SONS, DAUGHTERS AND WORLDLINESS

(Genesis 34:1-31)

Emailsanta.com gets over a million submittals each year. One read, “Dear
Santa, Mommy and Daddy say I have not been very good these past few
days. How bad can I be before I lose my presents?” – Christian, age 7.
That kid was ahead of his age. How close to the edge can I come and still
get the goodies? Question: What do you think your children will be like
when they reach their teen-age years? Will they be focused on how far
they can go without incurring trouble – or will they be focused on seeing
how close to the Lord they can stay? Now let me suggest that who you are
as a Christian will have a lot to do with the answer to that question.

The passage we want to look at this morning is tough, but God put it there
for a reason. The Bible does not cover the flaws of its heroes, so this is a
rough passage. But II Tim 3:16, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and
profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in
righteousness.” All Scripture is profitable. And this passage illustrates the
truth of James 4:4, “Do you not know that friendship with the world is
enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world
makes himself an enemy of God.” Most Christians are worldly -- friends of
the world. They want God, but they want what the world has to offer
equally or more – so they are looking for the edges. How bad can I be and
still be in with God? But in so doing they make themselves enemies of
God, and that comes with a price.

Iain Murray, a Scottish theologian, defines worldliness as “departing from

God. It is a man-centered way of thinking; it proposes objectives which
demand no radical breach with man’s fallen nature; it judges the
importance of things by the present and material results; it weights
success by numbers; it covets human esteem and wants no unpopularity;
it knows no truth for which it is worth suffering.” I would summarize that
to say worldliness is being satisfied with what this world has to offer.

Worldliness in you will come home to roost in our children. “Children

will become what the parents are.” Not what they say, but what they are.
And worldliness in the parents will be multiplied in the children. This
sordid story of Jacob’s family illustrates that for us. Quick background.
Jacob was sent away from home when he and his mother connived to cheat
his twin brother Esau out of his birthright and blessing. He went to Uncle
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Laban’s and for the next 20 years these two labored to cheat and outwit one
another. Remember that Jacob worked 7 years to earn Laban’s younger
daughter, Rachel, as his wife. He awoke the next morning to find Laban
had given him his older daughter, Leah, instead. So, he worked another 7
years for Rachel. Jacob, meanwhile, cheated to keep the best livestock.

Eventually, God told Jacob, “Go home.” And off he went. Despite his fears
he was warmly received by brother Esau and promised to join him in Seir.
But he didn’t. He stopped in Shechem -- a prosperous community at the
convergence of 11 roads – healthy for commerce and pasture-land. Jacob
was living high – freed at last from Laban, at peace with Esau. He could
take his ease. But as with so many of us, ease leads to satisfaction with
what the world has to offer and that happened to Jacob. His priorities got
screwed up. So, now as we approach chapter 34 of Genesis, I want us to see
the characteristics of worldliness that defined his life here and the
consequences to his children. The price was high. It always is.

I. Characteristics of Worldliness
A. Compromise
First, we see compromise. Jacob thought he could have God and have the
world too. So he stopped 50 miles short. This despite God telling him
specifically in Gen 31:3, “Return to the land of your fathers and to your
kindred, and I will be with you.” Jacob never made it. He found a place
that looked good to him and stopped. He broke his promise to his brother
and he broke his word to God. He compromised, and he paid a heavy price.

Are we compromising? Are we where God wants us to live, doing the job
He wants us to do? Are we faithful in our devotion time, or do we plead
that we are too busy? Has God called us to minister somewhere but we,
like Moses, are telling Him that we are not properly equipped? Are we the
living sacrifice that God asks for in Rom 12, or is God second, third or even
a poor fourth place in your life? Have you settled 50 miles short of God’s
will? I appreciate so much the people in our church who have responded to
God’s call to be involved in ministry. But I know there are others that God
is calling and yet there is no response. We need people for outreach
projects, technical projects. We need praise team members who will smile
and praise lead us all in praise of God. I love our teachers, but we will need
more. I am praying that God will unleash some male teachers. We need
our kids to know that church isn’t just for old ladies and kids. My most
profound influence as a child was a couple of times when my dad taught my
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Sunday school class. I can’t remember anything he said, but I remember
that he was there, and that he cared, and that he prayed for his class. First
sign of a worldly existence – willingness to compromise – to settle short of
what we know to be God’s will for us.

B. Compliance (mental assent, no leadership)

A second sign of worldliness is compliance – just going along. Jacob’s
daughter Dinah seeks out the society of her new community. She is
somewhere between 14 and 16 at this time, and tragedy strikes. Verse 2,
“And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land
(making Hamor a governor or ruler), saw her, he seized her and lay with her
and humiliated her (the language clearly indicates he raped her). 3 And his
soul was drawn to Dinah the daughter of Jacob. He loved the young woman
and spoke tenderly to her. 4 So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying,
“Get me this girl for my wife.” Such a sordid tale. Jacob hears about it but
defers action until his sons come home. Jacob defers a lot here.

So, Hamor comes to talk to Jacob and also meets the sons, brothers of
Dinah. Does he come to apologize? For what? He sees not problem in
what happened. He has a business proposition! His son wants this girl as a
wife; he demands no dowry; in fact, he will pay them. Furthermore, he
suggests that Jacob and sons dwell there, intermarry and, in verse 10, “and
the land shall be open to you. Dwell and trade in it, and get property in it.”
Jacob heard of all this, but he disappears from the scene altogether in what
follows. I suspect, though the Bible doesn’t tell us, that he is back figuring
out how he’s going to profit from all this. He becomes passive when his
leadership is most needed and the boys take over. Verse 13, “The sons of
Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully, because he had
defiled their sister Dinah. 14 They said to them, “We cannot do this thing, to
give our sister to one who is uncircumcised, for that would be a disgrace to
us. 15 Only on this condition will we agree with you—that you will become
as we are by every male among you being circumcised. 16 Then we will give
our daughters to you, and we will take your daughters to ourselves, and we
will dwell with you and become one people. 17 But if you will not listen to
us and be circumcised, then we will take our daughter, and we will be
gone.” In other words they said, “Listen, guys, we’d really like to do this,
but it’s against our religion to intermarry with someone who is not
circumcised. Do that and we are good to go.”

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And apparently Shechem was so enthralled with Dinah that he was willing
to do anything. He and his father go back to talk the villagers into this, on
the promise that they will eventually get Jacob’s livestock and property.
The villagers comply, but on the third day when they are sore and disabled
from the process, Simeon and Levi, two full-brothers of Dinah, go and kill
all the males and plunder all that is left. Murder and theft are on their hands
-- Jacob is nowhere to be seen. Dinah had been violated, but murder was
not the answer. Two wrongs never make a right. Jacob should have
focused on holding Shechem responsible and defending Dinah’s honor.
Instead, his focus was financial prosperity – he was screwed up priorities,
no leadership, and compliant with the world – all with disastrous results.

It isn’t hard to let the world set our agenda, is it? I think I’ve quoted Kent
Hughes before, but he says this, “I am aware of the wise warnings against
using words like “all,” “every,” and “always” in what I say. Absolutizing
one’s pronouncements is dangerous. But I’m going to do it anyway.
Here it is: It is impossible for any Christian who spends the bulk of his
evenings, month after month, week upon week, day in and day out
watching the major TV networks or contemporary videos to have a
Christian mind. This is always true of all Christians in every situation!
A Biblical mental program cannot coexist with worldly programming.”
Who sets the agenda in your home, and who does that agenda honor?

C. Conformity (physical assent)

But Jacob wasn’t just mentally compliant – he was ready to conform. He

finally appears in verse 30. Amazingly he doesn’t protest the murder, only
that it will make him personally onerous in the land and he fears attack.
Then comes the bros telling phrase in verse 31, “But they said, “Should he
treat our sister like a prostitute?” They recognized that Hamor’s proposition
for what it was -- a payoff for Dinah’s rape, treating her like a prostitute.
Jacob, favoring the deal, was no better. He had gone from compromise to
compliance (mental assent) to conformity – ready to live like the world.
But friendship with the world is enmity with God, and He says in Rom
12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the
renewal of your mind.” The world has a conformity mold that says, “Act
like me, look like me, think like me. Take my values, my ways of thinking,
my methods and I will give you success.” We conform because we don’t
want to be different. We’re cowards. But Beloved, worldliness has its
price. Jacob paid dearly in the lives of his children.
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 II. Cost of Worldliness
A. Loss of Righteous Virtue

First, there was the loss of his daughter’s virtue. Jacob was where he did
not belong, doing what he should not be doing and his daughter paid. Ten
years in Shechem. Ten years of worldliness in Jacob’s heart and life shaped
events that followed. Dinah was the daughter of Leah -- the plain wife, the
less loved wife. Leah was the one who had to bargain for the favors of her
husband. She was not as beautiful as Rachel and so not as favored, and
everyone in the household knew it. And Dinah, watching all this, got the
message loud and clear. It’s all about outward appearance. Her rejected
mother pointed her in the direction of physical beauty all her life. The
devastating message Dinah got: be beautiful. Be attractive. Above all – be
desirable. But beauty is never an end in itself, is it? Beauty has to be
appreciated. Beauty requires affirmation and wants to show off. And so
Dinah went to visit the women of the land. But why do girls visit other
girls? Why? Why to meet their brothers, dear people. Surely we have all
learned that by now! Dinah eventually hooked up with the most eligible
bachelor in Shechem – the son of the governor.

The Canaanites were some of the worst people who ever lived. That’s why
Abraham had sent back home to find a wife for Isaac – why Jacob had been
sent back home to find his wife. Intermingling verboten! But Jacob places
his tent among them and allows his inexperienced 15 year old daughter to
go exploring. And Dinah could not distinguish between the sparkle of true
love and the tinsel of the world’s lustful substitute. She bought what she
saw at home – that outward beauty was everything. Her ability to attract
attention was her life; she did, and it led directly to her being violated. Date
rape.

Worse yet -- Dinah wasn’t going home. Jacob was a little worldly, Dinah
went all the way. Look at verse 26, “They (Dinah’s brothers) killed Hamor
and his son Shechem with the sword and took Dinah out of Shechem’s
house and went away.” See that little word “took”? It’s the same Hebrew
word as the word “seized” in verse 2. First she was taken by Shechem, but
she went all the way over and had to be taken back by her brothers. Jacob
was a little worldly; Dinah went all the way. Jacob camped just outside of
town. Dinah went downtown – and she stayed.

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Does it make you wonder how many young women had been sacrificed to
their parents being satisfied with what this world has to offer – buying into
a world system that says how you look is who you are? It’s like the sign in
a Paris hotel, “Please leave your values at the front desk.” The world says,
Leave your values at home. Ever laugh at the phrase, “What happens in
Vegas stays in Vegas”? Did you know that’s the catchphrase on secular
college campuses? This is four years of time out. What happens here
doesn’t count. You are here to experiment with life. What you do here
stays here. And guess what they are doing? Somehow we have come to
the place where we don’t even think of pre-marital sex as a loss of virtue.
It’s no big deal. Everyone does it. There is no word of apology from
Shechem and Hamor when they offer their deal. Everybody does it. No
big deal. But it is a big deal -- to God. Verse 5 says that Jacob heard that
his daughter Dinah had been defiled -- “defiled” -- same word as used
elsewhere to speak of the desecration of the temple of God. It’s a big deal
with God. Worldliness in parents leads to loss of virtue in kids.

B. Lawless Revenge

A second cost that Jacob paid was that his boys took lawless revenge. With
murder in their hearts, they hatched a clever scheme. So where did these
boys get the idea of using deceit to take the law into their own hands? You
don’t suppose they had been watching their father all those years and picked
up a thing or two, do you? Of course, Jacob never killed anyone, but all his
boys did was take HIS OWN LIFE one step further? Were they justified
in abhorring their sister’s violation? Absolutely. Did that give them leave to
murder? Of course, not. But what they had seen Jacob do in little ways,
they now did in big way. The children become what the parents are – only
a little more so.

I’ll tell you what – these boys were glad later on that there was one of them
who did not follow suit. These guys later sold their half-brother Joseph into
slavery in Egypt. But, of course, later, due to famine, they had to move to
Egypt, became completely dependent on Joseph and when Jacob finally
died, they were worried. They were concerned that now Joseph would take
revenge – so much so that we read in Genesis 50:18: “His brothers also
came and fell down before him and said, “Behold, we are your servants.” 19
But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? 20 As
for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it
about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. 21 So do not
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fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” Revenge belongs to God.
Rom 12:19: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of
God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
Listen – our attitudes of bitterness, hatred, revenge, invite our children to
take it to the next level. Worldliness leads to rebellion in children.
C. Legalistic Religion
Another price Jacob paid was that his children became religious. You say
religious? What’s wrong with that? Just this -- God hates religion.
Religion is man putting a good face on his failures rather than confessing
sin. These young men used religion – something they could never have
done had their faith been genuine. They said, “Listen our religion
demands circumcision,” which it did -- but they were just using it as a ruse
to disable their enemies. Where did they ever get that concept of faith?

Look at 33:18: “And Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem, which is in
the land of Canaan, on his way from Paddan-aram, and he camped before
the city. 19 And from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, he bought for a
hundred pieces of money the piece of land on which he had pitched his tent.
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There he erected an altar and called it El-Elohe-Israel.” Jacob raised an
altar. What’s wrong with that? Nothing, except that he was not where
God had told him to go. He was outside God’s will; he knew it; and he
erected an altar to ease his conscience. He was a true believer, but he was
using his faith. And guess which half of that equation his boys picked up?
They felt no compunction about using the religious rite of circumcision as
part of their deceit. Their faith was without content; theirs was a religion,
not a relationship. That’s where worldliness leads the next generation.

Lot exemplifies this. Peter tells us in II Peter 2:8: “8) (for as that righteous
man [Lot] lived among them [people of Sodom] day after day, he was
tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and
heard).” He was a tormented believer, but he never left. So when God sent
messengers to get him out and the men of the city wanted to rape them, Lot
offered his own daughters, though they didn’t take him up on it. He was in
the world up to his eyeballs. And when he finally got away and found
himself living in a cave with his two daughters – those girls, fearing they
would never marry and have children, got him drunk, seduced him and
came up pregnant. They took their cue from what Dad did, not what he
said. And while evil vexed his righteous soul, it didn’t bother them at all.
They had “next generation religion”; it was without content.
D. Lack of Repentance
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Another price that Jacob paid – his sons were not repentant. Jacob
confronts his sons in verse 30, “30 Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi,
“You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of
the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites. My numbers are few, and if they
gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and
my household.” 31 But they said, “Should he treat our sister like a
prostitute?” His confrontation is a disaster. He cares more for his own
reputation and safety than for the fact that his sons are murderers. Is it any
wonder then that their response is a self-righteous excuse rather than
repentance? When right and wrong doesn’t mean anything to you, you can
well expect it will mean even less to your children.

Do you confess your sin? Your children are being bombarded with the idea
that there is no such thing as sin. There is no guilt. There is only poor
self-image, irrational guilt, lack of education or a poor environment. Blame
everything but me. To the extent that your children see you buying that
logic, rationalizing your decisions, refusing to acknowledge your sin – even
toward them – especially toward them, you can expect that they will not be
repentant. Worldliness covers over sin with all manner of blame pointed
everywhere but where it belongs.
E. Loss of Relevance -- Jacob got one thing right. He did stink
among the inhabitants of an evil land. God had promised Abraham in Gen
12:3, “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will
curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Jacob’s
playing with the world had led to the exact opposite – and would until he
got back on track. Among some of the most degraded people the world has
ever known, his name was now anathema. He was worse than the worst
because of the actions of his sons. It’s almost like there is a principle – a
Christian gone bad tends to outdo even the world in his evil, and that was
surely the case here. His family had lost their relevance. Their testimony
was gone. They were just another group living for themselves, looking out
for number one – wasted lives. Worldliness leads to wasted lives in
children.

There is only one solution to this – to live in the shadow of the cross. We
must first accept Christ as Savior and Lord and then live daily for him, not
for me. Jesus said that if we want him we must deny ourselves, take up our
cross daily and follow him.

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Conclusion -- Let me close with this. You may think you can get by with
one foot in Christ and one in the world. But you cannot. And the ones
likely to pay the greatest price are your children. Beloved, be sold out to
Him. It’s the only way to live.

It’s been many years ago now, but where we lived in Orange County CA,
there was an article in the paper to this effect. One night in early June a
father was awakened by a knock on his door. Due to the lateness of the
hour, he immediately sensed something was wrong. With great reluctance
he opened the door to find two police officers. They came to inform him
that there had been an accident earlier, and his daughter, who had been to a
prom with a boyfriend, had been killed. The boy had been drunk.
At once the father began to storm around cursing the man who would sell
liquor to a minor. Finally, calming down some, he decided he needed a
little bracer himself. He went to the bar where he always kept a bottle, but
in place of the bottle he found a note: “Daddy, Tom and I decided to
borrow this bottle tonight since it’s a special occasion. We knew you
wouldn’t mind. See you soon, and Thanks. Love, Sue.”

Sons, daughters and worldliness – it’s a volatile mix. Worldly parents have
kids who are looking for the edge, not for Christ. Children become what
the parents are – only more so. Be Christ to them. Let’s pray.