Sermons from Lone Rock Bible Church
Stevensville, MT
Index of LRBC Sermons: www.sermonlinks.com/Sermons/LoneRock/Sermons
Ju.y 24, 2005

Costly False Start
Genesis 33:18 – 34:31

How serious is God about keeping His promises? Jacob, his family, and especially the Shechemites found out the hard way. Consider what happened just inside the Promised Land.

At a state track meet earlier this year, we observed a young lady, who was running a relay and started running before the gun went off. She was immediately disqualified. The look of anguish on her face told the story. After all, track and field is all about the state tournament. If you are good enough to get that far and then all the work, all the running, all the preparation, all the stress, all the tension, is summarily dismissed because you have jumped the gun.  That is a heartbreaker, but that is the rule of the game. Guidelines like these are what characterize the competition. It is what it is about. It is a hard reality.

Have you ever been going down the highway and suddenly hear what sounds like a flat tire and you are glad it’s only the rumble strips along the road? They are an interesting invention. I like them. Sometimes we get drowsy and those rumble strips have a way of bringing us back to our senses. Sometimes we get distracted and the rumble strips have a way of getting our eyes back on the road.

Sometimes Christians get this way. We get lethargic or lazy or sleepy or distracted and we lapse into a me-centered Christianity that is anemic and shallow, though perhaps comfortable. Then we hit the rumble strips and we say there is more to this after all. This passage of the Bible represents rumble strips to me. It is a hard hitting, no-taking-prisoner sort of a passage that leaves us shaking our heads and wondering what is going on. This is a misadventure, a sad account. Show me the hero here. We look in vain among the players of this misadventure for a hero.

What has happened here is that Jacob, as we work through his life and his journey, is forgetting who he is and where he is from and what God wants. He is forgetting that God is serious about keeping His promises to His people. God is very serious about it and Jacob is beginning to indicate that he is not.

Jacob seems to be getting more concerned about what Jacob wants. We find that he is settling for far too little, far too soon. God made a promise to Abraham that He had an eternal gift for him – land, descendants (or a seed, a nation), and from that nation I will save the world. God said He would bless Abraham, and through Abraham would touch with His grace all the nations of the world. This was a huge promise. You might say a cosmic promise, a far-reaching promise, a solid, hard and fast promise that God has made. He is serious about keeping it.

I can think of one word that probably describes Jacob better than any other. I think this man is absolutely relieved. For one, he has gotten out of Padan Aram and away from Laban. His sojourning in a foreign country, working for a deceptive father-in-law, is over. No more can Laban cheat him and change his wages and jerk him around. He is relieved to be away from Laban. He is relieved to have had the words he had with Laban and to have built the monument they built. He is done! It’s over. He is moving on.

Further, he is relieved at being on good terms with Esau after so many years. When he left his brother, Esau was threatening to kill him. His brother hated him. For 20 years Jacob had to go on and on under the cloud of an inevitable meeting some day with Esau. What should he expect?  Jacob, as he is growing in his relationship with God and is learning to trust God, knows more clearly that Esau has every right to do it. Jacob had ripped him off on purpose. He had no leverage with Esau. He is so glad that encounter with Esau is over. Esau had taken his gift and gone south. Jacob is good to go, headed west.

Jacob is relieved because finally he has arrived at the Jordan River and he has crossed it to the west side. The Jordan River is the border of the land. Jacob knew it. He was finally back in the Promised Land. The first place he comes to is settled with peace-loving people who seem to like him. Jacob thinks, why go further? He stops, pitches a tent, trades with the neighbors, looks around, scouts the country, buys property and digs a well. It is called Jacob’s Well. Hundred of years later the Messiah, Jesus, himself would drink from that well, right in that very spot.

He even went to church, you might say. Isn’t that what we do when we are new in an area? Establish ourselves religiously. A good thing. Jacob had not forgotten God. He built an altar and he named it the God of Israel. He has not walked away from his faith. He has just forgotten how serious God is about his presence there.

Note the sequence of events. He is relieved and so he relaxes. When we relax we tend to forget. Jacob forgot a very interesting moment in his own life. Remember the night he ran away from Esau, 20 years before. He arrived at the place and anointed a stone. He saw a vision of God there, a ladder to heaven and angels, and the delivery of a message from God. It encouraged his heart and lifted him up and challenged him. God’s promise was, “I will be with you. I will be with you when you return to this place.” Jacob said “When I return to this place, I swear my allegiance to this God.”

He is not there yet. In Genesis 28, around verse 20, Jacob said, “If you bring me back here safely, I am yours.” Genesis 33:18 says Jacob came safely. God did His part, but Jacob had forgotten his oath. When we get forgetful, we get insensitive to the will of God. We drop our guard and the first thing we know, our sweet daughter is running off to places she had not ought to go. Just as in chapter 34.

Is God serious about His promise of the land to Jacob? You bet He is. Jacob was not taking it as seriously. Is God serious about His promise of descendants?  You bet He is and that is the problem here.

Dinah was about the tender age of 15. The family was new to the area. They had only lived there a short time. Jewish scholars suggest that there probably was a festival going on in the city where Shechem lived. Let’s just say the fair is in town and with the fair comes the carnival and 15-year-old Dinah says, “Can I go?” Dad says, “One of your brothers has to go. They’re out in the field, taking care of the stock.”

Dinah figures no one will know so she goes to the fair to check out the other kids. She wants to see who all lives around. This is a natural thing. So she goes to the fair and is wandering around and some guy catches her eye. She notices this young guy; he is obviously well heeled. He is dressed well and seems to have his act together. He says, “Hey, do you want to go on a ride?” They go on a ride. He says, “I’ll bet I can win you the teddy bear” and he throws accurately and wins it.

He says, “Hey, sweet thing, where do you live? I’ll walk you home.” She saw no need of caution. She is not too protective about guarding herself from the unknown of the local folks. She learned quickly and violently that the local culture was one of unrestrained gratification. She learned that unlike her own mother and father’s experience, there in Shechem, they preferred the cave man approach and she was disgraced.

The Hivites, the locals, are just who they are – pagans, they have a lot of gods. They naturally follow their moral and cultural agenda. This is the type of thing to be expected of a pagan culture. Sex first, commitment later. Shechem had the order correct as far as he is concerned. We’ll notice, too, that Junior runs the show. Shechem runs his Dad. I’ll bet he was the kid who pitched a fit in McDonald’s when he was little and threw himself down on the floor at the grocery store until he got what he wanted. Now he wants her. “Dad, get her for me.”

Notice in the negotiations. “We have to have this gal.” Material gain is very important. “We’ll take your daughter, you take our daughters,” and later on as Hamor is relating to the men at the gate – “They have cattle and sheep and stock. We’ll be one people and we’ll all share and share alike. This is a good thing for us. We can profit materially here.”

Jacob has an altar to God, the God of Isaac “No problem. That God will fit right in with our gods. We’ll just add it to the pantheon we already have. No problem. We like all gods.” In a culture where there is not one God, who speaks with authority and truth, any gods will do. 

Jacob is oddly silent. It’s tough to save face when you have already compromised. You can’t recover with your pride intact when you have already compromised. Jacob doesn’t know what to do. He bought the land. He intended to settle. He brought his religion, even made an altar but he had forgotten God’s promise extended much further than this. He was unaware that God’s promise to make and preserve a nation would be ruined with this relationship with the Hivites. One people – and where would that leave the nation of Israel?   It would leave them non-existent.

Have you ever met a Hivite? Have you ever met a Jew? God is serious about keeping His promise for descendants. So God is all over this. Jacob does not know what to do but his sons do. By the way, his sons respond naturally. Their behavior is so much like the way Jacob grew up. For one, there was no communication. Why didn’t Jacob sit his family down and say, “I have messed this up. We have paid a price. Your sister has paid a price. We have to get out of here. This is wrong, we’re leaving.”

The one option the sons did not want to take was the right one. Jacob said nothing. Why not communicate and do the right thing? May I suggest it is never too late to do the right thing.  Jacob does nothing but his sons do. They respond naturally, first of all, by failing to communicate anything and secondly, by deceiving. These are Jacob’s sons. They lived 20 years in the household of Laban. They know how to deceive. They understand hucksterism and manipulation and salesmanship underhandedly. They respond deceitfully but they come across with a tinge of religion. They spiritualize their response. They remember Genesis 17, and the covenant of God marked by circumcision. They said this won’t work for us if you are not like we are, so why don’t you guys go ahead and be surgically modified. Then we will all be together.

The outpatient, surgical ward got real busy as the Hivites lined up to be taken care of so they could be God’s people like Jacob’s family. Is this the way to become God’s people? Do you become united with the people of God by some sort of outward sign?  You certainly do not. The way to become one of God’s people is to give your heart to the Lord. We know that. For some, they think just living in America, a Christian nation in the eyes of much of the world, means I must be one of God’s people. After all, it’s a Christian nation; I live there. Some people take it a little further saying, “I go to church; I must be one of God’s people. I’ve been baptized.   I live in a Christian home; therefore, because Mom and Dad know the Lord, I do too.” Not so, as though something outward would do the job. Does walking an aisle make a person a believer? No. What unites a person with the body of Christ is surrender of the heart, all my trust in Jesus only. Not an outward act, certainly not an outward sign.

These people are misled and they really thought they could blend themselves with God’s people just by having the surgery taken care of. The Hivites are no exception. They wanted the blessing, the outward mark, that God was in this and that God was going to do them good. “We’ll just identify with God’s people, then we’ll get God’s people’s stuff.” They didn’t realize and Jacob didn’t realize that God is very serious about His promise to provide descendants and protect the people and to deliver the world through those people.

He is also very serious about his blessing and who gets it and how. They are looking to climb in over the fence rather than go through the gate. They are looking to cash in on God’s blessing in an illegitimate fashion.

Shechem, the young man who ran the show, was not the only unrestrained son in the neighborhood. There were two in Jacob’s family, Simeon and Levi, and they knew exactly what they were going to do. It’s almost a play on words, almost a deliberate irony for them to say, “All you need, Shechemites, is a slight surgical procedure, but what you are going to get is a much bigger blade than you ever expected.”

While the Shechemites were agonizing, Levi and Simeon had their whetstones out and they were making their swords very sharp and pointed.  At the height of the pain and healing they went door to door with their swords and they killed all the men. They swiped their stuff, including their families, and left.

Here it is – we have deceit, stealth, murder, theft, destruction, fear, confusion. Jacob said, “What have you done? You have now made me odious in the eyes of the locals and I don’t have enough to defend myself. They will gang up on me. Then I’m toast; I’m doomed.”   Their only response was one of brotherly indignation, “They can’t treat our sister that way!” And the story ends there.

I ask a question: Where are God’s people, who will do God’s work in God’s way? What is going on here? This is a tragic chapter. Nobody comes through looking good. This is what is going on.  It is a clear failure to take God’s plan and His promise seriously. Jacob has failed to take it seriously. His sons have failed to realize what God has in mind for them to do. God takes it very seriously. What did God want? What was God’s design for Jacob and his family?

First, He wanted Jacob to go Bethel, not settle the first place he came to and intermarry with the Hivites and lose the distinction of being God’s special race. From Bethel He wanted him to go to Beer Sheba, which is further south, because God knew He was going to create a nation out of these twelve sons and that nation would incubate in a land called Egypt for 400 years. Beer Sheba and Egypt are about a stone’s throw apart. He is preparing them for where he is taking them. God did not want them in Shechem, He wanted them back where Jacob had come from, back where there were people who understood his faith, his religion, his God, not settling for third best at the first place he came to. God wanted Jacob in Bethel and in points south.

Secondly, God wanted Jacob and his family kept genetically and tribally distinct. Twelve tribes, twelve sons, genetically pure sons of Jacob, at least to get the land settled. God has real estate prepared for twelve tribes. The boundaries are there; they are able to be found on a map. He is going to make a distinct nation of them – the Israelite nation. He even has heaven prepared with twelve gates with the names of the twelve tribes on them (Revelation 21). God wanted His people kept distinct.

Had they intermarried with the Hivites, had they done this blending business that Shechem and Hamar wanted them to do, there would be no Israelite nation. Jacob did not see that at the time, but God saw it. God wanted them out of there. I have to ask myself again, is this one of those times where rather than God sending a huge wind or some miraculous vehicle of deliverance, just picking those people literally up and planting them down south where they belong? No! He just withdrew enough grace to let Levi and Simeon handle it in the flesh.

He got them moved and out of there for God wanted a distinct nation. He wanted them in the south and he wanted his people respected and feared by other nations. This would be His plan. Here is a very interesting sidelight for this whole thing. The Hivites were the locals we are dealing with here. God had told Abraham a couple hundred years earlier that the reason He would bring His people into the Promised Land as one nation was because He was going to use them to judge the locals.

The local people, the Canaanites for lack of a better word, were not a peace-loving folk as they are often depicted in literature. They were wicked, immoral, occultic-type people. They did things, like they did to Dinah, with impunity, and it was no big deal. God had them marked for judgment. In a very similar way he had the entire race marked for judgment at the flood. This would be a localized judgment that would come through His people and their army. It would come under the command of Joshua as they dispersed all these folks and took over their ground.

Judgment was what God had in mind for the locals. Dinah means “judgment.” That is not happenstance. Furthermore, in the book of Joshua, once the exodus was finished, the wilderness wanderings were done, the people came to enter the land. God’s people were to show no mercy. They were God’s sword, unless somebody said, “Be merciful to us, we surrender and submit to you.” In the entire conquest of the land, recorded in Scripture, only one group came hat in hand to Joshua and his army, deceptively, but their point was, “We want to serve you.” They were the Gibeonites, who were Hivites. I cannot help but think they knew the story of Shechem and their ancestors and what they had endured.

In chapter 35, it says that the fear of Jacob and his family spread among all the surrounding people– as it ought to be. God’s design was to take Jacob and his family and transform them eventually into a nation that would honor and serve God and know God’s blessing to such an extent that people would come from everywhere to know that God and respect God’s people.

God takes his promise to bless very seriously. If we want God’s blessing, the thing to do is not to try to manipulate him. You don’t strike a deal with him. You don’t cozy up to his people, who know his blessing, and hope some of it might rub off like fairy dust. There was only one avenue to the blessing of God back then with the Hivites and today with us and that is to surrender. He takes that seriously. He won’t say, “Oh, you are a senior. Well then, let’s start that race over again for you because you are a senior.” He won’t say, “You mean you have trained all season, we better give you another chance because you trained hard.” No, he takes the blessing seriously to the point where he says there is only one avenue to know the focused favor, and that is to surrender. To put it more specifically, all my trust in Jesus only, that is surrender.