Open your Bibles, if you would, please, to Genesis chapter 34. Genesis 34, if you're using that Red Pew Bible in front of you, I believe it's on page 33. Genesis chapter 34. When we get to Genesis 34, we learn this fact. The Bible is an honest book, painfully honest at times. It sets forth in bold relief the desperate reality of the human condition, even of redeemed human beings, even of Christians. Its so-called heroes and its central human figures are never whitewashed, but shown for who they were, the good, the bad, and the ugly. In the last chapter, we saw the good. We saw Esau and Jacob. Esau forgiving Jacob's deception and theft of the blessing. Jacob forgiving Esau's murderous threats. Both men came off looking pretty good. Not so in today's text. If last week was the good, then this is certainly the bad and the ugly. In fact, no one, literally no one, looks good at the end of this chapter. Even Dinah, a victim, is not portrayed very sympathetically. Now, it would be easy to skip a chapter like this, and believe me, I was tempted. A chapter like this does not inspire us like the last one did. It does not tell us of the great work of Christ on our behalf. So why do we bother? Well, because we believe the Bible, the whole Bible, to be the only infallible rule for faith and for practice. And that means that even this chapter tells us something we need to know. In it, God has either set forth what we must believe or he has illustrated the duty he requires of us. And so we trust the Holy Spirit that he will give us the message he wants us to learn from Genesis 34. Verse 1, now Dinah, the daughter of Leah, whom she had born to Jacob, went out to see the women of the land. Literally, that word is daughters. She went out to see the daughters of the land. She is hanging out with the other single ladies of Canaan. I don't know. Is she talking fashion, makeup tips? I have no idea. But the local culture should not have been what influenced her. You'll recall that her grandparents and great-grandparents despised the women of Canaan. It's why they sent back to Haran wives for their sons. These are corrupt young women, and she is chatting them up, making friends with them. Now, this is not why she will be victimized. That's a whole other problem. But as we have noted, no one in this chapter is portrayed positively. Even Dinah is seen here as mixing and mingling with the pagan culture which she was called out of. 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. I get that translation is tricky. But most English versions are a little heavy-handed right here. Let me share with you, literally, the Hebrew words that are used. Literally, Shechem saw her. So far, so good. He took her. This is exactly the same wording used of Isaac's very loving sexual relationship with his wife, Rebekah. It's not portrayed as violent at all. And so this rendering of seized her is a little over the top. And he lay with her. Now that's faithful to the Hebrew translation, but I'll remind you that is a normal Old Testament way of expressing sexual relationship, most often of a nonviolent variety. And he humiliated her. And therein lies the rub. What does that mean? Well, a sequence of verbs linked by the word and can be translated, can be interpreted in one of two ways. They can be perceived as occurring simultaneously. The child kicked and screamed. The two things are happening at the same time. But a sequence of verbs linked by the word and could also be sequential. Shore Harvest Church bought the Moose Lodge and remodeled it. You see the challenge of interpretation. I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna suggest to you that we need to understand these as sequential. I realize that the vast majority of the translations are going to render this in such a way that we're gonna want to conclude that she was raped. But I don't think that fits the rest of the text. Rather, I think what we have here is that Shechem saw her, and he took her, and he lay with her. And those things occurred consensually, willingly, that Dinah had an illicit affair with this young man. And then after he humiliated her, how? I'm going to suggest it looks like he was boasting as insensitive men might do. He was boasting to his friends, his buddies down at the local pub about his conquest of this Israelite girl who had recently moved into the neighborhood. And he took what was a private fornication on Dinah's part and he made it a public scandal and humiliated her. Now, that may have been no big deal to the Hivites, but it was a scandal for Dinah and her family. The second view, this idea that it is a consensual relationship that was then mishandled afterwards, better fits the data. It would explain, first of all, why the narrator seems so indifferent toward Dinah. why he doesn't seem to really take her feelings and her attitudes into account. Were she a rape victim, we would have expected the narrator to portray her more sympathetically. Secondly, if Dinah was raped by Shechem, why would her brothers kill all the men in the town? But if they all joined in barroom banter and publicly humiliated her, Then Simeon and Levi's actions, though still outrageous, make a little more sense. There are two more evidences for seeing this not as rape, but as humiliation through bragging, and here's one of them in verse three. And Shechem's soul was drawn to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob. He loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her. Rapists are not tender men. However, it is easy to imagine a lover coming back and apologizing for his insensitive bragging after having maybe one too many with his buds down at the pub. Dinah was not raped. She consented to an illicit relationship, assuming it would be kept secret. It went public and scandal was added to her sin, humiliating her. Nevertheless, the man she slept with, though he acted foolishly, still he loved her and wanted to marry her. Verse four, so Shechem spoke to his father Hamor saying, get me this girl for my wife. Now Jacob heard that he had defiled his daughter Dinah. But his sons were with his livestock in the field, so Jacob held his peace until they came. And Hamor, the father of Shechem, went out to Jacob to speak with him. Note the contrast between the two father figures. Hamor, the pagan prince, is active and involved as a father ought to be. Jacob, by comparison, holds his peace. And as events progress, we're going to see Jacob as timid and disengaged, his children out of his control. The pagans actually come off looking like the better family. 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. And here's that other piece of dangling evidence. How do the men of Israel hear of Dinah's humiliation? Not from her, as we're soon gonna see, she's still in Shechem's house. that Jacob and his sons know what happened to Dinah supports this view that Jacob humiliated Dinah, not by rape, but by boasting of his sexual conquest after the fact. But Hamor spoke with them saying, the soul of my son Shechem longs for your daughter. Please give her to him to be his wife. Make marriages with us. Give your daughters to us and take our daughters for yourselves. You shall dwell with us and the land shall be open to you. Dwell and trade in it and get property in it. Shechem also said to her father and to her brothers, let me find favor in your eyes and whatever you say to me I will give. Ask me for as great a bride price and gift as you will and I will give whatever you say to me. Only give me the young woman to be my wife. The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully because he had defiled their sister Dinah. The bad guys are negotiating in good faith, and the good guys are negotiating in bad faith. 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. Only on this condition will we agree with you that you will become as we are by every male among you being circumcised. 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. But if you will not listen to us and be circumcised, then we will take our daughter and we will be gone. There are two things to note here. First, do not miss the symbolism, the irony that the instrument of Dinah's defilement is also going to be the instrument of their revenge. Ponder circumcision for a moment. Also, there will be a second important point, but we will come back to that in the body of the sermon. Verse 18, their words pleased Hamor and Hamor's son Shechem. And the young man did not delay to do the thing because he delighted in Jacob's daughter. The wording suggests the enthusiasm of young love. Shechem left the meeting and immediately circumcised himself. Yikes. Forget chocolates or flowers or feats of daring do. That's a man eager to impress his affections on a young woman. Now, he was the most honored of all his father's house. So Hamor and his son Shechem came to the gate of their city and spoke to the men of their city, saying, These men are at peace with us. Let them dwell in the land and trade in it, for behold, the land is large enough for them. Let us take their daughters as wives and let us give them our daughters. Only on this condition will the men agree to dwell with us and become one people, when every male among us is circumcised as they are circumcised. And I suppose as Shechem is standing there going, and now I am also. Now how do you convince all the men of your village to be circumcised? Well, sex and money. You're gonna get a bunch of wives, you're gonna get a bunch of young girls to take as your wives to have sex with, and all of their stuff's gonna become yours. Verse 23, will not their livestock, their property, and all their beasts be ours? Only let us agree with them, and they will dwell with us. And all who went out of the gate of his city listened to Hamor and his son Shechem, and every male was circumcised, and all who went out of the gate of his city. On the third day, when they were sore, two of the sons of Jacob Notice it had been all of the sons and now it is just two of them. Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords and came against the city while it felt secure and killed all the males. They killed Hamar and his son Shechem with the sword and took Dinah out of Shechem's house and went away. Cities were relatively small back then, maybe just a few hundred people. And given the nature of families among those few hundred people, many of them would have been children and women. So we may be looking at only a couple dozen military age men. And I don't say that to lessen the sin of Simeon Levi. This is an atrocious act. But I say that to explain how it is possible that two guys can conquer an entire city. Even laid up with the recent circumcision, nevertheless, this would have been difficult had it been a city of hundreds of men. It's probably not. By the way, the other brothers, the other nine brothers, they may have had scruples about mass murder, but look what happens in verse 27. The sons of Jacob, now we're back to all 11 of them, came upon the slain and plundered the 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, all their little ones and their wives, all that was in the houses, they captured and plundered. Note the duplicity of Jacob's sons. You cannot marry our sister, but we can take your wives and daughters. It's interesting, there is no record of where Jacob's sons get their wives. Many have speculated that at least some of them came from this right here. 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. But they said, should he treat our sister like a prostitute? The son's defiance of their father reveals that Jacob is losing control of his family. And his fear of the local peoples also reveals a man who is growing weaker. Let's pray and seek guidance in understanding this difficult chapter. Lord, we know that this is your word. And so we are sure that it is infallible and authoritative. But Spirit, we may be unsure of what it is you are saying to us, what message it carries for us, your children. We are listening. Please speak to us. Either reveal yourself in this text or reveal your will for our lives. And either way, help us hear and incline us to obey and give you glory. I was 19 or 20 years old. I was working in McDonald's when I overheard an employee describing in very explicit language the sexual acts he wanted to perform on a female coworker. A half second later, with his back pinned to the freezer door, his feet six inches off the floor, he learned two important facts. First, that girl was my sister. And secondly, if he ever spoke that way again, I would render him forever unable to perform those acts. I was hot. I can feel it. I'm welling up right now just remembering it. There is no way anybody was gonna talk about my sister that way. Now, I did not murder him. I did not follow through even on my threat of bodily harm. and the manager, she really liked my sister, and so she let me off with a verbal warning, and that was that. But what if I had carried through? What if I had actually done him harm? Would I have been justified? Would that have been right? Is it okay to take that situation into your own hands and act on it? Now, on the flip side, Do we take last week's sermon and apply it to that situation? Should I have forgiven him? What is the right way to handle that situation? You know, a chapter like this one can leave us scratching our heads, asking ourselves, why is this in the Bible? Well, you know, we've been working through our catechism, even as we looked at three questions of it this morning in our order of worship. And I'll take you back to last September and question three of our catechism. It asks this question, what does the Bible primarily teach? And it gives this answer. The Bible primarily teaches what man must believe about God and what duty God requires of man. In other words, our catechism says the Bible probably is telling you one of two things. Either it's telling you what you have to know about God, about Jesus and about the salvation he offers, about his omniscience and his omnipresence and his omnipotence, these facts and realities about God so that you might glorify him rightly. And if it's not telling you that, then it's probably telling you what God requires of you, what it is that you ought to do, how you ought to live your life. That sums up what the Bible teaches. Now, does this chapter teach us about God? It's hard to see how it does. And I would argue that it falls into the second category, that somewhere in here, there is a lesson we have to learn about how we live our lives, about how we conduct ourselves as the people of God. that this shows and illustrates our duty to God. If we've already reviewed, last week's text was a living example of forgiveness in action, and it stands in stark contrast to this text. If last week demonstrated how to handle a personal offense, a personal affront, this illustrates the wrong way for society to react to sin. Now let me be clear. I'm not suggesting that the alternative to chapter 34 is chapter 33. Societies ought not to be in the business of forgiveness. We as individuals must forgive. But societies have a duty, an obligation to protect the members of their society. And if they are in the business of routinely forgiving, remember the definition of forgiveness, that you make them pay nothing for their offense, If there is no payment, no cost to a violent crime, let's assume, let's pretend this is rape. I don't think it is, but let's imagine that it is. If there is no cost to that, then it's going to run rampant in society and become more prevalent. Such a society has failed to protect the weaker members of its society. Societies should be driven by justice. even as we as individuals ought to be guided by forgiveness. So while these two stories are juxtaposed, and there's been a passage of some time in all likelihood between these two chapters, but the reason the Holy Spirit puts these two next to each other is not so that we would see that last week is the alternative to this week, but rather that we would go, last week's how you behave as individuals, this is how you don't behave as a society. So then, what should have happened? Now, none of us would look at this and say the brothers acted with justice. They did not conduct themselves in this society justly. Now, whether or not you can articulate the distinctions, the finer points between revenge and justice, still, I think most of us would look at this and go, that's revenge, not justice. And so one of the things I want to do this morning is briefly outline the distinctions between revenge and justice, because they are helpful. Having done that, I want to look a little bit about how society ought to carry out justice, how God administers justice. on the earth among us human beings. And then finally, we'll give a brief look at God's final justice in the world to come. What are the distinctions between justice and revenge? How does God administer justice in our world now? And what will God's final justice do for us? Revenge versus justice. To be sure, there's a great deal of overlap between revenge and justice. Both are described often as a wrongdoer getting what he deserves. It is equally true that some acts of revenge might prove in the long run to be fairly just, while much that passes for justice turns out not to be so at all. Nevertheless, there are some fundamental distinctions between these two. I want to look briefly at three of them. Revenge tends to be emotional. Justice should be rational. Revenge tends to be emotional. Justice should be rational. Defense attorneys will object to material that they deem inflammatory precisely because they fear it will prompt an emotional response from the jury. And judges will often uphold such an objection. because justice should be rooted in rationality. We all know that poor decisions are a common byproduct of emotion, and justice should always be a good decision. I imagine this is part of the reason we see initially all 11 of Jacob's sons are involved in the plan, but ultimately only two carry it out. With the passage of time, emotions fade. And the other nine brothers, they came to their senses, they came back to some wisdom, and they said, that's not right. That's disproportionate. That's unjust. And they did not participate in the mass murder. Not only is justice, sorry, revenge rooted in the emotion of the avenger, but it also affects the emotions of the avenger. Scientists tell us that acts of revenge actually bring that sense of joy and sense of pleasure to the avenger. But I hope I don't need to spend much time on debunking this concept. Just because something feels good doesn't mean it is good. Revenge might bring a sense of pleasure that doesn't make it appropriate. Revenge is typically emotional. Justice ought to be rational. By the way, to those of you who have young children or may have young children in your near future, be sure that your spankings, groundings, timeouts, et cetera, are administered in cold blood and not out of emotion. Your goal is the discipline of your child not personal revenge because that child embarrassed you in the store. Revenge leans on emotions. Justice should lean on rationality. Number two, revenge is usually personal. Justice should be impersonal and neutral. Revenge is done with only the avenger in mind, how it makes him or her feel. Justice is enacted with the aggrieved party in mind to be sure But it also has an eye on the wider society and how it will be affected. Justice seeks the overall good. It's clear from Simeon and Levi's response to Jacob in verse 31 that their only concern is how they come off looking. Their only concern is their own honor. Jacob, though he was woefully silent during this whole mess, He speaks about their actions there in verse 30 and how it does not protect their other sisters. Remember, Jacob has 33 total children. Don't know that they're all alive by this point, but more than the 11 we know are. They've got other sisters besides Dinah. Creating a cycle of revenge isn't going to protect them. It's put them in harm's way. Their revenge. was focused only on themselves. Justice is attentive to the larger society. We talked a little bit last week about how an unforgiving person tries to make the offender pay for their actions. That desire is almost always about how the offended party feels and is almost never focused on whether or not it's good. for the wider society, be it the church, the workplace, the family, whatever that wider society might be. Revenge looks out for one. Justice looks out for all. And not for nothing. But when we're talking about this topic of justice, it's worth thinking about how we here in the United States handle major front page crimes, whether it was the Boston massacre or the Boston Marathon bomber. What do we do? We provide those people with the best possible legal minds. John Adams in the case of the former, Judy, is it Carver or Carter? I can't remember her last name. Clark, Judy Clark in the case of the latter. Top notch attorneys, why? So that the whole world will look at that and go justice was served. They had the best of the best legal minds defending them and they were still proven guilty. Justice was served. If we, as biblically motivated, biblically driven, biblically guided Christians, understand that justice looks at the whole of society and not the individual, why don't we argue that public defender's offices ought to be staffed with those kinds of legal minds? Wouldn't our society be well served if urban youths were given that kind of legal defense? Wouldn't their own communities, their own families be forced to say, wow, that was an amazing attorney he had? He must really be guilty. True justice looks out for the wider society and not how one individual or small group of individuals feels about a situation. And don't lose sight of one of the most famous court cases ever. We often think of Solomon's threat to divide the baby. And we think, oh, how clever. At a time before paternity test, at a time before DNA test, at a time before blood test, Solomon came up with this great, clever way to figure out whose baby it was. We forget this. The king himself was concerned that a prostitute get justice. The wisdom of Solomon was not the way he solved the case. The wisdom of Solomon was that he took up the case. Justice must be concerned with the wider society and not individual revenge. Number three, revenge fosters cycles. Justice favors closure. Whether it's the Hatfields and the McCoys, or modern-day Israel and Palestine, revenge is about one side acting in a way that makes them feel good and maybe seems good to them, and then the other side feels the need to match or even one-up them, and it never ends. And this was precisely Jacob's concern, that the surrounding peoples would be inclined to seek revenge for the revenge his sons enacted. Justice may not always satisfy the aggrieved party, but that may be the problem of the aggrieved party. In other words, the goal of justice is to arrive at a place where the rest of society, the bulk of society, the spectators, if you will, they all look at what is done and agree that was reasonable, that was fitting, that was appropriate, that met the requirements, the ethical and moral requirements of justice. Because it is personally emotional, revenge tends to be disproportionate. For example, killing all the men in a city when only one of them has defiled and humiliated your sister. It is this disproportionality which fosters the cyclical nature of revenge, which is, of course, the reason behind the principle of lex talianus, an eye for an eye. We tend to look at that and go, that's a reason to exact more out of a person. But it was actually put in place to limit revenge. Don't go over the top. Do not administer justice that takes more than what is owed. Revenge is emotional, personal, and cyclical. Justice is rational, neutral, and fosters closure. I heard a fictional TV character once sum up the two this way, and I thought it was pretty good. Revenge furthers chaos. Justice restores order. Revenge furthers chaos. Justice restores order. That's the difference between the two that we have to ask ourselves next. How does God administer justice in this world? What is the mechanism God has put in place for there to be justice? You may recall that Genesis is being written to the people as they're wandering in the wilderness. So back up to an earlier portion of their time after they left Egypt. When you get into Exodus, and you see the departure from Egypt, no sooner do they walk out of Egypt than there is this steady stream of threats to their existence. First they run into the Red Sea. Then they cross the Red Sea, and there is no drinkable water. God provides them water, now there's no bread to eat. God gives them bread, and again, they've moved on and they're without water. So God makes the water flow out of the rock. And on and on the threats go. Oh, the Amalekites attack, and they don't have any weapons. They're training as an army, and they are in danger. One threat after another to their existence before they can get to the safety of Mount Sinai. Do you remember the other threat to their existence? In that time between leaving Egypt and arriving at Mount Sinai, there is one other threat to their existence. It's Exodus chapter 18, where the people are being torn apart from inside because of a lack of justice. She stole my goat. That's not your goat. That goat has four spots. Your goat had three spots. That's not a spot. That's soot. That's my goat. Because you took my goat, I'm taking your goat, and I'm taking your chicken. You take my goat and my chicken, I'm taking your goat, your chicken, and your cow. And they're coming apart. You say, well, that's a minor thing. Oh, it's goats and chickens and animals. No, this is their livelihood. This is where they got their milk and their eggs and their meat. This is how they lived. and the people are being torn apart from inside because of a lack of justice. And Moses, at the advice of his father-in-law, says, hey, we need a court system. And forevermore, God has said that the earth should be ruled by justice through courts. It continues down to this day. Are you aware? It's taught in our membership class, but I don't know how much it actually sinks in. Are you aware that your elders, when they meet together, meet as a court of the church to administer justice in the church? That is God's mechanism for administering justice on the earth. And the members of the court are to be those who are respected in the society. Moses goes through the people and he picks the honored, the respected elders of Israel and makes them the judges and puts them into the court system of Israel. And what does Paul tell Timothy? What are the words that Paul directs Timothy when you're looking for an elder? Therefore an overseer, that is an elder, must be above reproach. She's the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach. Not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. Notice that not one of those is doctrinal test. Not one of those is about his knowledge. It's about the way he conducts his life. Does he conduct his life with honor and wisdom and dignity? Why? So that when he sits in judgment over God's people, God's people are going to be inclined to respect his judgments. God administers his justice on the earth through systems of courts that he has established. Whether it's a body of believers and the court of the church called the session, or it's a group of wider society and the court systems that God has put in place. Now, how would this have played out in our story? We've got a difficulty here in that these are two different societies. The one might not recognize the court of the other or the elders of the other. But nevertheless, what do we see? We see Hamor trying to make it work. Hamor, the elder of his society, coming and saying, let's talk this through. Let's figure it out. Let's arrive at a just solution. and Jacob is noticeably missing. Where is he in this mess? I am so thankful that the men of this church, those who do conduct their lives with dignity and wisdom, who follow biblical principles in the conduct of their everyday lives, step up when they're asked to serve as elders and deacons in our church. I have watched churches suffer because men who are otherwise seen qualified for whatever reason won't take on the difficult challenges. And the church suffers because a voice of wisdom is lost from the mix. Praise God that we have men who will answer the call when they are called. Jacob does not. He is absent. He is not there. What does he do? He shows up at the end and second guesses. the decisions of his sons. Jacob sits out of the hard work of negotiating justice and then attacks his sons for their revenge. I cannot say with any certainty that this chapter would have played out differently if Jacob had been involved. Maybe he and Hamer could have come to some agreement, maybe instead there would still have been some kind of conflict. But what we do have for sure is the emotion of youth the irrationality of hot-headed young men and revenge winning out over justice. Instead of the impersonal neutral result that might have come from a balanced decision by representatives of the wise portions of society, Simeon and Levi win the day and revenge is the result. God's administration of justice upon this earth has always been through courts composed of wise men of the society acting in cool, detached, unemotional, reasonable, impersonal, neutral, balanced ways so that order is established rather than chaos being fostered. By the way, and not for nothing, Paul reminds the Roman believers in Romans chapter 13, let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists what God has appointed. I hope and pray that you are never on the unpleasant side of a decision of any court. be it society's courts or this church's courts. But if you are, seek to accept it. Recognize in it the wisdom of God. Recognize that in that court decision is God's justice being carried out as he has ordained it to be on this earth. To simply walk away, To change churches because you don't like a decision of the elders is to say, I know better than God the way things should be done. And what if the elders make a wrong decision? And they do, by the way. They do. Not these elders here. They've never made a wrong decision. I've been at other churches and seen other elders make wrong decisions. You know, a wrong was done to Dinah, and the elder in her life, her very own father, did nothing. He did not step up and pursue justice on Dinah's behalf. When the elder, that administrator of justice, finally does speak up, his sons ignore his authority, and they do not submit. Justice was not achieved. Is it therefore then appropriate to take it into your own hands? Moments, literally a few words before Paul tells the Roman church to submit to the governing authorities, he tells them this, just a few lines earlier. Beloved, never avenge yourselves. Leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. We will mess it up. We will get it wrong. We will think that the court has mishandled its responsibility, whether it be the elders of the church or those courts of our wider society. And we will take it into our own hands to set it right. But we are not going to accomplish it. We will make it worse. God says, leave it to me. Dinah's brothers imagined that they were Dinah's only hope. That if they didn't step up and act, there was nothing that was going to be done. It was as if God doesn't exist. And by the way, did you notice, I said Jacob was missing from this chapter, do you notice who is missing from this chapter? Look at the last verse. Go to your page, go right before chapter 34 starts. The very end of chapter 33. The last word is the word God in Hebrew. El Elohi Israel. El means God. Now go to chapter 35 and look at the very first word of chapter 35. God said to Jacob. Chapter 33 ends with God. Chapter 35 begins with God and he is absolutely missing. from chapter 34. These boys have no interest in God. They have no hope that he will set things right. There is no prayer. Remember Jacob's prayer before he meets with Esau? There is no prayer. God, our sister has been done wrong. Help us make it right. Better yet, you make it right. There is no God in their revenge. More than that, The only religious reference in the chapter at all is circumcision. But they don't say to the Hivites, you need to take our faith. You need to become one with us in service to the true God Yahweh. When you have accepted that our God is the true God, then you will take on the sign of his covenant, and we will intermarry with you. No, they take a religious right and they profane it for their purposes and turn it in to something abominable to the surrounding peoples. When we talk about God's final justice, when we talk about the great throne judgment, when we talk about the end times, Do we really believe that our God will at that time make everything right? Do we really believe that he will vindicate those of us who are his? Do we really believe that he will uphold justice? You know the reason the Bible can say vengeance in the mouth of the Lord. Do not avenge yourselves for vengeance belongs to our God. And I've just sat here and told you that revenge and justice are two different things, and now God is seeking revenge? Because when you and I pursue revenge, and we act out of our emotions, out of the heat of the moment, in that moment, our true self comes spilling out, and the inner sinner is at work. When God acts in the heat of the moment, when He acts in vengeance, His inner self comes spilling out and it is pure righteousness, pure justice, absolute truth, final holiness. And He will make right all that is wrong. a great comfort to those of us who are hoping in His Son, and a great warning to any who reject the name of Jesus. God will avenge. He will set it right. They left God out of their actions. They left God out of all that they did in this chapter and believed that they had to take it into their own hands. Again, I'm not saying they should have forgiven. Individuals need to learn to forgive. Societies need to administer justice. But they should not have acted in revenge. Whether it's the court of the church or the civil and secular government, this chapter shows us how societies should not They should not act with revenge. They should not act out of emotion. They should not act out of moments of heatedness. But rather, they should act through the administration of justice. Over it all is God's promise and his warning that he will one day avenge it all in perfect justice. Let's pray. Lord, give us hearts and minds that are inclined toward justice, toward preserving and protecting society as a whole, toward administering your goodness, your ethical standard among the people who are created in your image. Let us do so not out of any hope that we will get it right, but out of a firm belief that you will one day get it right. Give us the wisdom to submit to those whom you have put over us. Give us the desire to participate rightly, fairly, appropriately. Give us patience when it seems to us that justice has not been done. Let us be people. who are individually forgiving, who are corporately just, and are both because we know you and the Christ whom you have sent. We pray this in his name, amen.