Connect with Skip - Skip Heitzig

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Connect with Skip Heitzig. We're glad you've joined
us for today's program. Connect with Skip Heitzig exist to
connect you to God's never changing truth in ever changing
times through verse by verse teaching of His Word. That's
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(00:22):
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with Skip dot com. Now let's get into today's teaching
from pastor Skip Heitzig.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Would you turn in your Bible tonight to Genesis chapter
thirty four now if you read ahead, this chapter is
a distressing kind of a chapter. In fact, as I
was reading this chapter, I thought of the term dysfunction family.
So I decided to get a working definition by a

(01:06):
pretty notable source who deals with this on what a
dysfunctional family is. Here's from one source, The definition a
dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict and misbehavior
on the part of an individual family member occurs continually
and regularly, leading other members to accommodate such actions. Well,

(01:35):
if that is the case, then welcome to dysfunction junction.
The life of the patriarchs, all of them so far,
have been dysfunctional. Remember Abraham not a pretty picture. There
was conflict within his family with his wife Sarah and
her handmaiden Hagar, and the two boys that came out

(01:56):
of that union. There was dysfunction in the life of Isaac,
their son, because Isaac had a couple of boys, Esau
and Jacob. Esau was Isaac's favorite boy. Jacob was Rebecca's
favorite boy, and the conflict developed and the dysfunction went

(02:17):
on for a lifetime. Now we get to Jacob's family
and it's like the next generation gets worse and worse
and worse. You are at dysfunction junction. It's notable because
these are the first men that God chose to form
the nation of Israel. I hope you are encouraged by that,

(02:42):
because and I'm not going to ask for a show
of hands. I was almost tempted to say, how many
of you came from dysfunctional families, many or all of
us have. Well. In tonight's study this chapter, you could
look at it in three sections. First section is rape.

(03:02):
See I told you there is dysfunction rape versus one
through five. The second section remuneration because of the rape,
verses five through twelve, and then finally retaliation by the boys.
That's the third section, verses thirteen through thirty one. And
we're going to be looking at all of them tonight. Now,

(03:24):
just go back in your mind to get a grasp
on Jacob as a person and as a father. Personally,
he was a deceiver. Collectively, as a father, he was passive.
He was passive because you remember back in chapters twenty
nine and thirty when his wives plural, he had two

(03:45):
of them, really four of them, because each of them
had a handmaiden. They were competing on who could have
the most kids, and every time one of them would
get pregnant, they would say, oh, the Lord is showing
his favor on me. Now, my husband's really going to
love me more than her. And they were competing back
and forth, even this weird mandrake thing that they had

(04:05):
going on. And during this whole competition. Jacob seems to
be totally passive, just sort of like, oh well, okay, dove,
whatever you want. Honeys plural. And we see that again
here tonight. There is passivity. Jacob was the one who

(04:26):
deceived his brother and stealing the blessing, who went and
deceived Uncle Laban when he went to padan Aram. And
now when he's coming back, he even deceives his brother again, Esau.
If you remember back, just remember in your mind, remember
when he came to meet Esau in the previous chapter,

(04:49):
and he was afraid that Esau was going to kill him,
and so he sent the family members in front just
in case he would kill them, and then at least
he could escape. When they find meet and he saw
us full of love and forgiveness, and they embrace each other.
The parting words of Jacob to his brother Esau, and

(05:10):
Esa says, come with me, my brother goes no, no, no,
you go on a head, go to Syr, go back
to your home. I'll come there and visit you later.
He doesn't do that. He doesn't even show up at Syr.
He had no intention of going there. He just said,
God bless you, I'll be there and he goes to
a different place. That is the guy that we're dealing with,

(05:32):
and we deal with him again in chapter thirty four.
Now there's a red flag. The red flag in this
chapter is the name of God does not appear, even
once it appeared previously. It will appear in chapter thirty five.
But in chapter thirty four there's no mention of the
name of God. And I would say that red flag

(05:53):
shows us that God's wisdom is not present in these
activities of the family. Do you remember the place where
God made himself known to Jacob and what that place
became known as, and it was the place that he
would eventually retreat back to. It was called Bethel. Remember
that Bethel, It met the house of God. It was

(06:14):
the place God spoke to him, and he built an
altar there at one time. To the Lord, it was
a place of intimacy and fellowship. That's where Jacob should
have gone. He should have gone back to Bethel to
meet intimately with God once again and to influence his
family and say, kids, let me tell you the story
of what happened in this place and what God has

(06:34):
done for me and for you. But he doesn't go
to Bethel. We saw in our last study or our
previous study in chapter thirty three, that he goes to
two places, one and then another place called Sukkot, and
then he later moves to a place called Shechem, Sukkot

(06:54):
and Chechem. Now he tells his brother, I'll see you
and see it. Doesn't go there. That's down south. Health
doesn't go back to Bethel, And we don't exactly know why.
Why wouldn't he go back to the place where God
spoke to him and he built an altar to the Lord,
and God made a covenant with him, the place where
he said, God is in this place. I didn't know

(07:16):
it before, but now I know it. Why didn't he Well,
we don't know. It could be this simple. It could
be that he just got tired of that place. Oh
you know, I've been there, I've done that. There's more
to see, there's more to live, and so he moves
to one place, gets bored with that, not happy there,

(07:38):
moves to the next place, thinking he's going to be
happy there. Could be as simple as that, I want
to be happy and I'm not happy here. Well, you
know what, there's an interesting truth. If you're not happy
where you are, you will not be happy where you move.
That may be a shock to some of you are

(08:00):
planning on moving because you just I just hate it here,
and i just got to move somewhere else because I'll
be happy if I do, and I've never really been
happy here. You will be as unhappy there as you
are here. And here's why, because you have to take
with you your discontented little self. You have to go
with you now. It'd be nice if you could leave

(08:23):
you behind, but you can't. And that's where the problem is.
It's not on the outside, it's on the inside. If
you're discontented now, you will be discontented there because you see,
contentment is something that doesn't come naturally, but you learn it.
You learn it. Paul the Apostle, who went from one
bad experience to another, said, I have learned, in whatever

(08:46):
state I am therein to be content. And it could
be that Jacob hadn't learned that yet. Done with Bethel,
been there, done that. I want to see Soukote and
now check them. Schham is a place where unbelievers are
hanging out. It's a pagan neighborhood. And in so moving

(09:07):
to Shechem, he will place his entire family in jeopardy. See,
that's the thing with decisions, isn't it. Whatever we decide
to do, wherever we decide to go, those that we love,
those that are a part of us, we can place
them in the place of blessing if we're in God's will,

(09:30):
or we can place them in the place of danger
if we're out of God's well jeopardy. And so we
never sin alone, but the people around us suffer as well.
I think Joanah is a good example of that, don't you.
He decided I'm done with preaching for God. I definitely
don't want to go to Nineveh. Uh Uh decides to

(09:51):
go the opposite direction and get on a little boat
and take a princess cruise and see Portugal. The mistake
is thinking that he was alone. In the episode, as
soon as he got on a boat with other people,
every crew member aboard that boat was in jeopardy. The
boat almost drowned. Everybody aboard was scared to death and

(10:14):
cried out to his own God and was mystified and
perplexed that the only person aboard not praying was the
very man who should be praying, the prophet of God, Jonah.
He placed everybody aboard. In jeopardy, Abraham decided, I'm going
down to Egypt. There's a famine in the land. He

(10:36):
placed himself, his wife because he lied about her being
his sister, and his entire retinue. In jeopardy, Jacob decides
done with Bethel, It's time for Shachem, and so he
goes there. Now, perhaps as we get into this tonight,

(10:57):
some of you men who are husbands, leaders of your home,
some of you need to get back to Bethel, the
House of God, the place of blessing, the place God
has called you to be with him, where he is
number one in your life. And perhaps He's going to
do it through this very meeting tonight. And if that's

(11:19):
the case, then it certainly wasn't in Vain that we
met tonight. It was Jesus who, in Revelation chapter two
said to the church the believers that Ephesus, remember from
where you have fallen, repent and do your first works
over again.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
You're listening to connect with skip Heisig before we return
to Skip's teaching. In his powerful book Beyond the Summer
of Love, Pastor skip Heitzig helps you understand God's plan
and his rules for relationships that flourish and reflect his
own love. And when you give a gift of twenty
five dollars or more this month to support the worldwide
ministry of connect with Skip Heitzig, We'll send you beyond

(11:59):
the Summer Love. This resource is for anyone interested in
having a successful relationship, whether you're single, searching for love,
planning to get married, or already married. This book is
a helpful guide to help your relationships flourish as God intends.
Go to connect with Skip dot com slash offer or
call eight hundred ninety two to two, eighteen eighty eight

(12:21):
and request your copy when you give twenty five dollars
or more. Now let's get back to Skip for more
of today's teaching.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Remember repent, repeat the three ares, not reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Remember repent and repeat. Do those first works over again.
And for some men, perhaps tonight, God will use this
chapter to get a hold of you and your own
spiritual values and priorities and get you back to that

(12:52):
place of blessing. Well, we begin in verse one, obviously,
and the first section is before us in the very
first few verses, and that is the rape of Jacob's daughter.
She's introduced in verse one. Now, Dinah, the daughter of Leah,
whom she had born to Jacob, went out to see

(13:14):
the daughters of the land. By this time, Dinah must
have been a teenager. Most biblical commentator scholars say she
was probably between fifteen and sixteen years of age. Kyle
and Dlitch, great scholars in the Old Testament, by comparing
this with other references in the Book of Genesis, fix

(13:37):
her age at somewhere between age thirteen and age fifteen.
She's a young woman in those days. She was of
marriageable age, but she was young. We would consider her
a child. But she's in a new place and she's
a kid. She's curious. She wants to find the other
neighbor kids right, find out who those are, other girls

(14:00):
are in the neighborhood, and play with him. However, given
the nature of the neighborhood that it is a pagan
Hivite neighborhood, you would think at least Mom would say,
you know what, you've got a whole bunch of brothers.
You're not going out alone. I want to make sure
that you have some accompaniment. But there's no indication of accompaniment.
She just goes out to see the Daughters of the

(14:22):
land verse two. And when Shechem, the son of Haymoor,
the Hivite prince of the country, saw her, he took
her and lay with her and violated her. That is,
he sexually assaulted her. He raped her. His soul was
strongly attracted to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, and he

(14:45):
loved the young woman. That this is a little bit
odd to me. He sees her, obviously there's lust involved.
He's a very aggressive young man. He violates her, forces her,
and then he he looks at her and goes, I
love her. But it says he loved her and spoke

(15:06):
kindly to the young woman. So Shechem spoke to his father.
Now Shechem is the son, Haymore is the father. The
town they live in is called Shechem, So either the
town was named after the boy or the boy was
named after the town. I think it was the first one,
because you'll notice in verse two he's called the prince

(15:29):
of the country. So obviously he was of notoriety and
very spoiled, and very petulant and very aggressive, because he
even says in verse four, notice how he talks to
his dad. So Shechem spoke to his father Haymore said,
get me this young woman as a wife. So he's
giving orders to his father. So Dinah fell in with

(15:54):
the wrong crowd. She's curious, wants to meet the other girls,
and then fall in with the wrong crowd. On her
first date with this prince charming, he rapes her and
then he says I love you and tells his dad
I love her. Now, there is a typical pattern for

(16:20):
young men. It's not always this way, but it is
often this way that young men, and I'm speaking young
worldly men, in a typical sort of way, will give
love in order to get sex. That is, they'll say
I love you, when in reality they love themselves and

(16:43):
they love what you can give to them in terms
of sexual favors. So the typical pattern is young men
will often give love in order to get sex, and conversely,
young women will often give sex in order to get
love because what they really want is what they really
want is acceptance. What they really want is friendship and intimacy.

(17:05):
But you have a guy who says, you know, I
love you, and he's saying that not because he loves her,
but because he wants sex, And so she wants to
be loved, especially when he turns on the charm, Prince
Charming becomes the prince who says, not only do I
love you, but I can't live without you. And if
you really love me, you'll give me what I want.

(17:28):
And then you discover he's not Prince Charming after all.
Verse five takes us to the second section, remuneration. And
Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah, his daughter, and
he became unglued. Oh it doesn't say that, does it. No,

(17:53):
it's interesting what it does say. In fact, I don't
know that I could have reacted this way. Now, his
sons were with his livestock on the field, so Jacob
held his peace until they came. Just well, O'll wait
till the boys get home and we'll talk this over.
Have a family. Powow. I couldn't have done that. I

(18:17):
would have found that kid. I'd have chased him down.
I certainly would have talked to his father. That would
have been my first course of action. I want to
see haymore, haymore, do you know what your son has
just done to my daughter? But he waited, he held
his peace until they came. He's maybe in shock, maybe

(18:40):
doesn't know how to act or react or respond. He
waits till the kids come home, the boys, and he
has a powwow, says then Haymore, the father of Shechem,
went out to Jacob to speak with him. So he
takes the first the initial play. And the sons of
Jacob came in from the field when they heard it,

(19:02):
and the men were grieved and very angry. Why because
someone's been in the kitchen with Dinah, because he had
done a disgraceful thing. That's what it was. It was
a disgraceful thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter,

(19:24):
a thing which ought not to be done. Now, notice
something in that last verse, the mention of Israel, not
as a person. Jacob was named Jacob and then renamed Israel. Right,
one who fights victoriously with God or prince of God.
But for the first time, and I always want to
give to you the rule of first mention. The first

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time Israel is mentioned as a nation is here. And
yet they're not a nation. Yet, they are only a
nation in terms of a group of people forming together
in a nascent state, embryonic state. And here the term,

(20:05):
though it refers to the nation of Israel, is referring
to the people, rather than the land, not the property
of Israel, not the land of Israel, but the people
of Israel, those who have a special covenant relationship with God,
because of God's relationship with Jacob. But it's a disgraceful thing,
and it will always be a disgraceful thing as far
as the laws of Israel will be concerned. A disgraceful

(20:30):
thing in Israel, by lying with Jacob's daughter, a thing
which ought not to be done. Now, did you know
that it was customary in those days for the entire
family to get together and approve of any marriage. Usually
the dads would get together, Hey, I have a son
who is handsome, hardworking. You have a beautiful young daughter.

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Let's sign a deal right now. Now the kids could
be toddlers, so I don't know how hard working a
toddler would be. But the father would say, I have
a son, you have a daughter. Let's strike up a deal,
a contract right now that promises them to be wed
to each other. So before the kids really know each

(21:21):
other or even know what marriage is, they're engaged, so
to speak. Then it is approved by the entire family.
It's a family affair, a family deal, a family contract,
which isn't all that bad now. Hear me out. Those

(21:46):
in that family are eventually going to be your future
in laws, hopefully not outlaws. They're going to be part
of your family or part of your future forever in
some kind of a relationship. You want to make sure
it's a good relationship now. In fact, I would say,
if somebody in your family has constant doubts about that

(22:11):
person that you say you want to marry, you should
at least take heed and listen to them, especially if
they have your best interests at heart. Take counsel, move solely,
move wisely. In the multitude of counselors. There is safety.
So the marriages were arranged. Here's an emergency situation. There's
been a rate, the fathers get together, the sons come in.

(22:34):
There still has to be an approval process. I remember
the first time I was in India, I was with Lenya.
We were newly married, didn't have our son Nate, just
been married a couple of years, and so we've went
over there doing ministry in India, and they looked at
this young couple and they said, well, you know, how
long have you known each other? How long have you
been married? And We were telling them our story, and

(22:56):
then they would tell us their stories that in their kind,
it wasn't like our country where a young man dates
a young woman and then asked her to marry her.
They said, oh, there are still arranged marriages in our country.
And I said, excuse me. He said, oh, yes, I
got married because her parents and my parents got together

(23:19):
and they prayed about it before the lord, and they
believed it was the Lord's will, and we're married. I said, no,
wait a minute, and I just thought that sounded so
foreign to me. It honestly sounded well unappealing, goofy backwards.
And as I started expressing my concern, one of them said, no,

(23:39):
wait a minute, brother, and he said, I'll have you
know that our divorce rate is miniscule compared to your
divorce rate, because you see, we learn early on that
it's commitment. We have already been committed by our parents
to each other. We learned the commitment comes first, feelings

(24:00):
come later. You do it backwards. You base everything on
how you feel and hope that you still feel good
over time and hopefully learn a commitment as time goes on.
We've already learned the commitment by the time we approach
the marriage alter. So I love the thought of an
arranged marriage. That my heavenly father and your heavenly father,

(24:25):
our father in heaven knows the right one that's for us,
and so we wait on him. He's the one, not
your earthly parents, as much as your heavenly father. You
wait and you pray, and you make sure that's the
one the Heavenly Father has for you.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
We're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember
that when you give twenty five dollars or more to
help reach more people with the Gospel through connect with
Skiff Heitzig, will send you Beyond the Summer of Love
Relationships in the real world by Pastor Skiff Heitzig to
help you build biblically healthy relationships or repair ones that
have been damaged by sin. To request your copy of

(25:03):
Beyond the Summer of Love, call eight hundred nine two
two eighteen eighty eight. That's eight hundred nine two two
eighteen eighty eight, or visit connectiskip dot com slash donate
for more from Skip. Be sure to check out the
many resources available at connectiskip dot com slash store. Come
back next time for more. Verse by verse teaching of

(25:25):
God's word here on. Connect with skip Heidzig.

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connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing
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