Dinah & Her Brothers

Good morning.

Today's scripture comes from Genesis 34, 1 through 7, and 25 through 31.

Now Dina, 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 ch so Shechem spoke to his father Hamer, saying, Get me this girl for my wife.

Now Jacob heard that he had defiled his daughter, Dinah, but his sons were were with his livestock in the field.

So Jacob held his peace until they came.

And Hamor, the father of Shechem, went out to sp to went out to Jacob to speak with him.

The sons of Jacob had come in from the field, and as soon as they had heard of it, and the men 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.

On the third day, when they when they were sore, two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords and came against a city, while it fell secure and killed all the males.

They killed Hamer and his son Shechem with the sword, and took Dinah out to Shechem's house, and went away.

The sons of Jacob came upon the slain and plundered 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, our all their little ones and their wives, all that was in the house they they captured and plundered.

Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, You have brought trouble on me by making me sink to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizites.

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?

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

I've got a bit of a cough, so I'm gonna keep some coffee up here with me, because I think coffee cures almost everything.

No, I am not in my experience.

I'm doing it.

I'm doing it.

Haters gonna hate.

No?

My name's James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at uh Redemption Church Denver.

We are moving back into Genesis this morning.

So our church, uh the origin story is uh complicated, but we uh started in this neighborhood in uh uh 2020, like right at the beginning of 2020, when the world was you know beautiful and there were no uh ailments or sicknesses or anything.

And uh we were meeting in the school right on this block, Centennial Elementary, and we began in this neighborhood in Genesis.

We began right in Genesis 1.

And since then, in the spring of each year, sort of spring semester of each year, we've gone through Genesis and continued marching through the story.

So we've seen a lot in this book.

It's been really a part of our church's development and growth together over the past uh now.

This will be our fourth year, our fourth time moving through Genesis.

So it's a fun marker to come back to.

Uh this year we began with a formation series, um, which I really enjoyed preaching through and hopefully uh will continue to be helpful for us as a church as we learn patterns of prayer in the morning and prayer in the evening.

But now it's time to get back into Genesis.

Where we are is Genesis chapter 34, which means we've seen a lot in this book.

Genesis 34 · chapter mention

I want to give a brief recap so we can kind of have an understanding of where we are.

Now, giving a recap of Genesis 1 through 34, that would take a very long time.

But I want to give us some principles so that we can understand what type of thing we're reading when we're reading the book of Genesis.

Now, in Genesis it begins with in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Now, that's quite a way to start a story.

So that tells us that this story is about everything.

When you start there, you know, most stories uh that I read start with phrases like once upon a time.

That means that there were probably things happening before that.

This story starts with in the beginning.

God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis is a story about all of creation.

It is the origin story of existence.

And so it is telling us not only what happened in a historical sense, but it's also telling us what does it mean that that happened.

Now, this is an important thing that we need to recognize about the scripture that we Genesis teaches us how to understand not only what took place in the beginning, but what does that mean that that took place?

It's giving us the tools to interpret existence.

It's doing no less than that.

Next, Genesis shows that true meaning, the ability to describe what something means, is shown in the relationship between the creation and our God.

That is what it means.

I'm gonna use the word means a lot.

That is what it means to say that something is meaningful or that we can properly interpret something.

The proper understanding and interpretation of the world is always through the lens of the relationship between God and his creation.

If we don't tie up what happens in history to what God is doing and what his moves in the world are, and how he is the one who's holding it all together, and ultimately all things find their meaning in him, then we cannot call the events of the world meaningful.

But Genesis teaches us to understand the meaningfulness of the world through the relationship between the world, the creation, and its creator.

Now it is an unveiling of a particular story.

And the story goes something like this: that we've seen so far in Genesis.

God creates the world, he makes it good.

God creates man in his image and puts mankind in dominion over all of creation under God, and all things are ordered well in submission to the Lord.

Mankind sins against God, and everything becomes disordered.

The loves of our hearts become disordered, the proper dominion of the world becomes disordered, and now we live in a world that is ruled by death and decay under the domain of Satan.

God does not throw away this broken creation, but instead he enters into a promise.

And he says, Abraham, I will bless you to those who bless you, I will make you a blessing to the whole world, and in you all the families of the world will be blessed.

And he makes him this particular promise of land and to multiply his offspring.

David at that time has no children, him and his wife are very old, and then miraculously they are able to conceive by the providence of the Lord, and they give birth to Isaac.

Isaac receives this same promise that he will be multiplied and be given a land of promise, and that through him all the families of the earth will be blessed.

Isaac gives birth to Jacob.

Jacob receives the same promise, goes on all sorts of uh adventures due to his shrewdness and cunning and the fact that he is a terrible liar.

He betrays his brother on multiple occasions, and we saw this is the story that we went over last year, where we saw Jacob and the his heart that is so deformed before the Lord that fractures his relationship with his brother.

He goes off into a foreign land and then is brought back.

We ended with him and his brother being reconciled together.

There is forgiveness there.

And the Lord intervenes in Jacob's life at a place called Bethel, which means house of God.

I think it's also a record label.

And at Bethel, God promises him to always, God promises that he will always be with him.

The promises of God continue to this one family with this aim of the blessing and restoration of the whole world.

This is the narrative that we're tracking and where we are in this story.

It presents a lot of dynamics, which are how is it that God can work through this absolutely dysfunctional family, who God promises to be both the object of his blessing and the means which he has chosen to bless the whole world?

God enters into a relationship with this family saying, I will be your God, you will be my people.

And we see God utterly faithful to this promise to be their God, and we see the dysfunction of this family proving over and over again that they are utterly incapable of acting anything like his people.

Well, how can that relationship stand?

What can possibly reconcile these things together?

And the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

It's the greatest story ever told.

So today we move back into Genesis, back into the deep dysfunction of this family.

If you came to church to get a brief respite from that sort of thing this morning, uh well, I'm pushing you right back into it.

So now you have no break this week from family dysfunction.

Yeah, all.

So let's uh set the scene for today's story.

By the way, uh we're going to finish Genesis this year.

We're in chapter 34, there's 50 chapters.

We're gonna we're gonna finish Genesis this year.

And in our uh uh which I I'm pretty excited about, but most of the story is going to be Joseph's story.

And you're you're probably familiar with the story of Joseph, uh, the Tectacolor Dreamcoat, that story.

Uh but now we're seeing that the violence that's in Joseph's story, where his brothers sell him into slavery, that violence did not just originate there, but it had been in the family.

So these are those few stories that sort of set the context for the deep dysfunction that is within the family of promise.

All right, so the story begins right on the heels of Jacob and Esau's reconciliation.

Jacob and Esau were the estranged sons of Isaac, children of the promise.

Jacob was given the promise, Esau was not given the promise.

But the way that Jacob goes about acquiring this promise, which is his due, is by lying and thieving.

And this becomes a mark of Jacob's life.

His name means the deceiver.

But it can also mean one who grabs on and doesn't let go.

And we see both of these qualities throughout Jacob's life.

Until finally, right before their reconciliation, Jacob, right before Jacob and Esau meet again, and Jacob is in great fear of encountering his brother whom he has harmed.

Jacob meets a man who starts wrestling him at night.

And then this man, as they continue wrestling, and Jacob refuses to let go, living up to his namesake, the man demands that he would be blessed.

Jacob demands that he would be blessed by the man that he's wrestling.

The man shows an extreme amount of power by breaking Jacob's hip.

And it is revealed that Jacob is in fact wrestling with God.

Before blessing Jacob, the God man whom he is wrestling demands that Jacob say his name.

The reason for this is because when Jacob deceived his brother, and excuse me, when Jacob deceived his father, he lied about what his name is.

He's claimed to be his brother.

But now to receive the blessing of God, all Jacob need to do is say who he really is.

So Jacob does this, and we see his life begin to reintegrate, and he is named Israel, the one who strives with God.

So Jacob leaves that moment and he is transformed in a sense, and yet we see almost immediately he is very much still the same.

Jacob and Esau reconcile, they have a good, peaceful meeting.

Then Esau says, I'm going this way, and Jacob says, That's great, I'm going to Bethel.

And then strangely, we realize Jacob lied again.

He immediately lies to his brother right after their reconciliation.

And instead of going to Bethel, the place in which God had called him to go, Jacob goes to a place called Shechem.

It's about a day's journey short of Bethel.

And he sets up camp and he builds stables and he establishes himself in this land just outside of the promise of God, just outside of obedience to the Lord.

And he settles here for a long time.

Today we see the fruit of that incompleteness of his obedience.

And how the lie and the settling in a place that seemed good to him, that was not the place that God called him to, results in pain to the most vulnerable in his family.

And how Jacob does not respond to that.

So this story is really about Jacob's daughter, Dinah, who is taken advantage of by the prince of the land that they settle in.

And it is about Jacob and his lack of response, his lack of seeking any justice on behalf of his daughter.

And it is about Jacob's sons, Dina's brothers, and how they seek to take justice into their own hands, and only result in multiplying beyond measure the violence that was taken against their sister.

It is a dysfunctional family.

So let's enter into it and see the patterns that are shown to us in this story.

Genesis 34, 1 through 2.

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.

Dinah is Leah's daughter.

Jacob had two wives.

One was Leah, the other was Rachel.

One was beautiful, whom he loved, the other had weak eyes, and he did not love her.

Leah was the unloved wife.

Now, in this dynamic, we see that Dinah is the lowest member of the family.

She is the daughter of the unloved wife.

She is the most vulnerable, likely to be the most neglected.

And she goes out to see the women of the land.

Something of Dinah, a bit more we can know about Dinah.

It's hard to know these things in particular, but we know that when her, when Jacob and Esau met that Dinah was seven years old.

And so, how long had they been settled in the land of Shechem?

You know, it in order for it to be mentioned that they were settled, it would likely have been several years.

They built stables, they had become an estate in this land, but we don't know the particulars of her age.

But they had settled in this land and she is young and she is the most vulnerable in the family.

And she goes out to see the women of the land.

This phrase women of the land has a connotation in it throughout scripture, in which there are the women of the household who are safe, and there are the women of the land, where the men of Israel are constantly tempted to go out and abandon their calling with.

Now it's a mixed phrase because it doesn't necessarily mean anything negative, but what it shows is that she is outside the boundary of the family's protection.

And it seems like she's outside that boundary to no one's particular concern.

Dinah is very alone in this family.

And we are given the phrases here to draw that conclusion.

Now, Shechem, the son of Hamor, the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, seized her, lay with her, and humiliated her.

You know when you watch an old movie and you think this is a bit cliche?

And then you realize this wasn't cliche then.

Look, he is the entitled man in the land.

What had the prince been denied?

What could the prince of this land look upon and not claim as his own?

You know, you might think if you read that in a screenplay, you'd think, oh, you could come up with something a bit more creative than that.

No, this is human nature.

He had been denied nothing.

He looked upon this girl whom he desired, and he took her for himself.

It is an absolute taking advantage of.

Now we see this pattern throughout the story of the patriarchs, throughout the stories of the patriarchs.

And in order to prevent this normal, ordinary event, which is terrible, don't hear those words to mean not terrible, but typical.

We know it is typical because both Abraham and Isaac took particular precautions to make sure that this didn't happen with their wives.

We've seen throughout the story, if you go into another land, the prince of that land or the king of that land will just take you as if he finds out that you're my wife, he'll take you for himself and he'll kill me.

And so they organized ways, deceitful ways that are that are not particularly good, you know, lying that their wives are actually their sisters and things like that.

But they were taking precautions because they knew the danger of the world that they were working, that they were living in for the vulnerable in their households.

We've seen that pattern already.

Which means that this is no surprise what has taken place.

This is neglect that has taken place.

Neglect of Dinah and then her being taken advantage of in an ordinary way, a way which would not even register for the prince of the land that this is being taken advantage of.

So we find out what Jacob's concern is with this problem.

Shechem, after humiliating Dinah, his heart is drawn in love towards her.

And he falls in love with her.

Throughout scripture, when something like this happens, when a woman is taken by a man wrongfully in this way, we see two sort of dichotomous outcomes.

In one instance, with Tamar, for example, her the man who takes advantage of her ends up hating her immediately.

In this example, we see that the man who takes advantage of Dinah ends up falling into this deep love for her.

Now, it's important to note that these distinctions of outcomes have nothing to do with the justification or condemnation of the outcome, of what had taken place, excuse me.

It is not that the naming of Shechem speaking tenderly toward Dinah and loving Dinah, this is not an example of some good change of heart that had taken place, or that he really had her best interests in mind all along.

No, this is just a revealing of the corruptness of him.

That this is what he thinks love is.

This is how he thinks love could possibly be manifest.

It is, as it will be called soon, an outrageous thing.

So Shechem goes to his father, the king of the land, and says, I desire to have Dina as a wife, so bring her to me as a wife.

He goes to Jacob, and we see this interaction of when Shechem's father goes to Jacob to ask for Dina as a wife.

Genesis 34, 5.

Now Jacob heard that he had defiled his daughter Dinah.

Look, the word humiliated, it shows us that this was public knowledge.

The women of the land saw it happen.

You know, there's no intervention anywhere on behalf of Dinah.

The women of the land saw it happen.

The highest authorities in the land are the ones doing it.

So Jacob knew.

Now, this might seem at first glance like, okay, there's some wisdom operating in Jacob here, where he wants to seek out something like a true justice.

And that's why he's holding his peace here.

But we'll see that his peace is held throughout the whole story.

There's no seeking of justice by Jacob.

So they asked for the hand in marriage, and the sons, Jacob's sons, come in from the field.

In verse 7, 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.

Okay, so finally, someone's angry on behalf of Dinah, right?

And her brothers are extremely angry.

They're indignant.

And we've got to listen to the way that they are angry because it's pretty it it actually reveals quite a bit.

It says, he has done an outrageous thing in Israel.

That means they already have a moral self-consciousness as God's people.

They haven't been given the Ten Commandments.

These sorts of the moral law has not been expressed or explained to them yet.

And yet, because they are the people of promise, the family of promise, they understand themselves to be operating in a different moral way than the rest of the world.

And so they would have this expectation.

We can hold ourselves to this standard, but we can't expect this standard to be expressed for the rest of the world.

And in that, we need to take care to protect the most vulnerable among us.

And they say they say clearly, for such a thing must not be done.

So they have they think of themselves as a people who are morally distinct, that they ought to be acting better.

This type of thing must not be done, not to one of their own, not to their family, because it is wrong before the Lord.

So they listen to the appeal of the Hivites, the appeal for Dinah in marriage.

This is what the king of the Hivites says to them, how he makes the appeal.

Dwell and trade in it, and get property in it.

So we need to understand what it would mean to give Dinah in marriage to this people.

They're saying, the people are saying it, give, give, you know, Jacob is the king of his people.

This Shechem's father is the king of his people.

How do you make a people become one people?

Well, you give to one another in marriage.

You become one family.

And so what's being offered here is you abandon your identity, this identity as the family of promise that has been given to you, and instead become one with us and integrate with us.

And they would go back to the Hivites and they would say, We are one people, so all that we have, you have.

We have no fear of one another anymore.

We have now become maximally wealthy, maximally peaceful, maximally protected in this place because we have integrated and become one people.

They are no longer the nation of Israel, we are no longer the Hivites, we are one.

And look at what we have gained from this.

But don't you see the offer?

If you just look over this small injustice against this one daughter, and if you just look over that and do nothing, do nothing for it, look at the promise.

You can be at peace.

You can have the wealth.

Jacob, we will talk to each other like kings.

Look at all that we could have.

Just look over this small injustice.

This is the offer that's here.

Jacob says nothing.

His sons step in.

They make a plan.

A plan that I can't tell, you can't tell what Jacob thinks is happening when they make this plan.

I think it seems evident from the story that Jacob, Jacob thinks that they are uh agreeing to the offer of the Hivites.

Because what they say is we could not give one of our daughters to be married to someone who is uncircumcised.

The circumcision is the mark of who we are, it is the mark of the promises that God has given to us.

And therefore, we cannot give off one of our own to a nation that is uncircumcised.

Circumcise all of the men of your tribe, and then we will marry off our daughters to you.

Dinah will be married into your people.

Jacob, because of his lack of intervention, his silence is the loudest part of the story, says he doesn't say anything, so that we must assume he thinks, okay, yeah, sounds good to me.

That's a good compromise.

We don't want to lose our identity as a people.

So let's just export this external identity marker, and then if they do that, we'll call it square.

We'll call it good enough.

Well, the brothers had another plan.

Three days after the circumcision, because they go the Hivites go back and they're like, great news, everyone.

Oh that incredible, you know, partially great, yeah.

That incredible estate that you've seen kind of on the perimeter of our city, uh, with the daughters who you would love to marry and the sons whose wealth you'd love to participate in, that will all be ours.

It will all be ours soon.

We have to circumcise ourselves, but you know, it's uh it's just one of those things.

Life's about trade-offs.

We're gonna get a lot for this.

So the whole nation does.

Part of this shows just how uh immense the wealth of Jacob was at this point.

It's an incredible draw, this type of wealth.

Must have been.

And on the third day, when the men of the tribe were still recovering, not feeling great, you know, when you go have a really hard workout, it's not the next day that you're sore.

Uh it's a couple days later.

Same sort of thing.

And they didn't drink enough water.

Simeon and Levi.

Now, who are Simeon and Levi?

These are the sons of Leah.

These aren't the sons of Rachel.

These are the sons of Leah.

These are the direct brothers of Dinah.

You know, they have the same mother.

So Simeon and Levi go and they kill all of the men of the Hivites, all of them.

They annihilate this people.

They kidnap the children and take the wives for themselves, and then the rest of the brothers come in and plunder all of the goods and the livestock and the wealth of that people.

It is a massacre.

It is kidnapping.

It is taking the women of that land for themselves in the name of justice for their sister.

Jacob hears of it.

In Genesis 34, 30, 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 Parasites.

My numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.

Finally, some anger from Jacob, right?

And what is the anger?

Look, you've ruined my reputation in this place.

And now I have no hope of peace.

I thought that's the thing that we were going to get out of this: a small sacrifice of my daughter, that I might have some peace and power in this land.

And now you have gone out, and because of the absurdity of your act of vengeance, it is dangerous for me now.

That is Jacob's only complaint so far in the whole story.

God has promised him he will always be with him.

He has promised him the land and the nation.

He's promised him protection against his enemies.

But now he's afraid.

We see what had been motivating Jacob this whole time.

This whole time he had been motivated by his reputation.

Why was he not frustrated?

At least frustrated at his daughter being taken.

Well, because it didn't harm his reputation.

It didn't threaten his peace.

These are the things that Jacob cared about.

We see that revealed in his heart.

And then this is the end of the story.

Genesis 34, 31.

But they said, Simeon and Levi, should he treat our sister like a prostitute?

Now when a Bible story ends on a question, it means that it's it's throwing the question at you.

When it ends unresolved, the Bible is saying, be unresolved now.

Because we're meant to think they couldn't have gotten away with it.

Shechem couldn't have gotten away with what he did to Dinah, with humiliating her.

He couldn't have treated her like a prostitute.

But right now, all those men who had nothing to do with it are murdered.

All those children are fatherless, and their mothers have been taken by these people.

And we're going to hang all of that evil and vileness and wickedness on look what he did to our daughter.

Look what he did to Dinah.

You know, at some point it becomes hard to believe that this was about Dinah.

At some point, it becomes hard to believe that this was an act of justice that her brothers were accomplishing on her behalf.

So it ends in this question, and we're brought to this terrible example of the two worst possible responses to injustice towards the most vulnerable in the family.

One is abdication, because it doesn't really matter, because it's just Dynah, right?

This doesn't really threaten what I have, what I have to gain, what the family has to really participate in here.

So there's an utter neglect of the justice that we see from Jacob, which is awful.

And then we see pure vengeance that multiplies and becomes this unstoppable devouring force in the name of justice on behalf of Dinah.

The story ends with a question because it's bringing us face to face with this dichotomy of humanity.

There are principles that we should see here.

Principle number one that we can gain from this story is in order for a people to hold together, they must protect the most vulnerable among them.

Okay, so in order for a society to hold together, you might think that the most vulnerable are the easiest to sacrifice and that they upset the established power structures the least.

But the Bible shows us repeatedly that if there is a neglect of justice on behalf of the most vulnerable, the society will crumble.

It is this strange interaction between the most powerful and the least powerful.

That if the most powerful do not advocate for the least powerful, the society will crumble.

We see this repeatedly, this pattern repeatedly throughout scripture.

Here we see it with Dinah, because the family is torn apart.

We'll see that this tearing apart of the family continues to manifest.

Soon, these people who have internalized this type of violence against people outside of them will have no problem accomplishing this same violence against their own brother.

We'll see this develop.

The family is torn apart.

We see it in judges, when a servant girl is also taken advantage of and killed, and then the tribe of Benjamin is almost completely destroyed.

We see this in David's kingdom, when Tamar is taken by her brother, and David does nothing, and Absalom sees David do nothing, and then begins to form his own kingdom against David, and then the kingdom splits, enters into a civil war.

Isn't it interesting that the taking advantage of the most vulnerable women in the nation is this canary in the coal mine for the whole civilization being about to be overturned, upended.

Justice is not an option.

It is of absolute necessity.

It holds things up.

So that's principle number one.

So we see that if the most vulnerable are among you are not protected, the civilization will be destroyed.

Secondly, if those who have been entrusted with the responsibility of justice abdicate that responsibility, terror will take its place.

If those who are entrusted with the responsibility of justice abdicate that responsibility, terror will take its place.

And it will multiply and be absolute in its destruction.

Jacob was responsible.

Jacob is the one who ought to have protected his daughter.

And if not protected, then it sought justice on behalf of.

And yet he didn't.

Because he didn't think that his power would be threatened.

He was utterly wrong.

He would lose the most precious thing to him soon.

Last, if those without the authority to execute justice seek to take it into their own hands, they will become worse than what they oppose.

The brothers thought that they were accomplishing justice on behalf of their sister.

What do they do?

They take their own women for themselves.

They kill many people.

They render fatherless many children, and they plunder an entire tribe of people.

It goes up in the scales of mere quantity.

It is no justice.

So here we are.

We are pinned.

Do we abdicate?

Or is there revenge?

This is the question that this text presses us deeply into.

And we ought to hear this cry.

How can it be that in a world like this, where these stories are playing out over and over again, where some are crying, peace, peace when there is no peace, and others are crying, let us multiply the revenge, and the society disintegrates.

Is there a hope of true justice?

And perhaps even a true justice which could preserve the members of the family.

Do you see the cry?

Do you see the necessity of Jesus Christ the judge?

Jesus Christ is the type of judge who sees all things and weighs them perfectly.

He accomplishes justice precisely so that nothing will go unpunished.

He is able to preserve and bring a reconciliation even amidst the family that is causing the injustice, because he himself takes on the punishment.

Nothing goes unpunished.

It will either be punished by him or it will be punished in him.

He allows for the true execution of justice in the proper proportion, and he allows for the possibility of forgiveness and a forgiveness that does not mean the abdication of justice.

Jacob was not forgiving.

Jacob did not forgive Shechem for what he did.

He abdicated his responsibility.

Our culture reels against forgiveness, has no category for forgiveness right now, because forgiveness means abdication of justice to our culture.

That's what people hear when Christians talk about forgiveness.

They hear abdication of justice.

But in Jesus, we don't mean that.

We mean the punishment of our Lord is sufficient for the evil and wickedness that you've done and that's been done to you.

That you can see that it has been punished in the most absolute and complete of terms, that he has not overlooked any of the sin that has taken place, but that that might not absolutely harden your heart, so that you become like the brothers of Dinah.

Because he saw her.

Jesus is the only possible answer for what justice might look like.

He's the only one.

This story, in its ambiguity and its ending in a question, we're forced into that question so that we might see this only resolves in Jesus.

This only resolves in the justice of the cross.

Otherwise, what hope is there?

All right.

Are there any questions today?

The patriarchy is such a despised and hot button issue in culture today, and this story seems in line with the narrative of abuses for men in positions of power.

What is a biblical response to this narrative?

All right, everybody, put your seatbelts on.

The dichotomies of abdication or annihilation.

Now the story that takes place here is one of men who abuse their authority, and that's multiplied in wickedness by men who do not use their authority.

The answer to this is not, the problem is men have authority.

The problem is men have abused their authority, and then other men, for the sake of peace, have not used the authority that they've been given to set things right.

The reason that the patriarchy is a dangerous interpretive framework as it's used in our culture because it operates like I say the patriarchy, the way that we used it, the way that I was taught it at CU was like Sauron.

And we can blame it in some narrative way for all the evil that's taking place.

That's, you know, the way that Sauron is.

But it's it's it offers no opportunity for a development or a participation with true justice.

And so because its answer is to remove the opportunity for those who ought to have the authority to enact justice from having that capability.

It is an inversion of the order.

Now, here's the narrative pattern.

In here we see that the authority of these men is utterly distorted and corrupted in their hearts.

And that needs to be set right and changed.

There ought to be punishment and justice brought to bear.

But the solution to a distorted structure is not the inversion of that structure.

The structure is not wrong.

It's acting wrong.

And the narrative structure of the patriarchy in our culture is called to be inverted to a matriarchy.

This is the I'm not making this up.

I I oh I hate to say things like this, but like I've I've studied radical feminism.

The purpose is an inversion.

To to destabilize this structure by inverting the structure.

Do you see how that is not just Dinah's brothers?

How could that possibly be anything other than Dinah's brothers?

And it just is a result in destruction.

And so we become fools when we and people do this because you know, conservatives do this now, where you try and tell a story like this and avoid the narrative pattern of men abusing their power as though we need to pretend that's something that can't happen.

Well, that's a foolish way of looking at the world.

But then it's also foolish to say, well, if we just inverted the structure and women had all the power, you know, if those are the bad guys and these are the good guys, then we can flip it.

Well, that's a foolish way of thinking of justice as well.

So don't be deceived.

Christ is the one who deals out his justice.

We have a God who is above us who decides what justice is.

Uh don't be tricked.

Don't don't you know one of the strange parts of the uh Me Too movement was the that conservatives weren't decrying the violence that had taken place against women?

Aren't we the ones with the strict sexual ethic?

You know, but then this pattern is so clearly displayed in our culture of abdication and then taking justice into my hands that becomes radical destructive violence.

We'll tear it all down instead.

Neither of these are options.

There is a pattern of justice that is described in Christ.

If we aren't oriented towards that, we will be easily taken advantage of by one half of one of these master narratives that are reigning in our culture.

Half a narrative is not a helpful way to interpret the world.

It's a very complicated place.

So does that make sense?

Or is it at least provocative in a helpful way, perhaps?

We'll find out.

I'll find out.

All right.

Oh, that at least you see that the Bible is a participant in these questions at their deepest level, and that Christ is desiring to answer these, not desiring, but is the answer to these things at their deepest level, not in some surfacey feel-good way, but in a very, very deep way that's fundamental.

You know, it's even a diagnostic of our of the foolishness that reigns in our culture.

Christ pierces through that.

He's not easily pinned down.

How could he be?

He accomplishes justice out of his great love for ourselves, and he will come back as a judge.

He offers absolute mercy to his enemies because of the justice that he bears on our behalf.

The one who determines what justice is, out of the depth of his love towards us, takes our sins upon him, so that we might be reconciled to him and become his people.

Justice and a hope and a future.

These things are in Christ.

Deeply, not just foolishly or naively, deeply.

Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

As we gather to this meal, we remember the Lord who laid down his life for us.

We receive that he is both just and the justifier.

We come to him as ones who have been hurt and need his care, and ones who have hurt and need his forgiveness.

He offers them to us with his table fellowship, and it is an offering of no less than himself.

What other hope could there be for the world?

Lest we ignore each other or annihilate each other.

Let us come to the table with this hope of Christ.

Holy Father, we pray that you would teach us your justice, that even as keeping this story in your scriptures, that we might be given eyes through which to see the errors of how we seek to accomplish justice or ignore it.

Lord, we pray that those of us that feel neglected would be seen by you.

Those of us who need forgiveness would run quickly towards it.

Lord, and that we might receive in your sacrifice a hope of true reconciliation to you, and then perhaps even to one another through that, Lord.

Pray that we might experience this first in the church and that we might share this with the world and our community.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.