Genesis 33:17-20 KJV And Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and built him an house, and made booths for his cattle: therefore the name of the place is called Succoth. [18] And Jacob came to Shalem, a city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Padanaram; and pitched his tent before the city. [19] And he bought a parcel of a field, where he had spread his tent, at the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for an hundred pieces of money. [20] And he erected there an altar, and called it Elelohe-Israel.
I. INTRODUCTION -- GIVE ‘EM WHAT THEY WANT
-There are times in parenting that the huge dilemma is trying to figure out when to give in and when to give out.
-James Dobson tells a story in his book Straight Talk To Men and Their Wives that gives a good explanation of what I mean. Dr. Dobson writes:
In the absence of parental leadership, some children become extremely obnoxious and defiant, especially in public places. Perhaps the best example was a ten-year-old boy name Robert, who was patient of my good friend Dr. William Slonecker. Dr. Slonecker said his pediatric staff dreaded the days when Robert was scheduled for an office visit. He literally attacked the clinic, grabbing instruments and files and telephones. His passive mother could do little more than shake her head in bewilderment.
During one physical examination, Dr. Slonecker observed severe cavities in Robert’s teeth and knew that the boy must be referred to a local dentist. But who would be given the honor? A referral like Robert could mean the end of a professional friendship. Dr. Slonecker eventually decided to send him to an older dentist who reportedly understood children. The confrontation that followed now stands as one of the classic moments in the history of human conflict.
Robert arrived in the dental office prepared for battle.
“Get in the chair, young man,” said the doctor.
“No chance!” replied the boy.
“Son, I told you to climb onto the chair, and that’s what I intend for you to do,” said the dentist.
Robert stared at his opponent for a moment and then replied, “If you make me get in that chair, I will take off all my clothes.”
The dentist calmly said, “Son, take ‘em off.”
The boy forthwith removed his shirt, undershirt, shoes, and socks, and then looked up in defiance.
“All right, son,” said the dentist, “Now get on the chair.”
“You didn’t hear me,” sputtered Robert. “I said if you make me get on that chair, I will take off all my clothes.”
“Son, take ‘em off,” replied the man.
Robert proceeded to remove his pants and shorts, finally standing totally naked before the dentist and his assistant.
“Now, son, get in the chair,” said the doctor.
Robert did as he was told, and sat cooperatively through the entire procedure. When the cavities were drilled and filled, he was instructed to step down from the chair.
“Give me my clothes now,” said the boy.
“I’m sorry,” replied the dentist. “Tell your mother that we’re going to keep your clothes tonight. She can pick them up tomorrow.”
Can you comprehend the shock that Robert’s mother received when the door to the waiting room opened, and there stood her pink son, as naked as the day he was born? The room was filled with patients, but Robert and his mom walked past them and into the hall. They went down a public elevator and into the parking lot, ignoring the snickers of onlookers.
The next day, Robert’s mother returned to retrieve his clothes, and asked to have a word with the dentist. However, she did not come to protest. These were her sentiments: “You don’t know how much I appreciate what happened here yesterday. You see, Robert has been blackmailing me about his clothes for years. Whenever we are in a public place, such as a grocery store, he makes unreasonable demands of me. If I don’t immediately buy him what he wants, he threatens to take off all his clothes. You are the first person who had called his bluff, doctor, and the impact on Robert has been incredible.” (James C. Dobson, Straight Talk to Men and their Wives, 1980, Word Books, pp. 58-60)
-What an impact that confident and judicious authority has in the life of a child. If we aren’t careful as parents, our children will do their very best to bluff us until we give in to their every whim.
-In the long run, it will not turn out good for them or for us. . . that is what I want to preach on from this text. . . “When Parental Guidance Slumps To Parental Negligence.”
II. THE TEXT IN GENESIS
-When we get to Genesis 33 and 34, we again begin to see some subtle signs of Jacob’s backsliding. Over his long years, what had been without guidance in his life would soon slump to negligence.
-The highest cost that he would pay would come when his teen-age daughter, Dinah, was nearly destroyed by the world she was allowed to go to.
-I shall do my best to navigate through this territory with tactful discernment because we are going to explore the failures of Jacob as a parent. Furthermore, I have come to see that some children who were raised in the godliest of homes have turned out bad and that some who were reared in very ungodly homes ended up being greatly used of God.
-However, having said that, I do believe that we should do everything within our power as parents to give our children a great spiritual heritage so that they may live out their days in the service of God.
A. Tents, Altars, and Houses
-For whatever reason, Jacob’s travels throughout the land seemed to take away something from him that Abraham and Isaac had in their heart. When we look at the focus of the lives of Abraham and Isaac, we find that they were content to be men of altars and of tents.
-Abraham and Isaac understood that this life was only a temporary measure until they reached the city whose builder and maker was God.
• Their Tents -- Proved that this was just life in transition.
• Their Altars -- Proved that pure worship could be forged out in a heathen world.
-The only real foundation and permanence that could be discovered in their lives were their altars. But Jacob was to soon make a serious miscalculation with his tents and altars. When men get their tents and altars out of sequence and priority in their lives, trouble is soon to follow.
-In our text, we discovered that Jacob got to a place called Succoth (Genesis 33:17) and he got tired of the tent and started building. In fact our text states that he built a house. He is tired of always being on the run and now since things have been patched up with Esau there is seemingly no need to continue this nomadic kind of existence.
-He starts looking around and discovers that everybody around him, everyone . . . has a home. So he gets his vision a little skewed and trades off the city for the house. He gets his mind off of the eternal city and focuses on a temporal house.
-Oddly enough, he should have paid attention to his family tree because he had a second cousin that made a terrible decision about a house. In fact, when you look in the Bible the first time you discover a house in the family of Jacob it comes down to Lot.
-Jacob’s grandfather, Abraham was a saint who lived in a tent on the plains of Mamre but Jacob’s second cousin, Lot, was a backslider. The saint lived in a tent in Mamre and the backslider lived in a house in Sodom. That should have been a key sign for Jacob but he obviously ignored it.
-Anytime you begin to get a little comfortable down here you begin to build houses and become dissatisfied with tents. This is what happened to Jacob, he got tired of the tents. He characterized our generation who do not understand the concept of delayed gratification.
-So tired was Jacob of traveling that he decided he would just settle down and take it easy although it meant stopping far short of the land of Canaan, the land of promise. He abandoned the hope, the vision, and the very destiny that God had put into his father and grandfather. Because he was tired of tents. . .
1. The Spiritual Battlefield Is Everywhere!
-One of the greatest victories that the devil is wreaking on the Church in our day is to convince most of us that there is no war being waged, so we might as well relax, feel good and enjoy life.
-George Barna wrote in his book Transforming Children Into Spiritual Champions the following words about this war of influence that is being waged:
There seem to be three tiers of influence in American culture today. The relative influence of any particular element changes over the course of time, as society itself changes due to new technology, the impact of past influences and he ever-changing realities of spiritual warfare. In American society today, it appears that the most dominant agents of influence are contemporary music, movies (including videos and DVDs), television programming, the Internet, publications (dominated by books but including magazines and newspapers), laws and public policies, and parents. The second tier of influence agents include peers, schools, radio, mentors, colleges and universities and siblings. The lower tier of influence encompasses churches and faith communities, adult education, counseling and therapy experiences, and extended family. Naturally the relative levels of influence vary from person to person, but their tiers appear to reflect what affects most kids in the 5- to 18- age category in America. (Regal, 2003. pp. 57-58)
-Don’t think for a second that the devil is not going to do his best to use every bit of his effort to get into all of these areas to shake our children! WE MUST REMAIN VIGILANT EVERY WAKING MOMENT, SPIRITUAL WARFARE IS AN UN-ENDING STRUGGLE!
2. Don’t Get Weary In Well Doing
-People who get tired of tents make some very foolish decisions. When you get tired of the tents that God has called us to, trouble is brewing.
• Tents of doctrine are important.
• Tents of prayer are crucial.
• Tents of outward holiness and separation from the world are significant.
• Tents of inward purity and hunger for communion with God are inseparable.
• Tents of worship are imperative.
-This is why we must put eternal things into our children. The challenge in the eternal is that what looks permanent in this life is so fleeting and the things that look fleeting and often insignificant in this life are the eternal things!
-With our society facing all the dilemmas that it is facing, should we just throw in the towel and say “forget it!”? Not on your life. . . History bears out some crucial lessons:
• Pharoah was tossing babies in the Nile River during when Moses was born.
• Nebuchadnezzar was capturing young Hebrew captives during Daniel’s times.
• Herod was murdering baby boys when the Lord was born.
-Whether you realize it or not, children want well-defined boundaries in their lives.
Years ago, when Ann Landers and Dear Abby would dispense advice a letter came in one day to Abby.
Dear Abby,
My problem is my mother. She’s too lenient! After she gets angry and punishes me, she often will apologize. Why should she, when I had the punishment coming? Signed, Mixed-Up In Cleveland.
Abby replied,
Dear Mixed-Up,
Your mother (like many others) fears you will love her less because she has punished you. (She’s wrong.) No child has ever resented punishment he knew he had coming. Discipline is “proof” of love, . . . Children “know” this. I wish more parents did. Signed, Abby (Michael Green, Illustrations for Biblical Preaching, p. 43)
-Well defined boundaries often create well defined citizens!
B. Jacob At Shechem
-But the story does not end there in Succoth. Of lesser importance but something that whittled my curiosity a bit was the meaning of the name of Succoth. It means booths. Something that is transient and portable. Here was Jacob trying to build something permanent in a place that was temporary.
-Then more progresses in this story. We move to a place called Shechem. It is not clear in Scripture exactly how long that Jacob lived in Succoth but it is probably safe to say that he lived there long enough for his children to grow into their later teenage years.
-In fact, the years there transformed his little pig-tailed daughter, Dinah, into a graceful young lady.
-We find Jacob putting a tent up in the direction of a city. Jacob bought some property from a man named Hamor and it would be a business dealing that would change the life of his young daughter forever.
-One of the most crucial times in a parent’s life is when you are trying to choose which city toward which you will pitch the direction of your tent. God had already identified Himself to Jacob as “I am the God of Bethel.”
-Bethel was the appointed place for Jacob to be but instead, he was far too easily convinced to stop short of God’s plan of blessing and destiny for his life. There are many parents who are trapped in this same plight in our generation.
-They live on the edge of the world, just on the borders of spiritual things. They want the blessings of both worlds. A spiritual blessing is what is necessary. However, just close enough to the world to venture out periodically and listen to the siren call of the world.
1. Please Don’t Check In Your Brains At the Back Door!
-Think, Think, Think, Think about the temptations and the dangers that will come from the choices in life that you will make.
• Open your eyes and count the cost.
• Take time over that choice.
• Seek the wisdom of elders in that choice.
• Imagine that you have retired from that choice in life and what effect did it have upon your own soul.
• Don’t just evaluate the successes of that choice but also the failures of others who have made those same choices.
-In raising our children we must think about the choices for jobs, for commitment in marriages, for commitment in families, for commitment to a church. Think, Think, Think. . . .
-Jacob’s problem was that he made a worldly purchase and then tried to put a spiritual twist on it by building an altar. It would have been so much better if he would have left all of these financial choices alone.
-By building this altar, he put on the airs of spirituality to give his own backsliding a respectable twist. It sounded too good to be true because it was Jacob at work and not Israel. Jacob probably intended for his altar to be somewhat of a testimony to all the heathens in the country-side.
-He should have chosen to go much deeper toward Canaan than what he did but he did not. When God insists on complete separation from the world it is because God has our better interests at heart.
-Because Jacob did not go far enough as a parent, a terrible scandal ensued.
III. DINAH’S DEFILEMENT
A. Genesis 34 -- A Sad Day For All
-Note in your Bible, Genesis 34.
Genesis 34:1-7 KJV And Dinah the daughter of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. [2] And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her. [3] And his soul clave unto Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the damsel, and spake kindly unto the damsel. [4] And Shechem spake unto his father Hamor, saying, Get me this damsel to wife. [5] And Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his daughter: now his sons were with his cattle in the field: and Jacob held his peace until they were come. [6] And Hamor the father of Shechem went out unto Jacob to commune with him. [7] And the sons of Jacob came out of the field when they heard it: and the men were grieved, and they were very wroth, because he had wrought folly in Israel in lying with Jacob’s daughter; which thing ought not to be done.
-This innocent Dinah became marked for life.
-Because of Jacob’s worldly purchase and then trying to put a spiritual twist on something that was wrong he paid in the lives of his children.
-It is apparent that Dinah had probably become enthralled with the lure of the city. The temptation and excitement of the city was too much for her. The appeal and flair of the young prince of the city, Shechem, was too much for her.
T. H. Leale -- What is called “seeing life” may prove, in many cases, to be but tasting death. Familiarity blunts the sense of things sinful, and increases the danger of temptation.
-She began to think of ways to entertain the city. How can I escape my home to go to this place of excitement?
1. Your Kids Are Smarter Than You Think They Are
-I am certain that all of this failure cannot be placed at the feet of Jacob because children are much smarter and craftier than what we might give them credit for.
-In fact, sometimes children are about as crafty as a story that I heard about an old poodle. . .
A wealthy lady decides to go on a photo safari in Africa, taking her poodle named Cuddles, along for the company.
One day the poodle starts chasing butterflies and before long, Cuddles discovers that he’s lost. Wandering about, he notices a leopard heading rapidly in his direction with the intention of having lunch.
The poodle thinks, "Oh, oh! I’m in deep trouble now!" Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. Just as the leopard is about to leap the poodle exclaims loudly, "Boy, that was one delicious leopard! I wonder if there are any more around here?"
Hearing this, the young leopard halts his attack in mid-stride, a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees. "Whew!" says the leopard, "That was close! That poodle nearly had me!"
Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard. So off he goes, but the poodle sees him heading after the leopard with great speed, and figures that something must be up.
The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard. The young leopard is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here, monkey, hop on my back and see what’s going to happen to that conniving
canine!”
Now, the poodle sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back and thinks, "What am I going to do now?", but instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn’t seen them yet, and just when they get close enough to hear, the poodle says...
"Where’s that monkey? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another leopard!
-Your kids are a whole lot smarter sometimes than what they let on to be. That is why that we must be incredibly vigilant as parents!
B. Dinah’s Visit To The City
-So with all of her savvy and craftiness at work, Dinah makes it to the city. What she does not take into consideration is the motivations of the world. In fact, when you look at the meaning of Shechem’s name, you find out that it means “shoulder or neck” and is generally associated with a place to deposit burdens. Here was Dinah about to place her destiny on something so worldly and so sordid. The moral principles of Shechem are no match for her own spiritual heritage.
-So Shechem begin to chip away at her. . .
• Don’t be so old-fashioned.
• Everybody’s doing it.
• People now say its okay to get involved like this.
• Come on all the other girls don’t see anything wrong with it.
• This is not sin, this is romance.
-When she gave in to him, a whirlwind of trouble was set in motion. Before all was said and down, the world had ripped the virtue of purity from Dinah and her two brothers became murderers and further remorse filled the life of Jacob.
-Our children need our guidance not our negligence!
Loose wires give out no musical notes, but when their ends are fastened, the piano, the harp, or the violin is born. Free steam drives no machine but harnessed and confined with piston and turbine, it makes possible the great world of machinery. A unhampered river drives no dynamos, but dam it up and you can generate sufficient power to light a great city. So our lives must be disciplined if we are to be of any real service in the world. (Illustrations for Biblical Preaching, Michael Green, p. 109)
IV. CONCLUSION -- HAS GUIDANCE GIVEN IN TO NEGLIGENCE?
-What are our children seeing in the lives that we model before them?
(NOTE: Some personal illustrations were used to conclude this message.)
Philip Harrelson
January 27, 2008
