Picture Perfect - Genesis 34:1-13

[0:00] Let's dive in and see what Jacob's going to do today. Jacob has come from Haran. He's come across the Jabbok River. He's met Esau last week. They had that family reunion. Esau wanted to then be BFFs and do everything together, and Jacob recognized this is not going to be healthy for his family because the same issues that caused Jacob and Esau to not dwell together before, those same issues are still there. Esau is still Esau, and Jacob is still Jacob.

[0:28] So Esau heads back to Edom in the south, and then Jacob, we're going to find out, we found out last week, he went to Sukkoth. He built booths there or a house. He kind of settled down.

[0:41] We said he needed some space away from the family. He had been with mom and dad up until his 70s. He'd been with Laban up until his 90s, and then he comes and meets Esau, and he's just like, I need a break. I just need a little space. There's nothing wrong with a little space.

[0:54] And from there, he heads to Shechem. Shechem crosses over the Jordan River. Now he's in the promised land. He's back in the land that God had originally called him to.

[1:07] Being in the land is a good thing. Where he settled is not necessarily a bad thing, settling in Shechem. We see he built an altar there. He had his family worship, and that's okay. That's a good place to be at. That's not the issue. It's that he's going to settle down there and seem to be there for quite a while. 1 John 2, 16 is kind of like a theme verse for this section we're going to be going through here, whether it's this week or this weekend, next week. It says, For all that's in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. The lust of the flesh. And the word lust, you know, we think, oh dear, that's not a great word. Well, it's not because what it means is a desire for gratification now. I have a desire to be gratified now and in this moment. So if we rephrase that, for all that's in the world, the desire for gratification of the flesh, the desire for gratification of the eyes, and you could say even the pride of life, the desire for gratification in this life, it's not of the Father, but it's of the world. That's kind of our theme here as we go into this section of scripture. The desire, we're going to see this word desire come out quite a bit in the characters in today's section of scripture. The outline, if we get through the whole chapter, either way, that's our outline for today. Verses 1 through 7 is Dear Dinah, and we're going to see what happens to Jacob's only daughter, Dinah. Verses 8 through 12 is Messed Up Morals, and we'll look at what that is. These people have morals. We all have a sense of morality. It's just who defines that sense of morality. 13 through 19 is Deceitful Dudes.

[2:52] We're going to see Jacob's sons. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. 20 through 24, Happy Hamor. That's Shechem's dad, remember? Hamor. 25 through 29 is murder and mayhem. And then 30 through 31 is a rotten response at the very end of this chapter. So for Jacob, if you remember, he settles in Shechem, and there's no strife there.

[3:15] He has a moment to breathe, and he's like, this is a good place to be. And he assumed that because there was no strife, there's no problems, right? I don't see any issues. I have no strife. This is a good place to be. And that mindset is going to blind him to the pitfalls that Shechem will pose to his family. A lack of strife does not necessarily mean a lack of problems. For Jacob, this was a picture perfect situation, right? And that is the message. Title for today is picture perfect. It looked great.

[3:48] Everything looked great. Picture perfect family, right? It looked great. It was wonderful. Picture perfect house. It was picture perfect. And if I may take a little bit of creative license here, Jacob had moved his family to Shechem because of the great situation it would afford his family.

[4:09] It presented a fantastic opportunity with its top-notch schools, great after-school programs, and business potential. The future opportunities for his children and the education potential was great.

[4:23] After all, what could go wrong? It was a picture perfect setup. Shechem, after all, was technically in the land. It was free of strife, and Jacob was living his best life now. What could go wrong with this picture perfect setup? But behind that picture perfect family, it's a facade. It's just acting.

[4:52] Jacob, there's nothing wrong with being in Shechem. There's nothing wrong with your picture perfect family. My family is picture perfect. It's the perfect picture of my family, right? Nothing wrong with having a house with a white picket fence. I have a picket fence. It's not white. It's brown, and half of it's fallen down. But that's okay, you know? That's okay. There's nothing wrong with those things. The problem here is that Jacob assumed because he saw those things, we walk by faith, right? We do not walk by sight. That Jacob assumed that because everything looked good, it was good, right? It was good. He was in the land. He was in church. His kids were in youth group.

[5:36] Things were good. Things were really good for Jacob, or so he thought. Jacob is in Shechem. Do you remember what Shechem meant from last week? Shechem meant back or shoulder, like the upper portion of the back. And so Jacob was so recently seen God face to face, and we saw how he was walking with a new walk after seeing God face to face. But he was walking before the face of the Lord. I totally blanked on what the name of that place was, where he says he saw the Lord Peniel, for I seen the face of God, and my life is preserved. Jacob was so recently seen the face of God is now living on the backside of the promised land. He's living in Shechem, the shoulder, the back. He's in the promised land. Yeah, he is. And that's where we left him at the end there, verse 20 of chapter 33. There's some time that's going to pass between 33 and 34. By the time we get to 37, Joseph, we're told, is 17 years old. So we have a date stamp for an age stamp. Joseph is 17 at that point. If you remember in the birth order, as we saw the chapter where the girls were having all their kids in 31, they're having all these children. The birth order is Joseph's last of the 11 at the time, and Dinah's right before that. She's the last of Leah's children. She has six sons and one daughter, and her name means judged, right? That's like her mic drop. Seven, the number of perfection. She's like, hey, you want to judge me? Boom. God has judged me, and I'm a fruitful woman. You know, I'm a blessing to Jacob. I've got six sons and one daughter. Here she is. So at the end of that period of the seven years that he's worked for Leah and Rachel, seven years for Leah, or seven years for Rachel, he's forced to marry Leah, and then he marries Rachel and works seven more years. That's 14 years, 20 years with Laban. At the end of that, he's finished having children, and he's like, I want to go home, and then he's going to stay for six more years. So if Dinah was born at the end of the 14 years, then she's about what? Six when they leave Haran? Joseph's six, Dinah's seven, somewhere in there.

[7:55] Reuben would be 13, early teens, the oldest, right? Because they're having all these children overlapping. You had Leah having children, Rachel having children, the two maidservants having children. It was like baby competition for a while there. And so at this point, when they're in Haran, have left Haran, and he meets up with Esau, Dinah's seven, eight years old, maybe at that point.

[8:17] Joseph's six. By the time we get to 34 here, she's going out as a young woman, and she has the potential to be seduced as a young woman. So there's some years that have gone by. We're going to find out after this chapter, Jacob's going to go back home to Isaac. And then the next time we pick up and see him, he's dwelling in the land in Joseph's 17. So maybe there's a year between there, a year or two between 34 and the time, by the time we then pick up with the narrative with Joseph.

[8:47] So I think Dinah's probably 15 about this time, Joseph 14, maybe 15, 16. She's somewhere in there. That would put the boys, the oldest boys, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and then Judah. They were the first four, but we're going to see Levi and Simeon today. That puts Reuben about 23, maybe late 20, mid, early 20s. I mean, they're going to be called men in scripture in numbers that the men who are numbered for war are 20 and upwards. That doesn't mean that they're 20, but that's just would be consistent with scripture. So they're in late teens, early 20s at this point, the oldest boys.

[9:23] Scripture is going to refer to them as men. So Jacob, the point is, has been quite a while at Shechem. He's in the land, but he's dwelling here at Shechem. He's pitched his tent there. He bought a parcel, a field, and he's living outside of Shechem and enjoying all of the benefits that Shechem, he believes, is bringing to his family at this time. So having said that, we pick up in verse 1.

[9:45] And Dinah, the daughter of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. So she goes out to hang out with her buddies. The word see there means regard, look after, or aim at. It means to see it. I see something, but it's not just like, oh, there it is. I see it.

[10:05] But it's to look after it. It's to aim for it. It's to regard it. It's to intentionally look to it. So here's Dinah going out with regard to the daughters of the land. These are her peers.

[10:18] These are the people influencing her. These are the ones she's looking to. Jacob's decision to remain at Shechem has placed his impressionable daughter under the wrong influences and in the path, unfortunately, of the unscrupulous. So we have mixed company here. I'll be using very sanitized language.

[10:34] Today. And when Shechem, the son of Hamor, the Hivite, in Hivite, I love it. Hivite means villagers or belonging to a village. So Shechem, who grew up in a place where it took a village to raise a child, or so he thought. Shechem, the son of Hamor, the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her. He took her and lay with her and defiled her. Hamor, if you remember, means donkey. And you can all insert there the word for a male donkey. That's what his, that's who his dad is. And here he's the prince. And we're going to see he's a very, very spoiled man, young man. And so he goes out and he sees her. He saw. That same word there for saw, he saw her, is regard, took look after, to aim at.

[11:26] And so he says, I'm going after her. I like that girl. For Shechem, it was not love at first sight, was it? It was lust at first sight. It was desire, the desire to be fulfilled now. As it goes through this, we're going to see some really messed up morals. We live in a world of messed up morals. Morality is just the difference between understand, the understanding of the difference between right and wrong, right? I have morality. I know right from wrong. But who sets your standard of what's right and wrong? Everyone has a morality. Everyone has a morality of what they believe is right and what they believe is wrong. But your moral compass could be so skewed that your idea of right is opposed to God's idea of right. Your idea of wrong could be so far wrong.

[12:13] Or you could actually think that God's idea of right is wrong. And so for Shechem here, he sees her and he takes her. Proverbs 6, 27 through 29, and then verse 32 says, Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Hello? No, you can't, unless you have asbestos clothes. Can one go upon hot coals and his feet not be burned? So he that goes into his neighbor's wife, whoever touches her, shall not be innocent. But whoso commits adultery with a woman, lacks understanding. He that does it destroys his own soul. Destroys his own soul. And here is this man, young man, Shechem, who this is just normal for him. This is his morality. And so Dinah, she goes out into the world and has regard for the daughters of the land. And Shechem has regard for Dinah. For Dinah, what did that lead to? Dinah's regard for the daughters of the world, it led her out from God's people. She went out from God's people, Jacob's people, the man of the covenant, Israel, and his family. It placed her in harm's way, directly in harm's way. And it led to compromise and defilement.

[13:27] Now, I grew up in the 90s in the homeschool movement. And there was different ways, winds of doctrine that go through a lot of things. At that time, one of the winds of doctrine was what was called the patriarchal movement, which was essentially that as long as dad's still alive, however far up, he's kind of like has say over his children, even if they left the home. That's not scriptural. It's not biblical. One of the things also was they would use this scripture to be like, this is why girls should never have a job and why they should never leave the home until they are given in marriage to a man, because they will go out and this will happen to them. And it was like, oh my word, I don't want that to happen. Now, I've homeschooled my children and I did not teach them that. And praise God, you know, all of all the places that I've been in my past, I've been, I grew up in an assembly of God and I've gone to Baptist churches, community churches, and I'm very thankful for all of that because it's given me a perspective that now as I approach the word, I'm so thankful for God's word and the truth of God's word. I don't need man's system. That's why

[14:32] I'm really not interested in a man's system of theology. I'm interested in what God's system is. But for Dinah, it just wasn't the fact that she went out from home and had sleepover. That wasn't it.

[14:46] What we saw there was where she went out with the intent purposely. She went out to have regard to the daughters of the lion. She went out specifically to go to be a part of what they were doing. Shechem's regard for Dinah. No, he didn't have any regard for Dinah. Shechem's regard for his desires led him to see what he wanted, take what he wanted, and use what he wanted, and all at the expense of another. In verse three, and his soul clave unto Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the damsel and spake kindly unto her. Spake kindly means to speak to her heart.

[15:22] Dude is sweet talking her. All right. That's all it is. She's full of hooey. He says he loves her. Did he love her? What is love? Love is sacrificial. Love never seeks its own. He doesn't know what love is.

[15:37] It says he loved her and his soul claved to her. The world thinks love is all about fulfilling desire, doesn't it? 1 John 4, 9 says, in this was manifested the love of God toward us. Here's how God showed love.

[15:56] Because that God sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him. Sacrificially, God's love was to give. God's love was to sacrifice. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. He entered into our world and he died there. It wasn't for his own fulfillment.

[16:13] It wasn't for his own desires. God's love is not about accomplishing the soul's desire, right? He said, oh, his soul clave unto her. But God's love is about accomplishing the soul's deliverance.

[16:26] There's a difference. And as we said, love does not behave itself unseemly. It seeks not her own. That's what true love is. True love is that.

[16:38] If someone says they love us, and that relationship is just them being fulfilled at my expense, it's probably not love. Now, am I going to have to expend myself in a relationship that has love in it?

[16:52] Of course. I have to give myself, right? You have to, my wife and I, she has to give herself. But I can't take. And she can't take. It doesn't work that way, right?

[17:04] So true love gives and true love sacrifices. And Shechem in verse 4, spake unto his father Hamor, saying, Get me this damsel to wife. Ouch.

[17:17] Shechem was used to getting what he wanted. He was the prince of the land. He's named Shechem and they live in Shechem. Either his dad named him after the town, or they named the town after him, and his dad's ruling it.

[17:29] I mean, you know, and he's just like, Dad, get me what I want. He's used to getting what he wants. And unfortunately, his parents are used to being part of making that happen for him.

[17:40] He didn't try and do this on his own. He knows I can go to Dad. Dad's going to give me what I want. And Jacob now hears that he had defiled Dinah, his daughter.

[17:53] And then it tells us something very interesting. Now his sons were with the cattle in the field. So what? What's the matter where the boys are? And Jacob held his peace until they were come. Jacob held his peace, but holding his peace did nothing to lead towards peace.

[18:08] Jacob should take initiative here. Jacob should take responsibility in this situation. Remember, as we've gone through the history of Jacob, he has a tendency towards passivity, to just kind of sit back and let other people run his lives.

[18:22] The 70-year-old man having his mom tell him what to do. Okay? He's good with that. He just goes through with that. He's with Laban. Laban is just kind of running the show at the same time.

[18:32] He's good with that as well. His wives, when it comes to bearing children, he doesn't name one of them. He's not interested or involved. They're just kind of running the show. And here we see again, Jacob's passivity on full display.

[18:47] And it led to problems in the past, and unfortunately will lead to problems in the future. And we said this last week, that having a new nature means having new options, but the old options are still there, right?

[18:58] Having a new nature does not mean our old nature's gone. We have the down payment of our inheritance. We have the Holy Spirit, the earnest of our inheritance. But it didn't eradicate that old nature. So there are options that are still there.

[19:09] Now, when we were not in Christ, we had no option but to sin. The world has no option but to follow their desires. Ephesians 4, 22 through 24 says, that we, the church now, those of us in Christ, we have a new nature.

[19:23] We've been born again. We've been made new. That we're to put off concerning the former lifestyle, the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. Why do I have to put that off?

[19:34] Aren't I born again? Didn't Jesus give me a new heart? I'll take the stony heart of flesh out of you. I'll give you a heart of stone out of you and I'll give you a heart of flesh. That's not the flesh like the desires of the flesh, but like a soft heart.

[19:47] Didn't he give me a new heart? How come I have to then put off the old man and be renewed in the spirit of your mind and that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

[19:59] There's an intentionality that's there. The decision that's there now. Outside of Christ, we couldn't choose. All we could choose was sin. In Christ, we now have the opportunity to choose different options, right?

[20:12] And to go along with that. And Hamor, in verse six, the father of Shechem went out unto Jacob to commune with him. So Hamor's like, all right, son, your honor, I'll go make a deal.

[20:25] Hamor came to speak with who? Jacob. He came to speak unto Jacob. We're not gonna hear Jacob's voice until the last two verses of the chapter. Jacob's completely silent here.

[20:38] Verse seven, and the sons of Jacob came out of the field when they heard it, and the men were grieved. All right, so it's calling them men, not boys. So that's only those who qualify as men. So Joseph, we know, is gonna be 17 by the time we get to 37.

[20:53] 37. So you have Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and then Judah. Probably the only ones really who qualified as men. They were grieved, and they were wroth, because he had wrought folly.

[21:08] That means senseless or disgrace, a senseless disgrace. And absolutely, this is what it was. The man wanted to marry her. Wait, follow God's way.

[21:19] And it won't end in senseless disgrace, an absolute senseless disgrace that didn't need to happen. Because he had wrought folly in Israel and lying with Jacob's daughter, which thing ought not to be done.

[21:30] The sons of Jacob were 100% correct in their reasoning. I'm sorry. Their reasoning was spot on. But their response will not be, unfortunately. And so here these men come.

[21:42] Remember, Dinah is Leah's daughter. Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, they're all Leah's children. This is their blood sister. It's not like Dan or Joseph, who is their half-sister.

[21:55] This is their mother's daughter. This is their sister. Their little sister. 15 years old. We say that the morality of this world is on its head these days.

[22:12] There are three things that are happening here, kind of. There's morality, and then there's principles, and then there's an example that's taking place. And those three definitions, morals, morals are the ability to discern between right and wrong.

[22:25] Everybody has morals. Everybody has a standard by right and wrong. Principles, though, are the framework in which morals operate. What do I mean by that? So if I say that it's, it is wrong to take advantage of someone.

[22:42] It is wrong to disrespect them. It is wrong to defraud them. Okay? What is the framework of that? That means you don't steal. You don't go and take from someone else what you want.

[22:54] Son, when we're in the store, you cannot take what does not belong to you without purchasing it. That is the framework of the morality of not defrauding or taking advantage of someone else.

[23:06] But there's also that third part. See, Jacob's job was not just to teach his children good morals and principles, which he had done. They were absolutely right in their view of this. But it was his place also to teach them how to apply them.

[23:18] It was his place to lead in that. That's that example of how to correctly apply a moral framework. Remember that picture-perfect scenario? Right?

[23:29] Without the example, we don't know what this picture is for. Thanks, Dad, for painting this great picture for me. I'll hang it on my wall. How do I apply this to my life?

[23:40] What does this mean in my life? For Jacob, he had given his sons the principles and the morals, but not the example of how to use them.

[23:52] I'm going to quote Jane Austen. If you know who she is, she wrote many books back in the 1800s, and she wrote one, Pride and Prejudice. And she had a very interesting, a lot of insight into the human character and human nature.

[24:08] But there's one character, a Mr. Darcy, in Pride and Prejudice, who comes across extremely haughty and arrogant and like a jerk in the beginning of the book. I never read the book in the beginning of the movie.

[24:19] And I watch it with my wife, not by myself. Many times with my wife I've watched that movie. But he says in there at the end of the book when he's talking to the main character of the book, the girl that he eventually gets with, Elizabeth, he says to her after he's learned humility, he says, I've been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.

[24:46] As a child, I was taught what was right, morals. I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.

[24:57] He said, I had all the tools, but I had nobody to show me how to use these things. And here's an opportunity where Jacob should have been the one leading and showing his boys how to use these things.

[25:08] And unfortunately, we see his passivity. Just as we saw in Ephesians, we have options in Christ. We have a lot of options we can take advantage of. We have all of heaven and its power and its authority at our disposal.

[25:23] But how often do we just kind of read the principles and the morals and go, that's interesting. And I don't put them into practice in my life. And there's others that are watching, not just my children. Children could be your friends, could be your siblings.

[25:36] You know, Paul told Timothy, let no man despise your youth, but be thou an example. It doesn't matter your age, the example that we're supposed to be. Verse seven, and Hamor communed with them.

[25:48] So Hamor is now here. The boys are upset. The men, Jacob's just kind of sitting back and Hamor realizes who's really calling the shots here. And he communed with them saying, hey, look it, the soul of my son, Shechem, longs for your daughter.

[26:02] I pray you, give her him to wife. The word there, soul, can be interpreted or can mean the heart. The heart of my son longs for your daughter.

[26:14] He's just trying to follow his heart. Give him what he wants. Hamor was enabling his son to follow his heart. What's wrong with following the heart?

[26:25] Aren't we supposed to follow the heart? Right? The scripture has a different idea of what the heart is. Scripture doesn't say it's something that it should be followed. You know, the heart wants what it wants.

[26:36] What does that mean? The heart is only, the heart's only ability is desire. Right? The heart desires what it desires. Okay? So if we follow the heart, we follow our desires.

[26:49] The heart is meant to be led, not followed. I lead my heart and then I lead it into the desires, the correct desires. And then, oh, I can desire that. Right? Jeremiah 17, 9 says that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

[27:04] Who can know it? You know? Oh, man, brother, you got a sweet heart. No, we've got a deceitful and desperately wicked heart. Now, we have that sweet heart as the heart, the new heart we have in Christ.

[27:16] Right? Jesus said about our heart, Matthew 15, 18 to 19, but those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart. Talking to the Pharisees about, hey, eating something isn't going to defile a man, but what defiles a man is what's spoken from his mouth.

[27:30] For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and blasphemies. We have a culture today that's training our children and us to follow our hearts.

[27:44] The Disney movie, Coco, in 2017, there's a line and a song in there and the song is terrible. If you read it, it says, the rest of the world may follow the rules, but I must follow my heart.

[27:55] Right? Sounds good as you're singing along with it, but they think, wait a minute, if I line that up against scripture and put that into practice, hmm. So the world tells us follow our hearts. They don't hold up in front of us follow murder, evil thoughts, adultery, and fornication.

[28:10] They don't say that. No. They hold up a pretty picture with fun music and songs and they say, look, and if you follow your heart, you'll be the hero. You'll get what you want and it'll end in happily ever after.

[28:21] Right? Here's Shechem following his heart. This was his desire. Right? Man, I want to follow my heart. So they frame it in what? They say, let's look at follow your heart to help people.

[28:33] Yeah, I want to help people. I really do. Follow that desire. Is it wrong to follow a desire to help someone? No. Is it wrong to have a desire to be in a relationship, to be married, to have someone to love?

[28:44] No, that's not wrong. What's wrong is, the premise is, you do that because that's what the desire is. So the problem is, when the desire then goes, and takes a turn, I've been trained to follow my desires.

[28:59] Man, I really, I really like that guy. I really like that girl. You know, I'd like to marry them. Well, you know, I love them, so what does it matter if we're married or not?

[29:10] It's love. It's desire, you know? Oh, wait, in this world, that dude loves that dude. What's wrong with that? He's just following his heart.

[29:22] He's just been taught to follow his desire. The heart is meant to be led, not followed. In Proverbs 23, 19, Solomon says, and probably heard this from his dad, from David, hear thou my son and be wise and do what?

[29:36] Follow your heart in the way. Follow that heart. Guide your heart. Guide your heart, son. Don't let your desires lead you. Lead your desires. Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path.

[29:53] What do I do with my heart? Man, I anchor that sucker in the Lord. I trust in the Lord. I take my heart and I put it towards the Lord. Scripture also tells us that where our treasure is, there will our heart be also.

[30:12] Right? So, I choose my treasure to be here. I anchor my treasure in the Lord. I choose that and my desires are brought along with that. I choose to anchor my desires in my wife.

[30:24] Right? That's where my treasure is. And then that's where the desire then is. I don't let my desire, my heart, decide because the heart wants what it wants. So, I have to tell my heart, this is what you want.

[30:38] You want this. Right? We do that by the options God gives us with the new nature. If we awaken appetites of the flesh and desires of the flesh, we can't turn that off.

[30:49] I can't just go, oops, don't want that anymore. Right? That now becomes something I hunger for. That desire wants to be fulfilled. Verse 9.

[31:02] Hamor continues on. His premise of why Jacob should give his son or his daughter to his son is completely screwed up.

[31:13] And then he says, and I've got more good news for you, Jacob. We can make marriages. You with us, us with you and give your daughters unto us and take our daughters unto you.

[31:24] Does that sound like marriage? Give and take. I'm going to take your daughter and you can take mine. It's going to be great. This is going to be awesome. In Genesis chapter 3, the curse that was put upon the serpent.

[31:38] The Lord said to the serpent, because you've done this, because you've led my people into sin, you are cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field. Upon your belly you shall go and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.

[31:50] And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed and it shall bruise your head and thou shalt bruise his heel. Satan hates you ladies. He hates women because it's through women, through woman, that the seed would come, that deliverance would come.

[32:09] The heart of fallen man always leads men to view women as a commodity. Always. And here you see that with Hamor. Hey, we'll just trade. You trade some women, I'll trade some women and we can live together.

[32:21] Right? The heart of fallen man will degrade women. It will erase them as we see happening today. What's the one person we've not heard from yet?

[32:36] Who haven't we heard from? Okay, we have Jacob here, we hear from him at the end. By the time we get to the end of this chapter, nobody's ever asked Dinah what she thinks. Nobody's ever talked to her. Nobody's ever said, hey, Dinah, how do you feel about this?

[32:49] She's erased. She's irrelevant. It doesn't matter. Verse 10, And you shall dwell with us. Jacob, I got a great deal. And the land shall be before you.

[32:59] Dwell and trade you therein and get you possessions therein. Jacob, I'm going to give you the promised land. Well, Jacob's already got the promised land. Why does he need him to give that? God's already promised it.

[33:10] Isaac, when he blessed Jacob before he left for Haran, gave him Abraham's promise. And then when he comes back and says to Esau, if you remember from last week, he said, man, take of my blessing because I have enough.

[33:21] I've got everything already. I don't need more. I already have the blessing. And you shall dwell in the land.

[33:32] And Shechem said unto her father and unto her brethren. So Shechem now speaks up and says, let me find grace in your eyes and whatever you shall say unto me, I will give. Look at whatever I need to do to buy your favor.

[33:44] I'm going to do it. Well, what did we say last week? Right? Love and grace cannot be bought. You can't. If you earn grace, it's not grace. Right? If I have to buy your love, it's not love because love is freely given.

[34:00] And whether Hamor and Shechem are genuine or not, I don't know. But they know exactly what to say to Jacob. Right? They know how to use the spiritual talk. Oh, grace. And, you know, let me find grace in your eyes and whatever you want me to do.

[34:14] You know, I need to be a Christian? Oh, sure. Sign me up for that. All right. You know, you can't marry me because I'm not a Christian? No problem. I'll go to church. Sure. And Shechem says in verse 12, Ask me never so much dowry and gift, and I will give according as you shall say unto me, but give me the damsel to wife.

[34:35] Listen, guys, a broken relationship cannot be bought out. He can't fix this by buying his way out of this. Do you see Shechem ever say, I was, man, I was wrong.

[34:47] I'm sorry. That was, I shouldn't have done that. That was way out of line. Never once. This is normal for him. This is, this is how you operate. And so he's like, all right, right, if there's a problem, we can, we can patch it up.

[35:00] I mean, I'll buy my way out of this. I'll gain back your favor. Proverbs 13, 12 says, that hope deferred makes the heart sick.

[35:11] But when the desire comes, it's a tree of life. Shechem's like, I desire this. But desire is a master that can never be pleased. In the scripture there, we think of our hope when it comes.

[35:23] Man, our hope deferred makes the heart sick. And man, sometimes you're heart sick for home. You want Jesus to come. You want to go to heaven. You want to get out of here. But when that hope comes, it's a tree of life that will last for eternity.

[35:36] But in this world, it's not so. You know, we can rephrase this with a much more modern translation and say that when Amazon takes, when Amazon's deferred, it makes the heart sick. But when it comes a day early, it's a tree of life.

[35:48] It's like, wow, my word was supposed to come tomorrow. It came today. I am so fulfilled. I am so satisfied. I'm so, oh boy, I'm going to order that too. It doesn't last, does it? It's, it's so fast.

[35:59] That desire. Desire is a master that can never be pleased. Do you think Shechem is going to be satisfied with Dinah? A man who lives by his desires? No, he's not. Eventually, that relationship will become old to him.

[36:12] And the sons of Jacob answered Shechem and Hamor, his father, deceitfully and said, because he has defiled Dinah, their sister. So what that means there is they're answering deceitfully because they've spoken among themselves and they said, look at it.

[36:26] He's defiled our sister. We're going to get him. I've got a plan to take care of this guy. That word there, deceitfully, means fraud or treachery.

[36:37] It's used throughout Scripture, the Old Testament, but it's only used twice in Genesis. This is the second time. The first time was in Genesis 27 when Esau comes crying to Dad because there's no blessing left for him.

[36:51] And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, O my father. And he, Isaac, said, Thy brother came with subtlety, with fraud and treachery, and has taken away thy blessing.

[37:08] The apple didn't fall far from the tree here, did it? The sons of Jacob, the same deceit as their father, to take advantage. Proverbs 14, 25 says, A true witness delivers souls, but a deceitful witness speaks lies.

[37:24] A true witness delivers souls. And the implication then is one that speaks lies doesn't deliver souls. It entraps them. True love waits, right?

[37:41] It says, Because he's defiled their sister Dinah. Was this love? They knew. They were right, 100%. Shechem, you didn't show her love. Dude, you defiled her. This is not right. True love waits, but true love obeys.

[37:54] True love seeks to please and satisfy God, not myself and not someone else. True love obeys. 1 John 2, 5, But whoso keeps his word, God's word, in him verily is the love of God perfected, and hereby we know that we are in him.

[38:10] God's love is perfected by those who keep his word. True love obeys God. There is no substitute for the love of God. Anything else eventually ends in defilement.

[38:22] If we try to substitute anything for God's love, for true love, it'll end in defilement. Romans 1, picking up in verse 21, says that those, that knew God, they glorified him not as God.

[38:35] And they were not thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Wherefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts to dishonor their own bodies between themselves.

[38:48] And there we see some of the words we've been looking at. Because they chose not to know God, not to obey God, not to know his word, God gave them up to uncleanness, defilement, through the lusts, through the instant gratification and desire of their own hearts.

[39:05] Their own hearts. They decided to follow their hearts, God gave them over to that. And look what happened to their hearts. To dishonor their own bodies between themselves. It led to dishonor.

[39:17] It led to defilement. Romans 13, verse 10, tells us that love, true love, God's love, sacrificial love, agape love, works no ill to his neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

[39:28] I don't ever have to worry about God's love defiling me. I don't have to worry about it hurting me. It's not going to break the law, right? The moral law, the law of God, the moral law of God.

[39:39] I don't have to fear that. I think we're going to stop there until we continue on next week. Move through the next section quicker.

[39:54] This morning, as I was looking at that in that picture-perfect setup, the opportunities that are placed in front of us, man, some of them look really good.

[40:06] They look really good. And the world will present it as like, hey, this is a great opportunity. There's no strife. There's a lot of upside. But when you look beneath the surface, what is it based on?

[40:19] What opportunity is it really? Is it based on desire? Is it based on sacrificial love? Is it based on God's word? Is it just a morality and a framework that's like, you know, it's that picture that's taken off God's wall and put on a wall over here?

[40:33] It's like, wait a minute. That's not quite right. We see in our world today where marriage has no meaning anymore, right? Shechem comes and says, hey, give your daughters to our sons in marriage and we'll give our daughters to yours in marriage.

[40:46] Shechem, that's not marriage what just happened there. You think that's marriage? That's not what marriage is. That's outside God's order, outside God's word. That's not what marriage is. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.

[41:01] If any man love the world, if any man desire the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that's in the world, the desire of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father, but it's of the world.

[41:14] And the world passes away and the desires thereof, but he that does the will of God abides forever. We need to be careful what opportunities are placed in front of us.

[41:25] And we need to be careful that just because there's no strife doesn't mean there's no trouble. So what opportunities have been placed in front of us in Christ? We just saw, it's not a very fun chapter, I'm sorry. I'm not sorry.

[41:36] This is God's word. It's just going through these things sometimes. It's just what God puts in front of us. But on this side of the cross, as we look back and we ask ourselves, what opportunities has God put in front of me?

[41:48] Man, what an amazing opportunity. 1 John 3, verses 1-3. It says, Behold what opportunity the Father has put in front of you. Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us.

[42:03] This is our opportunity. That we should be called the sons of God. Therefore the world knows us not because it knew him not. You're not going to get along in the world. They're going to look at you and go, what kind of crazy system are you following?

[42:19] You think you're going to leave it to Beaver Day or something? We don't do it that way. I mean, come on. This is the, you know, 2020s. I love this person. They love me.

[42:29] Why shouldn't we get married? Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God. Therefore the world knows us not because it knew him not.

[42:41] Beloved, now are we the sons of God and it does not yet appear what we shall be. We don't even understand the opportunities that God has given us in the future, in the kingdom.

[42:53] We do not even understand yet what we shall be. But we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is. And every man that has this hope in him, the hope of what? Of Christ's return.

[43:04] The return that when we shall see him we will be like he is. The culmination of that blessed hope. The down payment, the earnest of our inheritance meets the full thing. Right?

[43:15] The engagement ring becomes the wedding ring. We shall see him as he is and every man that has this hope in him does what? Purifies himself. We don't live in defilement even as he is pure.

[43:28] How do we keep ourselves pure? How shall a young man cleanse his ways? By taking heed under the word of God. You know, there's nothing wrong with a picture perfect life.

[43:41] But that can only be found in Christ. Right? You can have picture perfect relationships. But the picture doesn't look like what this world says it should look like. Man, it looks a lot different.

[43:53] It looks a little bit costly. It looks like a cross. It looks like crucifixion. But don't forget it also looks like resurrection.

[44:04] Right? I don't look to you to bring fulfillment to myself. Right? I can't because all I'm going to do is harm you. Those that I love the most will be harmed through my desire to use you for my fulfillment.

[44:18] Brokenness is part of relationships and part of life. But it's fixed in Christ. Right? You can't buy out a broken relationship. You can't fix a broken relationship on your own.

[44:30] Only Jesus can do that. And that picture perfect life that we wish we could have in this world, we've never been promised. We've not. The part of it that we do have is that Holy Spirit living in us, the new nature.

[44:43] And man, we get to enjoy so much of that. I can live in my house with the picket fence that's falling down in brown and not white and absolutely love it. Love it because I have the joy of the Lord there. I have a peace that passes understanding because of Jesus.

[45:00] So Lord, as we look to you, that picture perfect husband, that picture perfect son, that picture perfect man and Father, our picture perfect father, thank you so much that we don't have to rely upon our own desires, upon our heart, upon our feelings, upon our own opinions or moralities or whatever.

[45:23] We have the word of God and we have the Holy Spirit given to us, Lord, that down payment. But Lord, keep us from expecting that the things in this life are going to fulfill, that the life that we have here is supposed to look like heaven because it's not.

[45:36] We've been promised tribulation. We've been promised suffering. But we've been promised glory in heaven, Lord. And Lord, we've also been promised your presence that will never leave us and never forsake us.

[45:51] So Lord, as we sit before you, Lord, as we, or if we stand, Lord, as we worship you, Lord, we recognize that only in Christ am I made whole and only in Christ can I really understand what it is to love someone.

[46:06] Lord, would you give us that love, the love that comes from the Father, that sacrificial love, Lord. I don't want to be led by my desires, Lord. Lord, would you please lead my heart?

[46:18] Would you please lead it to a place, Lord, that it's anchored in the word of God and its desires are for the things of God. And then, Lord, would you allow me to be a vessel of your love, Lord? Lord, sacrificial, surrendered, and giving, Lord.

[46:33] And Lord, I pray, Lord, for those that have been hurt, Lord, for those like a Dinah, Lord, who feel like their voice has been silenced in the midst of their pain, Lord. Lord, you know that pain.

[46:46] And Lord, you know how defiled they feel. And Lord, I pray that you would remind them that at the cross, Lord, there is forgiveness and cleansing and renewal. Thank you, Father, for being picture perfect in every way.

[46:59] And in Jesus' name, Amen.