethel. Jacob settles in an area just outside of a city called Shechem. And he even stops there. And in the end of chapter 33, we're told that he even buys land there, not in Bethel, but near Shechem. Now, why did Jacob stop? Why didn't Jacob go all the way? We really don't know. Jacob stops there. He even builds an altar to God right there outside of Shechem. And so you might be thinking, well, what's the big deal? I mean, he goes into the land. Sure, he doesn't go all the way to Bethel, but come on. I mean, he comes back. And I mean, he's obedient to an extent. He might not be fully obedient, but he gets pretty close. Well, that is the big deal. That's the big deal. The best illustration I can come up with is an illustration that I've used with admittedly junior, senior high level, and it's, you know, how do I say this? It's kind of fifth to seventh grade boy language, but it gets the point across. And so, it's not nearly as crass as God's own word just was, so just bear with me. Suppose I bake for you a tray of brownies. We just had a newcomer's dessert at our house. We had brownies there. I didn't bake those. Everyone was grateful for that. But suppose I bake for you a tray of brownies, and just as you are about to enjoy one of my brownies, I tell you, now, I just want you to be aware that I did not use 100% brownie mix. I used about, I used a mix of about 75% brownie mix and 25% poop. Now enjoy. A show of hands, how many will now enjoy the brownies I have made for you? Really? None? Gosh, you guys are, you're little, you're kind of sticklers for rules. All right, well maybe, I'll tell you what, I understand that maybe that's a little too high of a ratio. I'll make a new tray and I'll drop it to 15%. You know, 85% brownie mix, 15% poop. Is that going to, will that satisfy your brownie cravings, your desire for whole browniness? What about 8%? What if I go 8, okay, 5, I'll go 5%. Two? One? I got to tell you, you're a little self-righteous in your browniness. You're kind of legalistic in your whole concept of desserts. No, I imagine if you're anything like me, when the brownies come out of the oven, You want to be able to say, brownie, brownie, brownie, hole in your gooeyness, the whole tray is full of your browniness, all brownie to you. You want 100% brownie, all uncontaminated, pure, perfect brownie. Now that's you and me, fallen men and women, and dessert. I mean, we're talking about dessert here. Imagine then, a holy God and his relationship with his people. A holy God who says, be holy like I am holy. We're not talking about dessert after a meal now, we're talking about how you relate to a holy God and do we approach him and say, how about 75% I follow you? Okay, I understand you want me to go this far, how about I just go this far? How about I just, I mean, I want to be obedient, but I mean, really? Come on. That's, I mean, you're getting a little legalistic, God. No, when God calls us to follow, He calls us to follow wholeheartedly. One of the difficulties in pointing out what Jacob has done here is that it's not really something he's done, it's something he hasn't done. This is what in church speak we call a sin of omission. There are sins of commission, sins that you commit. They're kind of easy to point out. If I steal $100 from you, I have done something. You can see what I have done. If I punch you in the nose on the way out of church today, you can see something. It's something I've actually done. Sins of omission are harder to see. It's something I was supposed to do, but I didn't. Something I was called to, but I stopped shy of. Sins of omission are very easy to deny. They're very easy to justify, because for anyone to even point out to you what you're not doing sounds rather legalistic. And you can just say, well, I don't have to do any of that. Jacob is satisfied with halfway obedience. And it leads to the opportunity for further sin. Now again, don't misunderstand. Sin always comes from the heart of the sinner. Always, always, always, sin comes out of the heart of the sinner. But Jacob's disobedience is at least fertile ground. for these hearts to produce further sin. And so in verse one, Dinah went out to see the women of the land. And as I said, nobody is innocent. Certainly, Dinah does not deserve what comes about. And do not misunderstand that. Dinah does not deserve what happens to her. But Dinah goes out alone looking for the women of the land. You have to understand that in a culture of that time, in wilderness type settings, no young woman, around 16 probably, no young woman ever left her home without a chaperone. It was not done. And so why Dinah left, whether it reflects Jacob's continued hard heart toward Leah, his first wife, and all of her children, or it reflects his continued passive nature as the husband and head of the household, Or it reflects a young woman who wants what she wants and just isn't interested in oversight. I think it is most likely a combination of all of these things. The attitudes of parents, of young adults, or of teenagers, or whatever you want to call them, the attitudes of parents toward this age group today is at the very best appalling. We Whether it's because you're you feel like you've done your time You know you put in all this work, and you know they're 16 and for goodness sake you're just done. You're tired you're You've had enough or maybe it's because you're just overwhelmed you're scared to death of how to interact with your with your young adult and Maybe it's because you just want to be their buddy and you want to be their friend, and I hate to break this to you, but they've got plenty of friends and they only have two parents. Or maybe it's because you're naive and you think, well, my child is a wonderfully mature follower of Jesus Christ and he will always choose the right path. For goodness sake, I've raised him, I've raised her better than that. There is no... Excuse. Our kids are going to make bad choices. I know this because I make bad choices. You make bad choices. And you're no kid anymore. And so certainly add to that childishness and immaturity And our kids are going to make bad decisions and sometimes we have to be there to say, no, I can't let you go do that. And sometimes we have to be there afterwards, embracing them, letting them feel the absolute unconditional love of their Father in heaven through their Father on earth. Who doesn't hug them with an, I told you so. Or doesn't greet them at the door with a, you've made your bed, now sleep in it. but receives them home, runs after them, embraces them, and says, Jesus loves you. Jesus will forgive you. I forgive you. I love you. I have loved you since the day you were born. That will never change, no matter what. No matter what you do, I love you anyways and always. Jacob's passivity in this passage is despicable. He has zero presence with his daughter. He has zero reaction when he learns that his daughter is raped and kidnapped. Sometimes we don't remember or realize that part of the story, but they don't see Dinah again until they storm the city and take her home. She was kidnapped. She was taken by force. Jacob has zero reaction to that. He has zero interaction when it comes to the dialogue of his daughter's future. And the only time he reacts is at the end, and it is a, what will the neighbors think of me, reaction. It seems like there's very little that needs to be said about Shechem's sin against Dinah. It is as blunt and straightforward as it can possibly be. In verse 2 it says that Shechem seizes her, he lays with her and he defiles her. What is shocking about it is that in verse 3 is a reversal, again in three parts, of Shechem. It says that he was drawn to her, loved her, and spoke tenderly to Dinah. There is no sense of the sin that he has committed. There is no sense of any sort of remorse or repentance over what he has done. And it sounds horrible, doesn't it? That Shechem would do this to this woman, to this young girl, to this 16 year old, and then turn around and think that with a few sweet words he's going to fix it all. To think that he can undo what he has just done to her just by changing his attitude. But we do this every day. We do this in our own relationships. We may be convinced that we are nothing like Shechem because we never let it get that far. And when we do, we recognize, man, I can't fix that. But every day, don't we have this approach to our sin? You treat your spouse poorly, and so you try to make up for it. You do something nice to try to balance it out. You yell at your children in frustration as they're leaving in the morning. And so you bake a plate of cookies for them when they get home. You want to balance it out. You want to make it right. You've been ignoring your duties at home, striving for that next promotion, working extra hours, ignoring what is happening to your family. And so you plan an extravagant vacation for them. You want to make it right. You want to balance it out. Is there anything wrong with vacations after an especially hard time of life in the season of your career? No, there's nothing wrong with vacation. Is there anything wrong with giving your children cookies when they come home from school? No, there's nothing wrong with cookies. Is there anything wrong with speaking kindly to your wife or to your husband? No, there's nothing wrong with any of those things. But doing those things in an effort to balance out what you've done already is sin. It is this idea that I can fix what I broke. Sure, I sinned in this way, but I can make up for that sin in this way. I can take care of it. I can fix it. I can make it better. All of these things without that step of, that was wrong. I have sinned against you. I can't change that. I can't fix it. I have no rewind. There's not enough paint in the world to cover over it. It will continue to bleed through. I'm not trying to fix it. I'm trying to say I'm sorry. Please forgive me. My actions aren't to fix it, it's because I want to show you that I am sorry, that I do love you, that I do treasure our relationship. This balance sheet approach to our sin, it actually affects us in two ways at least. First of all, it minimizes the impact that my sin has on our relationship. That I think I can sin against you, and then just make nice and all of that goes away, ignores the effect that my sin has on breaking our relationship. We have that approach to God at times. We've sinned, we've done something great, we've done something that just feels unfixable, and so what do we do? Well, I'm going to go to church three weeks in a row. I really got to make this right. It minimizes the impact sin has on our relationships. Second, it actually will cause me to sin more. This idea that you can pay for your sin, that you can make up for it, it won't cause you to sin less, it will actually cause you to sin more. Because you will think, as long as I am doing something nice, I am allowed to do something mean, and then I'll do something nice again. Because I think I can take care of this. I think I can handle this. I think I can make the balance sheet work. And so it will actually cause me to sin more because I think I've got it all under control. I mean, this is Shechem's view toward his sin, first with Dinah, he's just going to make kind talk, he's going to speak lovingly to her, and that will take care of it. And then even with his attitude toward her family, he thinks he can pay for it. You know, whatever you want. You name it. Name your price and I'll pay it. There's no remorse. There's no, this should not have happened. There's no repentance. There's no acknowledgment of what he has done is wrong. There's simply a, I can fix it. Name your price. I'll pay for it. I've mentioned already Jacob's passivity in the whole matter, but now we come to consider the brothers of Dinah, the sons of Jacob. They're so blinded by their sense of justice. that they're willing to sin in order to achieve it. Not just sin in any way, but they actually take the very sign of God's grace, the sign of God's covenant, circumcision itself, this sign that God had given to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, this sign that was a reminder of God's everlasting covenant that He said, I will bless the nations through your offspring. Your offspring will be a blessing to the nations. They take this very sign and are anything but a blessing to the nations. How far are you willing to go to restore your sense of justice? The husband screaming into the face of his wife, or the father screaming into the face of his daughter, I will be respected in this house if it's the last thing I do. How far are you willing to go? How much are you willing to sin in order to restore your sense of justice? The sons Simeon and Levi murder every man in the town. All of the sons come together and plunder the town. All in the name of justice. All in the name of restoring order. And again, Jacob's only concern, what will the neighbors think of me? Look what you have done to me. Do you realize this is still the balance sheet approach to sin? With Shechem we can understand it. He's an unbeliever. He doesn't have any concept of grace, of God's loving, of God's forgiveness, of God's calling us without any reason to call us other than His own unconditional love. And so certainly we can expect to see that Shechem would think that when I do something wrong, I have to make up for it. I have to balance the sheet. But what is the excuse of God's people? who rarely look inside and say, how do I make this right, but are always willing to look outside at the sins of the world and say, how do I make this right? How do I restore the balance of justice? Look what that evil person out there did. I have got to restore the balance. They've done evil. I'll do evil. I'll do evil farther. It's still this sense of, I can fix this. You've sinned against me. I can fix this. I'll sin against you. I've sinned against you. I can fix this. I'll be nice tomorrow. It's this idea that all of it is in my power. I can fix it either way. And so in a chapter that is so void of hope, that is so empty of grace, that has no mention of God anywhere in the whole chapter, where is the Gospel? You can't fix it. You can't fix it. You need a Savior. You can't fix it by ignoring it. You can't fix it by being nice and balancing it out. You can't fix it by taking matters into your own hands and giving sin, repaying evil with evil. You can't fix it. You need a rescuer. You need a deliverer. You can't make it right. You can't balance the books. to restore, to pay for, to forgive your sins. You need a Messiah who promises, I Myself will restore justice one day. I will come and judge the world. You need a Savior who will wash you, who will cleanse you, who will forgive you, You need to see that. You need to be able to say, I can't fix this. First in your relationship to God, I can't fix this. I can't make this right. And then in your relationships with each other, I can't fix it. What I've done can never be undone. in matters of sins of omission. What I haven't done, I can't go back and do. I can't fix it. I can only ask for forgiveness. I can only cry out with the psalmist, wash me. You wash me, God, and I will be clean. You cleanse me, God, and I'll be whiter than snow. You need a Savior. You need Jesus Christ who forgives all of our sins, who heals all of our diseases. Let's pray. Father, these passages always seem like they're so much about those bad people out there and yet to realize that they're all about your children. They're all about God's people and our own sin. God, forgive us for having a balance sheet approach to our own sin, thinking that when we sin against you or against each other, we can just make up for it and everything will be fine and we don't have to ask for forgiveness because we can fix it. Forgive us for having a balance sheet approach to each other's sin. And rather than confronting one another with love, we simply lash out at each other and sin. And we seek to balance those sheets as well. God, we need a Savior. We need one who has never, who has never obeyed in order to balance out his sin because he never sinned. And yet, he became sin for us. We need one who will pay the penalty for sin but who also promises that He will restore justice perfectly. God, we need Jesus, our Messiah. It's in His name that we pray. Amen. Let's stand and sing together, Jesus, Messiah. people in approaching your life this way is a balance.