Out of Order

Genesis 34
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, November 27, 2022
Copyright © 2022, Gregory Broderick

Before Jacob and his family head “Back to Bethel” in Genesis 35, we see a series of really awful events in Genesis 34.  Daughter Dinah is raped by the son of the local warlord, Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, and Jacob’s sons trick the Shechemites into leaving themselves defenseless.  Then they slaughter every male in the town, and for good measure, they seize all the property of the men that they killed.  On top of that, they carry off all the widows and orphaned children to be kept as slaves or perhaps even concubines.   By any measure, rape and genocide is a pretty bad week.

There are many lessons that we can learn from this text and we have preached a number of them before.  Our focus this morning, though, will be on Jacob, the father and supposed head of this clan.  It seems here in chapter 34 that he has lost control of his household.  Everyone seems to be doing his own thing, leaning on his own understanding, and, no surprise, they made a mess.  The daughter is defiled, the sons become murderers, and we have what we might gently call political problems for Jacob.  In verse 30, he says, “We have become a stench in the nostrils of those around us.  They may all band together and destroy us.”  It puts the whole family at risk.  He is mad at his sons for the action they took, but it is his failure to lead and his failure to order his household properly that gave them that opportunity.  So let us examine this morning how it came to be and how we may learn from Jacob’s mistakes.

I. Proper Order

Before we know what is wrong, we must know what right looks like.  How should Christian homes function?  Almost every one of us knows the standard.  We preach it here all the time, and we do it for a reason: 1) it is important, and, 2) we forget.

The father and husband must be the head of the home.  This is not some special doctrine that we made up: God decreed it that way (1 Cor. 11:3).  It was this way in the garden before the Fall (Gen. 2:20).  It is still God’s order after the Fall (Eph. 5, especially verses 22–33).

As we often preach, this is not based on any supposed superiority of or qualifications inherent in the man.  Both man and woman are equal in the sight of God, and each is made in His likeness and image.  It says so in Genesis 1:27.  So they have equal status before God, but they don’t have equal positions.  They are the same in God’s sight, but they don’t have the same job.  God gave the man a job to do: Fill the earth and subdue it.  And He gave him a wife to help him to do that job.  God gave them children, eventually, to raise up, and then God told them how to do it.  Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go.”  There is a way, and that is God’s condition.  Train him up in that way, “and when he is old, he will not turn from it.”  That is the promise.  We have many proofs in our time.  Second Timothy 3:15 is a proof, or you can look at Pastor Mathew sitting in the back row as proof.

There is a standard for Christian fathers to keep.  We are not given free rein in how to do our job as the heads of our homes.  No, we have a standard.  Second Timothy 3:4 gives the qualifications specifically in this context for elders and deacons, but this applies to every Christian husband and father.  It says, “He must manage his own household well and see to it that his children obey him with proper respect.”  But this is not for elders only, or for some kind of imaginary super-dad who is out there.  This is the rule for every Christian father: Manage your own household well.  So don’t misunderstand that because it is a minimum qualification for pastors and elders means that it does not apply to me.  No, if you don’t meet that qualification, you are not able to serve in that office, but you are still supposed to meet that qualification in your own home.

Notice, the mandatory nature of the language that God uses here: “He must manage his own household well.”  Elsewhere it says, “He must see to it that his children obey him with proper respect.”  The same idea is repeated in verses 4 and 12.  It is also in Ephesians 6:4: “Fathers, do not exasperate your children, but [see, this is a command] raise them up in the fear and instruction of the Lord.”  Men of God, this is our God-given job.  It is a mandatory duty as a Christian husband and father.  And if you are wondering, since you are the head of the household who the enforcement mechanism is, don’t worry.  It is not me, and it is not even Pastor Mathew.  It is God Himself.  Hebrews 13:17 includes fathers among the men who must give an account.  An account to whom?  An account to God.  God will ask you on that day: Did you manage your household well?  Did you raise your children in the fear and instruction of the Lord as God commanded?  Did you see to it that they obeyed you with proper respect?

As I have noted, this was not optional.  God commanded us to do it, and we must do it.  We cannot avoid this job out of laziness.  We cannot shirk the duty out of fear.  Remember the one-talent man from Matthew 25:26.  Essentially, he did not do his job because he was afraid, and because he did not want to put in any effort.  What did God say to that man?  “You wicked and lazy servant.”  I don’t know about you, but when I give an account to God on that day for my household, I don’t want to hear, “You wicked and lazy servant.”  We cannot dump the burden onto our wives by abdication, refusing to do the job, or by acclamation: “I bestow the duty onto you, wife.”  It is not a delegable duty.  We must manage our own households well because God has decreed it.

How do we do it?  First and foremost, this is a big job, and we have to recognize the scope of the job.  It is frankly beyond the natural capacity of any of us to do it.  It is a huge job and to do it, you must first be born again.  Our obedience to God’s command to manage our own households well presupposes that we care to do it well, that we care to obey God’s command.  To do that, we must be born again.

The standard for husbands and fathers has not changed since the Garden, but unfortunately we have.  Adam was posse non peccare in the Garden, possible not to sin, a sort of moral neutrality—capable of sinning and capable of not sinning.  Unfortunately for us, Adam chose to sin.  He chose to defy God’s decree.  He chose to believe the devil’s lie.  In doing so, he plunged the whole world into darkness.  He twisted our very nature such that we are now born sinners who go on to sin daily.  Romans 6:20 says we were slaves to sin.  We find the same thing in Romans 7:25.  Romans 8:7 tells us in our natural estate, in the way we were born, that we are hostile to God in our sinful minds.  That means before we are born again, whatever God says for us to do, we want to do the opposite.  We are against it.  We have enmity toward God.  If He says, “Do x,” then that is the last thing I want to do.  I don’t want to do x.  If He says, “Don’t do x,” then that is the first thing I want to do.  I want to do my own thing.  Pastor Mathew used to say there would be a sign on the grass that said, “Don’t walk on the grass,” and suddenly you are inspired to walk on the grass.  Or you see a sign that says, “No spitting,” and suddenly the saliva comes into your mouth and you want to spit.  Whatever God says, I want to do the opposite.  I am against it.  I want to do my own thing.

Romans 8:7–8 lays it out plainly for us.  In our natural estate, it is impossible for us to submit to God or to please Him.  So Adam may have been posse non peccare (possible not to sin), but we are non posse non peccare (not possible not to sin).  This is a bad spot to be in.  God says, “You must do x,” and God has a pretty good enforcement mechanism.  He is all-powerful.  He is sovereign over the whole world, and He has His eternal wrath in eternal hell due to us who refuse to obey Him.

So He says we must do x or face hell, and yet I just told you that it is impossible for us in our own nature to obey Him.  We are incapable.  So that means we are destined for hell.  It is a desperate condition to be in.  This is the condition of every single person ever born, save one.  If we had any understanding of God and any understanding of ourselves, we would cry out with Paul in Romans 7:24, “What a wretched man I am! [What a wretched condition I am in!] Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

But, praise God, there is an answer to that question.  Paul, by the Holy Spirit, says in Romans 7:25, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” We can be delivered from that wretched condition.  We can be changed from those people with enmity against God to His sons and daughters, to His obedient servants.  We can become a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17), no longer slaves to sin, but now slaves to Christ, who sets us free from our bondage to sin (Rom. 6:18).  Before it was non posse non peccare (not possible not to sin), but now as a new creation with a new heart, we are capable of saying “No” to sin and “Yes” to righteousness (Tit. 2:12).  We now can live holy lives in obedience to God and in obedience to His word and to please Him (1 Thess. 4:1).

How does this come about?  Acting by His mighty Holy Spirit, God changes our very nature.  That is what it means to be made a new creation.  It is a God-authored change in us, a new heart and a new spirit by His miracle of regeneration.  Short of that, nothing else will do.  But with that, every problem is solved.  We now have that new nature, moved to obey God by His Spirit (Ezek. 36:26).  We have that new heart capable of loving God because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).  So we can now obey our God, obey His word, out of love for Him.  In John 14:15 Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my command.”  We confess Christ.  He paid it all for us, and so we are overjoyed, we are full of love for God out of this new heart.  And our joyful obedience to God is that proof of our new love for Him, of our new heart (1 John 5:2).

He paid for all our sin on the cross.  I told you that we were due an eternal hell and an eternal wrath.  But Jesus paid it all.  He went on that cross and suffered the full wrath of God which belonged to us.  He did it voluntarily.  Infinite God, Jesus Christ—with God from the beginning, and He was God, the Second Person of the Trinity—voluntarily became man, voluntarily stood in our place, voluntarily took the infinite blast of the infinite wrath of God in our behalf and then He died the death that we deserved.  We were looking at Isaiah 53 this morning.  It is our transgressions, it is our iniquities, it is our problem.  But He paid it all so that we could have peace with God.  He died the death that we deserved, but then He was raised to life—raised to life for our justification, risen to show that His payment was acceptable and that His payment was complete.  Risen because He never sinned, and so therefore death could not keep a hold on Him.  The wages of sin is death, but He did not sin, so He did not have to take those wages.

How do we partake of this great salvation?  It is available to everyone.  It is available to everyone, but not everyone will consent to receive it.  It is that old enmity that I spoke about before.  So how do you take hold of it?  It is not by payment of silver or gold.  It is not by your good or moral life.  I told you already that before we confess Christ as Lord, we are incapable of living such a good or moral life.  It is not by money.  It is not by actions.  It is not inherited by birth.  It is not due to your race or your education or your inheritance or anything else.  It is by grace alone through faith alone.  It is the free gift of God for you.  It was so priceless, so valuable, that God offers it to us for free because any price paid would simply cheapen it.  God tells us in Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”  So that is all you have to do.  What must I do to be saved?  “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).  Trust in Him alone and you will be saved.

So, number one, fathers: If you want to be the head in your home, if you want to live according to God’s way, if you want to live a proper order, number one is that you must be born again.

But number two is that you must be filled with the Holy Spirit.  Salvation alone is not enough to manage your own household well.  Look through the Scriptures.  There are many saved men in the Scriptures who did not manage their households well.  So we must have something more than mere salvation, and that something more is to be full of the Holy Spirit. You see, Jacob was saved.  He is in the Hebrews 11 “Hall of Faith.”  We are not going to make it into the Hebrews 11 “Hall of Faith.”  None of us will.  But Jacob made it in.  He was a good man.  He saw God.  He met with God.  He spoke with God.  Yet he still failed to manage his own household well.  There are many other examples, including Eli and Samuel and so on.

Of course, we don’t need to rest on inferences or reading into the Scripture to get this point.  Ephesians 5 and 6 tell us in plain terms.  This is the family order section of Ephesians 5 and 6: Wives, submit to your husbands.  Husbands, love your wives.  Children, obey your parents.  Fathers, train up your children, and so on.  But if you go back to the beginning of that section, it starts with a key exhortation in verse 18: “Be being filled with the Holy Spirit.”  You see, all the other things follow, but if you are not filled with the Holy Spirit on a daily basis, you are not going to be able to do those things that follow.  “Be being filled with the Holy Spirit”—that is the need for fathers, for husbands, for heads of households.  It not more money or promotion at work.  It not more management acumen.  There are no tips or tricks.  You must be filled with the Holy Spirit.  We don’t need any of those things.  We need the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit dwells in us to help us to do all that God commands us to do.  We have heard it many times.  There is a saying from John Calvin: “What God commands us to do by His word, He likewise enables us to do by His Spirit.”  God gives us wisdom and revelation to know His will.  How?  Through the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:17).  The Holy Spirit gives us assurance when the world, the flesh, and the devil come to us and sow doubt, saying, “You can’t do the job.”  The Holy Spirit gives us assurance: “You can do the job” (see 1 John 4:13).  And the Holy Spirit gives us power to do the job, great power—power, power, power to do the will of God (1 Sam. 16:13; Judg. 15:14; Acts 2:1–4).  What do we see there?  Normal people, weak and frail human beings, full of power, full of the Holy Spirit and doing amazing things for God.  That is what we need.  God gives us His Holy Spirit to guide us and direct us, and to help us properly interpret His word which, after all, He inspired men to write down (John 14–16).

That is what we need.  It is not natural ability.  If there is someone whom you regard as a good Christian father, you may look at that person and think, “I can’t do it like him.  He has more natural ability.”  No.  It is not a matter of natural ability.  It is not a matter of your work experience or your personality.  Those things play some role, but they are only at the margins.  There are plenty of people who are generals in the barracks but privates in the home, who are the CEO at work and the mail clerk at home.  It is not a matter of natural ability.  It is not a matter of self-strength.  “Well, that other person can do it.  He is stronger than I am.”  No.  It is a matter of Holy Spirit discernment, Holy Spirit boldness, and Holy Spirit power to do the job that God has given us.  And the good news is: That Holy Spirit power is available to all.

The Holy Spirit dwells in every believer (1 Cor. 3:16).  But what we need is a greater measure of that Holy Spirit, and it is no problem to receive it.  Just ask.  That is what God says.  Ask, and keep on asking for the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13).  Our God is not stingy.  He is very generous.  The Holy Spirit is not some limited supply that God has to dole out a little bit at a time.  No, our God is infinite, and the Holy Spirit, being very God, is infinite as well.  We know this from the nature of God, but we know it from the Scriptures as well.  Jesus Himself received the Holy Spirit without measure (John 3:34).  So ask and receive, and then ask again.  There is plenty of Holy Spirit to go around.  God will fill you to overflowing.  You can’t receive it without measure.  I can’t receive it without measure.  We have a limitation, but the Holy Spirit does not.  Ask God to fill you to the full brim, overflowing with His Holy Spirit so that you can do your job.

So, first, you must ask.  But, second, you must obey God.  The Holy Spirit is not given to you so that you can do your thing.  You must obey God to receive the Holy Spirit and to put the Holy Spirit to maximum use (Acts 5:32; Rom. 8:9).  If you are born again, the Holy Spirit dwells in you in some measure, but you can quench the Holy Spirit.  You can quash His work by your sin, by your laziness, or by your disobedience (1 Thess. 5:19; Eph. 4:30).  So obey God.  Live a holy life.  Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit.  Don’t impede the work of the Holy Spirit.  Instead, obey God and fan into flame the Spirit’s fire by your obedience and by your earnest desire to do more and more for God and for His glory.  Then, you will be full of the Holy Spirit, like Peter.  Remember him, the timid fisherman?  If you read the gospels up to the time when Jesus is crucified and risen again, it seems that Peter cannot do anything right.  And even when he does something right, he soon makes a huge blunder.  He is a timid fisherman.  He is cowering by the fire under the questioning of a mere servant girl.  And yet he becomes the bold man, preaching and proclaiming Christ to the crowds in the temple and to the mighty Sanhedrin.  What is the difference?  The Holy Spirit made the difference.  He did for Peter, and he can for us.  The same Holy Spirit that made Peter so powerful is available to you, men of God; available to help you to do your job, to manage your household well.  So ask and obey, and receive the Holy Spirit, and put Him to work as God commands to manage your household well.

The third way is to teach, train, rebuke, and correct.  Being saved and full of the Holy Spirit means you are ready.  Now you must do the job.  Full of the Holy Spirit, you want to please God and manage your household well.  What do you have to do?  It is simple: You just do what God says to do: teach, train, rebuke, and correct.  Simple.  Not easy, but simple.  This especially means doing those things from the word of God (2 Tim. 3:16).

First, teach the word of God, especially to your children but also to your wives also, washing them with water through the word.  Teach the Scriptures in your household.  Literally, teach them.  Read them and explain what they mean.  That is going to require hard work because you are going to have to know what they mean to explain what they mean.  But you have lots of tools.  You have a Bible that speaks to you.  You have prayer where God will speak to you.  And if you are not sure about that, you have many books and resources, especially Daily Delight and things like that to help you.  So you read and understand the word, but then you read it to and explain it to those whom God has put under you.  That is all I am doing this morning.  We read the word and now I am attempting to explain it to you.  Do this in miniature in your household, which is a little church.

Teach them the Scriptures literally, but then teach your children and your household to reason from the Scriptures.  Teach them to approach every situation from a biblical perspective.  Make the biblical perspective your default.  Ask yourself, and teach them to ask themselves, “What is the will of God in this situation?”  This teaching that I am speaking of can take place at set times in your homes: household devotions in the morning and in the evening.  Or you can use “teachable moments,” certain teachable moments where it is not the morning devotions in your household, but something happens and, after it is done, you can stop and teach: “Here is the lesson God is speaking to us from this.  Here is the application from the word.”

Do it at set times, but also do it just in daily life.  The Bible teaching is not just for Sunday morning at 9 and 10 and 5.  It is not just for Wednesday night.  It is not just for home groups.  It is not just for household devotions.  It is all of life.  What does God say?  Teach these things to your children—when?  As you sit at home and walk along the road (Deut. 6:5), just talking about daily life together, and reasoning from the Scriptures.  If you spend any time with Pastor Mathew, you know that this is what he does all the time.  He is teaching as he sits at home, as he walks along the road, as he comes to the office, as he comes in and as he goes out.  Follow that example yourself.  This is what Jesus did with His disciples.  Yes, there were key moments of teaching—the Sermon the Mount and so on—but there were other times, as they walked around the temple or as they walked along the road, where Jesus taught them about the things of God.  Follow that example.

Notice that you men of God, you husbands, you fathers—you are the ones who must do this.  It is a job God gives to you personally.  It says, “Teach them to your children.”  Ephesians 6:4: “Fathers, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”  Fathers must do it.  Proverbs 4:20: “My son, pay attention to my word.”  It is your job to teach.  It is not someone else’s job.  The word of God—God Himself speaking—says, “You do it.”  He doesn’t say, “Cause it to be done.”  He doesn’t say, “Make sure somebody does it.”  He says, “You do it.”  Do not think this is the job of the church.  Do not think this is the job of the Christian school or even the job of your godly wife.  We all have a role to play, but our role is in support of you, men.  Do your job.  We are supplemental.  You can think of us as force multipliers.  But you have to do the job yourself, or the things that we do are not going to be enough to make the difference.  It is principally your job.  So do your job.

Of course, you must teach them the gospel as a matter of first importance.  Your children are sinners.  Our God is holy and our God is just, and so your children by nature deserve the full wrath of God, just like you and just like me.  And there is for them one way to be saved, just like you and just like me.  They must trust in Jesus Christ alone.  So don’t skip that step.  You teach them to sit in the right place and be quiet at the right time and clean the dishes and do the table and obey you with proper respect, but if you don’t teach them Christ as of first importance, all those other things will fade away in time.

So teach them about the gospel as of first importance, but also teach them how then should we live.  Teach your boys to be men, under authority but also active, bold, and leading in the home and in the church and in the workplace, living in righteousness.  Teach your daughters to be women of God, Proverbs 31 women: holy, pure, intelligent, educated, hardworking, God-glorifying Proverbs 31 women.  That’s your job too, men.  It doesn’t say, “Teach your sons.”  It doesn’t say, “Raise up your sons.”  It says, “Raise up your children.”  It says, “Train up your children.”  That includes your daughters as well.  It says, “Fathers, teach your children,” not your sons.  Girls also need a man, a father, to raise them up in the fear and instruction of the Lord.

Teach your children to work six days and to give double honor to God’s ministers who are worthy of it (1 Tim. 5:17).  Teach them to provide for themselves and to care for others, and to love and to serve and to lead.  Teach them thousands of other practical things: how to do the laundry and change the tire on a car and do the dishwasher and balance their checkbooks and all that good stuff.  But teach them how God wants them to live in proper order.  Here is a secret: Your children are not born knowing the way.  They are not born wanting to do the way.  They are sinners, and so we must teach them God’s way.  “Here is what the Lord requires of you.”  Teach them the way they should go because God commanded.  So the first way is to teach.

The next way is to train them in righteousness.  Think of this as teaching in action.  Teaching is telling but training is showing how to do and making them capable of actually doing it.  Train them first by doing it yourself.  When I first went to trial in a case, I went and watched a great lawyer named Matt Segal try a case in front of the same judge.  And two things I learned: 1) It didn’t look that hard; and, 2) the proper way to do certain things by going and watching a person who was expert in doing it.  So be that person for your children.  Go and do in an excellent way so they know the excellent way to be a father and husband, and so that your girls know what a Christian father and Christian husband should look like.

Train them by doing it yourself.  If you are a slob, you cannot train someone else to be clean.  You cannot give what you do not have.  If you don’t obey your authorities—your boss, the police, your pastor, and so on—if you do not seek counsel, if you do not make church and personal devotions a priority, you cannot train someone else to do that.  (GTB)  You can teach them to do it, but you cannot train them to do it.  You can tell them to do it, but you won’t be able to show them how to do it.  You will not be showing them how to do it.

Train them by modeling the behavior.  But then train them also by giving them opportunities to engage in that behavior for themselves.  Training requires a chance to actually go and try to do the thing.  So do not retard your children’s ability by doing everything for them.  I understand the impulse, but it is not good.  They have to learn themselves how to do it.  Give them the chance to succeed and give them the great, great gift of failure.  Do it in small matters where the price of failure is relatively minor.  It is better to get a “D” or an “F” in sixth grade than in college or on your first job.  If they are not doing the work in junior high, let them suffer the consequences of not doing the work.  Don’t rush in and do the work for them and save the day.  You are training them, all right, but you are training them that someone else will take care of it and that there are no consequences for your poor actions.  Eventually, they will contact reality.  Let them contact that reality early, where the price of failure is relatively small.  If you give your children the opportunity to fail—this is a warning—they will fail.  It is painful to watch.  I don’t like it any more than anyone else.  But let it happen so that they may learn from their failures.

Train them in the way to do.  If you only teach but do not train, you are doing them a great disservice.  It is unreasonable to expect those under your care to be able to do something well if you have not walked them through what they need to do and showed them how to do it.  You may look at them and scoff at their failure, but it is your problem if you have not taught them how to do it.  It is not that they are bad students; it is because you have been a bad teacher.  You have not let them try and fail and try again.  So put your teaching into action with hands-on training and let them succeed or fail.  Then let them learn the lesson and improve for the next time.  That is teaching and training.

Third is rebuke.  Rebuke is “You did it wrong.”  Say, “You did it wrong” when they do it wrong.  This is an important step, and you cannot learn without rebuke.  Now, the harshness or the degree of the rebuke is going to depend on the nature of the violation.  A simple error deserves a small rebuke.  But contempt or carelessness deserves a larger rebuke.  You don’t go crazy when they do it wrong the first time, but give a rebuke.  You must rebuke.  To not rebuke means you are living in unreality.  If you think that your child is perfect or not in need of rebuke, you are deceived and you are training that child to be deceived.  We have a world full of “snowflakes” who think that they are perfect and wonderful.  And if you ask yourself why, it is because we told them so.  Everybody gets a medal at the Turkey Trot, right?  Some people get a slightly larger medal, but everybody gets a medal.  We are all winners is the idea.  But that is not true; we are not all the same.  Some things we do well, and some things we don’t.  We are doing a great disservice especially to our children if we tell them that they are perfect and not in need of any improvement.

As I said before, the problem is that the boy or that girl will eventually come into contact with reality, and they will be very, very surprised at the results.  It will violate all their expectations when the boss says, “You did a bad job.”  It will violate all their expectations when they get pulled over by the police officer and they don’t obey the police officer and they end up in restraints.  So rebuke.  Tell your children, “You did wrong,” when they do wrong.  This is an act of love.  Psalm 141:5: “Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness; let him rebuke me—it is oil on my head.”  Our children will learn what they probably already suspect: I am not perfect.  But they will also learn: I can do well by God’s grace and with God’s help, working out what He is working in me.

Especially make sure to rebuke any disobedience or any contempt displayed for your authority.  Your children’s approach to all authorities in life will be based primarily on their experience with you.  Teach them to respect and obey you, and they will respect and obey the boss, the husband, the pastor, the police, and even their God.  And they will be blessed.  But teach them that contempt and disobedience are tolerable or acceptable, and they will show contempt for the boss, contempt for the husband, contempt for the pastor, contempt for the police, and even contempt for God.  And they will be cursed.  So teach them what to do, train them and show them how to do it, and rebuke them when they do not do it.

Fourth, correct.  This is simple enough.  Correction comes after the rebuke.  Rebuke is, “You did wrong.”  Correction is pointing them back in the right way.  It is showing them back to the way that they should go.  You can think of it as re-training after the error.  So we don’t just give up at the first rebuke or the second rebuke or even the third rebuke.  We patiently show the right way again and again, helping them to learn from their mistakes.  And if we grow frustrated or tired of doing so, let us remember that our heavenly Father has greater patience with us, digging around the tree one more year.

We must do all these things: teaching, training, rebuking, and correcting, to keep on managing our households well.  When our children are small, we sometimes think, “Only a few more years and we will basically have them on the way.”  Then they hit the teenage years, and we think, “Only a few more years and we will have them on the way.”  That is where I am now.  I suspect in a few years I will learn there are yet more roads to travel with them.  It’s a 20 years to life sentence.  It is a long-term teaching and re-teaching of our children.  So let us persevere in teaching, training, rebuking, and correcting, all in love, all from the word, all for their good and for the glory of God.

II. Jacob’s Failure

So how about old Jacob in Genesis 34?  What was his grade?  This is his report card for how he has done in training up his children.  The grade is F minus.  Let us start with Dinah.  First, she goes out to visit the women of the land (Gen. 34:1).  Stop and ask yourself right there: What does this have to do with godliness, to go out to visit the women of the land, the Shechemite women?  Maybe she went out to see what is the fashion and what is the style.  Maybe she went out to find a gossip partner or a friend to chit-chat with.  Whatever it was, it was nothing to do with godliness.  It was nothing to do with evangelism, which does not seem to really have existed at the time.  It seems more to do with, “How can I be like everyone else?”  when of course we are to be different.

It has nothing to do with truth either.  Shechem saw her and took her and violated her.  Ask yourself: How did it happen?  She went out to visit the women of the land.  She said it was girls.  And yet somehow she ends up with this Shechem in a compromising position.  It seems likely she was doing more than visiting the women of the land.  Matthew Henry puts it that she went out to see but also to be seen.

Jacob should have said, “No.”  Jacob should have said, “Do not go out and visit the Canaanite women.”  Or, if he was very gracious, he could have said, “What is your purpose in going out and visiting the Canaanite women?”  There is no good answer to that question.  But Jacob did not say “No.”  He failed to protect Dinah from Shechem, from other women, and even from herself.  It is all out of order and has nothing to do with godliness.  Either Jacob did not know what she was doing, in which case he was not managing at all, or he said, “Okay, go ahead,” in which case he was not managing well.  But it is failure all the same.  It put her in harm’s way, and harm came to her.  She was violated.  She wanted to go and so she went.  And you can say all you want that it wasn’t her fault, and maybe that is true.  But it was her problem.

How about the sons?  They showed total contempt, open contempt for Jacob.  Jacob was there when Shechem’s father comes.  Shechem rapes the girl and then he wants to get married (Gen. 34:6).  Jacob is standing right there, but who does the talking?  It is the brothers, the sons of Jacob, who do the talking (v. 13).  Jacob is supposed to be the head.  He should be leading.  He should tell them to shut their mouths.  “I am in charge.”  But instead, the children are leading, and Jacob stands there dumb.  So they lie to these Shechemite men: “Well, you know, it is a matter of our religion.  We can’t . . . I mean, otherwise, we would be happy to do it.  But if you guys go ahead and get circumcised, then we’ll have a bargain” (see verses 14–15).  And Jacob either goes along with this bargain or he doesn’t know about the bargain.  It is bad either way.

You could actually read this to say that Jacob agreed to give Dinah in marriage on condition of circumcision.  I am not sure if that is the best reading, but you could read it that way.  That would be a major violation of God’s law which said not to intermarry with them.  But either way, Jacob’s sons commit terrible murder and genocide after tricking the Shechemites into getting circumcised.  They killed every male (v. 25).  Simeon and Levi go out and do this.  Maybe most or all the other sons were involved too.  It is not clear.  They kidnap all the women.  They take the children as slaves (vv. 27–29).  This is way, way, way out of order.  Death for the rapist?  Sure (Deut. 22:25).  But what about these other men and male children?  What did they do?  They didn’t deserve to die for this.  The wives and the daughters of Hamor the Hivite and his clan—they didn’t deserve to be enslaved for this.  They didn’t do anything.  Jacob’s sons murder all these people.  It is all out of their own vengeance and all out of their own pride (v. 34).

Jacob has two problems here.  First, he may be unaware of what is going on.  That is not managing.  Pastor Mathew said that there are three kinds of people: those who make things happen, watch what happened, or wonder what happened.  So Jacob is either in the “watch what happened” or “wondered what happened” category here.  He is not making things happen.  They did this without telling him and showed him total contempt.

Second problem: He raised young men who thought this behavior was acceptable or good, and even after they did it.  That’s a hard heart.  You might do something in a moment of fury, although that certainly does not look like the case here.  This looks premeditated.  But you might do something ahead of time, going out and killing tens and hundreds and maybe even thousands of people.  You might do that in a rage in the moment and have regret later.  But they don’t have any regret.  When Jacob goes to them and says, “Why did you do this?  You made a big problem,” what was their response?  “Hey, should we let our sister be treated like this?”  To go and kill many people—that is a hard heart—to do it to helpless victims who were trying to recover from the circumcision.  It wasn’t a fair fight.  This isn’t what the Bible teaches.  Where did they get this idea from?

The deceiving part of it, we can be very sure, they got from Jacob.  And the murdering part of it?  This simply looks like Haran-inspired morality, a product of decades in pagan Haran paying off in murder back in Shechem.  And the last part of the hard-heartedness was that they did this all by using the name of God.  That is extremely wicked.  “Go and be circumcised, and then we will accept you into our family.”  They used the name of God to violate God’s law, committing horrible murder.

It seems that even worse was happening in this household.  In Genesis 35:2, Jacob commands his household, “Get rid of the foreign gods.”  You cannot get rid of the foreign gods unless you have foreign gods.  They had them.  No respect for God, no respect for Jacob.  They had foreign gods, idols, in their household and Jacob seems to have known about it but done nothing about it until Genesis 35.  We know they at least had them since they left Haran in Genesis 31, and they probably worshiped the foreign gods before that back in Haran.  So, you see, it is all out of order.  None of this has anything to do with God’s household order that I spoke about before.

Jacob is failing to manage his household well, and the result is disaster.  Dinah is raped and defiled.  His sons are murderers.  There is household idolatry and old Jacob is back to living in fear again.  It is the pattern of his life.  He ripped off his brother; he lived in fear.  He ripped off Laban; he lived in fear.  He went back to face his brother; he lived in fear.  He mismanaged his household in Shechem and where does he find himself now?  Living in fear.  He says that his sons made him a stench to the other Canaanite people, and “if they join forces against me, just like you joined forces against the Hivites and they attack me, I and my household will be destroyed.”  Mess for Dinah, mess for the sons, mess for the entire household.

Application

What is the application for us?  Understand that mismanagement makes mess.  I don’t know exactly what happened in Jacob’s household.  We have speculated.  I don’t know.  But I know it was not good.  Perhaps he was too busy defrauding Laban to raise up his children in the fear and instruction of the Lord.  Maybe he was too busy making babies with four wives or, more likely, dealing with the exponentially increased disputes and bickering of four wives and 12+ children all living in close quarters.  Maybe he was too busy guarding the flocks and the herds, making money.  Maybe he failed to guard against the worldly influence during their “lost years in Haran.”  Maybe he wanted the kids to like him: Mr. Softie.  This is the problem of our age.  Maybe he was simply passive and lazy.  It was easier to just let things go.  Maybe he convinced himself that it is love to let them do what they want to do.

Whatever his reasons for failing to manage his household well, he failed to manage his household well.  He thought he will do another way and it will be better, or at least easier for him.  Well, it was not better.  It was bad all the way around, himself included.  It is always that way when we do our own way, when we try to improve on God’s order.  Let me say, men, the devil will lie to you and tell you the same thing in our day and age.  “Managing well is too arduous a task.”  “Managing well is beyond you.”  “You are not capable.”  Or he will tell you, “Well, you tried, but give up because it isn’t working.”  Or that you have better or more important things to do.  Or that just a little lower standard will be easier for you.  These are lies.

Some ways may seem easier or better in the moment.  It may even be easier in the moment.  But I ask you, was it easier for Jacob in the long run?  The answer is no, and it will not be easier for you either.  Don’t end up with your daughter defiled, with your sons murderers, with your house full of idols.  Don’t end up under threat for your very life and for all the people of God.  The reality is that God’s way is always better.  So let us trust and obey the Lord.  Let us never lean on our own understanding.  Let us rise up as men, govern our households for God’s glory, and be full of the Holy Spirit power to receive God’s blessing and God’s benediction.

Rise up.  Rise up, O men of God.  For yourselves, for your wives, for your families, for your church, and for your God.  Rise up and rule and govern and manage your own household well.  You will be blessed, all in your household will be blessed, your society will be blessed, your pastor will be blessed, your church will be blessed, and God will be blessed and glorified by your obedience.  Let’s do the job that God gave us for our good and His glory.  Amen.