“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.
“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.”
Genesis 34:5, 30 ESV
A rule of parenting is and should be, “show them Christ.” It’s often everything but that – and I’m talking about within the church.
In Jacob’s case he discovers that his sons have learned from his bad spiritual habits. There’s no duplicity and slaughter of the men of Shechem if faith and humility before God had been preached and modeled by the father. Indeed, socialism, wokeism, and the LGBTQ movement aren’t destroying America. They’re symptoms of the disease of the smug and prideful church that has abandoned Christ for the false gospel of prosperity and/or self-righteousness. A Christ-less church, born from our rejection of the doctrine of total depravity, is what’s destroying our land. Sin is our problem. My sin, your sin. If we don’t truly believe this then we don’t know the grace of God and we’re dead legalists raising corpses. A father or mother will only show their children Christ if they know how desperately they (personally) need Him. There is no way to be a bad parent when every road in the house leads to Jesus Christ and the gospel of righteousness through faith alone. Likewise, there’s no way to be a good one absent this. Ultimately, sin will pick us clean. This is the stumbling stone (Romans 9:31) of which Paul warns us. This truth should and must lead us parents to the security that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes (Romans 10:4). Jacob failed his family by omitting the truth about God and his children, naturally, learned the ways of the world around them and enforced the law of Canaan rather than the law of faith.
As parents (and as men and women) we should be gospel saturated. How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news (Romans 10:15)! And this is nowhere more true than in our homes.
Barnhouse says of Jacob:
“You set them a constant example of guile. They heard you lie to Esau at Peniel and start northwest after he went southeast. They saw your interest in fat pastures when you pitched your tent in Shechem. You said nothing when Dinah was violated. Now that they have taken things into their own hands, do you think they will be moved by your whimpering? Talk to God about your own sin before talking to these boys about theirs. How can they take you seriously when you think only of danger to yourself! Lord, how we need honesty!”
There’s a lesson for us as parents (and for children to heed as well). Jacob’s past was littered with bouts of conniving as well as faithfulness. A manipulator and an ambitious man/woman in the world often finds themselves bringing sin home. A father might take a job under the pretense of providing for the family and yet leave himself no time at all for study and prayer. How can a dry well provide water for the family? If a man’s job consistently keeps him from his full duty – that is, to be the priest of the home – then he’s traded his work for the spiritual safety of his family. What has Jacob taught his sons throughout the years? It would appear from chapter 34 that they’ve learned lessons of pragmatism, power, and worldliness rather than the obedience of faith. And by moving to Canaan (chapter 34) instead of Bethel (where he’s called in chapter 35) it seems that Jacob has made another critical mistake. He blames his sons for their behavior but spiritual laziness may very well have been the catalyst for it all.
Should Jacob have had Dinah chaperoned? The Scripture doesn’t say, so we must tread carefully. What we do know is that pitching one’s tent in a violent place is wrought with risk. How many Christian parents make this mistake too? How many of us send our kids to the cesspool of public schools and welcome the quiet as our teenagers are engrossed with social media? If we’ve lost the culture it’s only because we first lost our pulpits and then our homes. The pulpit has preached to itching ears. In downplaying the doctrine of total depravity they’ve also robbed the gospel of its centrality in our lives and homes and Christ of His preeminence. Oddly enough – and it does seem backwards – not teaching our children that they’re sinners and need grace – we leave them at the mercy of the world’s messages. If sin and its consequential separation from God isn’t our first and major problem in life then we’re bound to seek out false messiahs. We’ll run off after money, sex, fame, drugs. What we seek in life, and why, shows what we think is ultimately real.
Telling the truth about sin’s horror – and that means the sin in us not merely around us – teaches our children the glory of Christ! If we downplay sin, we diminish what Christ did for us on the cross. Do our children know this…and hear it daily at our table? Or do they hear politics and worldly things without the context of our abundant gratitude for the forgiveness of sin? Do they see faithfulness and submission to Him in us? Do they routinely enjoy worship in the Lord’s house where they see us in submission – or are we spiritual islands?
What is in evidence is that after Dinah is raped, Jacob doesn’t pray nor meet to pray with his sons. His sons’ response isn’t true sympathy for their sister – it’s rage against the slight of their pride. The attack against the men of Shechem had nothing to do with love or faith and everything to do with pride.
The other thing to note about Jacob’s lack of spiritual leadership is how the sons’ used circumcision as a cloak to cover murder. It’s like a Christian getting someone to accept baptism and then drowning him. Yes, it’s that ghastly. How do men of the covenant act with such depravity? Simple. Self-righteousness is the catalyst for all the world’s violence and strife. A man who’s convinced that he’s righteous and that his enemy is evil is capable of any atrocity. This should warn us of the danger of bringing up gospel-starved children. A father or mother who speaks more of the sins of others rather than their own will hardly talk of grace. In the immature minds of our children there will grow, not like weeds, but like poison ivy, the great scourge of self-satisfaction.
We are not saved because we’re morally superior than our unbelieving neighbors. We’re saved by grace, lest any of us should boast. The constant reminder of this in the home – the recognition of personal sin and the abundant grace and love of God in Christ – is the only way. Jacob stayed silent after the rape, but then opened his mouth afterwards to complain. Of what? He lamented his lack of personal safety amidst potentially enraged enemies. Real faith concerns itself with how we honor God; it fears our own presumptuous sins, not the peccadillos of others and life’s circumstances. Jacob’s sin was his lack of true spiritual leadership in crisis – itself the result of unfaithful daily living. That Jacob chided his headstrong and prideful sons for his fear of repercussions is evidence that he hadn’t instructed them in the ways of God’s grace.
Lord, we pray that our hearts are always soft and open to your correction and grace. We pray that our children see in us the humility that is the true station in life of all those who know how much they’ve been forgiven. And we pray fervently that we don’t raise, in the name of Christ, those who don’t know Him, but know the sinister shadows of legalism and spiritual pride.
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