Truly Offended! What Should the Response Be?

How should we relate to what is happening in this nation at this moment? Should we take up arms against the dominant political process, or should we affirm and strengthen it? How do we reconcile our desire for justice with the need for the law to prevail? Where is grace? Where is love? It is a swarm of contradictions, and the children of God need counsel from their pulpits, from their spiritual leaders.

I launched into that preaching in the Name of the Lord, and I know that even here among us who are Latinos—and I believe that theologically there is, as it were, greater unity in certain areas—I believe that right here, if we were to conduct a survey, there are many who think one way and others who think another, and all of them are devout Christians who love the Lord and love the truth, and they are people of mercy and love, and yet we are divided from one another.

These recent events, these marches that have taken place, remind us that these things need to be discussed. That is why I have postponed the series we were preaching in order to do what I believe we ought to do. That is, if there were no comment from this pulpit at this time, I believe it would be a very serious and grave omission. You need to hear and be encouraged to think about these things in biblical terms, and that is what I intend to do for a while this afternoon.

And that is why this passage from Genesis 34 presents us with a situation of extremes, of bitter feelings rooted in a sense of offense. Part of what is driving this nation in its actions right now is that people feel offended; people feel that their interests are threatened. There are different groups in this nation that feel neglected and mistreated: working-class whites, people from rural areas, people who feel that their government previously neglected them, that they are being mistreated economically, that their rulers have forgotten them—those regions of Appalachia, the South, rural areas, the white working class—and that instead of defending their interests, the government has gone after homosexuals, after what they call identity politics: policies aimed at interest groups and aggrieved groups that shout loudly and demand a great deal of attention, and which are therefore given attention at the expense of an entire sector of the nation.

So whites of what is called the blue-collar working class feel that the government has gone after issues of homosexuality, after helping people who are on welfare, and has failed to enforce the laws of the nation, thus allowing a wave of undocumented immigrants to enter the nation at the expense of workers in the United States. They are straining social services and schools, demanding medical care, insurance, and all those kinds of things, and taking jobs. That is the perception of this sector of America, which is resentful beyond what you can imagine and is watching its young people—as we see here, for example, many of the homeless people who are using drugs nowadays. It is called the opioid crisis, the opioid crisis, and it is affecting whites. Why?

Because I believe that what used to be solely the territory of Blacks and Latinos is now also making its way into the white working class and affecting that class as well, because that is how sin works. When a nation neglects its foundations, evil begins to creep in. It starts with the weakest, but sooner or later it reaches other groups as well—groups that have no moral or spiritual support. That, then, is what this nation is experiencing.

On the one hand, there is that class, which also contains another group: people who do not merely have economic or social grievances, but who have genuine evil within them. They want to return to the days of lynching African Americans; they want to return to the days of slavery and of suppressing the rights of Black people here in this nation; they want to return to the days of white supremacy.

And among those elements of, let us say, reasonable grievance, there are also diabolical groups taking advantage of this opportunity, and the enemy is also making his way in, because that is what happens: when these things occur, of course, all kinds of evils come in and corrupt everything.

So there are also antisemitic groups that are attacking the Jewish people because they believe that the Jewish people are the source of all evil and every false doctrine, of all corruption and all economic oppression. They are antisemitic, and they are anti-Black as well—racists—and they have inserted themselves into this. And so it has become a ball of rage and terrible menace.

But then there are also African Americans who, with their wounds from the past and all the offenses they have experienced, feel that those statues of Southern generals who fought to preserve slavery are an insult to their dignity. They too feel assaulted, and every time they pass a general with his sword drawn and his enormous horse, a general who fought for slavery, they feel that this nation is not taking their grievances or their feelings into account, and that those things must be torn down, must be completely removed—that this part of history must be completely erased.

These other groups then react against that and say, “See? That is what we have here: abuse by minorities who are getting their way and trying to erase the history of our nation, without taking our sensitivities into account.” They do not view those statues as something offensive, nor as a glorification of slavery or anything like that, but as part of the history of their relatives—grandparents, parents, brothers—whom they too lost in that war and who, in that sense, have a place there and whom they therefore want to honor. The other group views it in a totally different and offensive way.

Then there are homosexuals who feel oppressed in their own right. There are undocumented immigrants who feel that their aspirations have been violated and ignored, given that they have already been here for decades, have children here, have businesses and homes here, while their government simply wants to remove them without any kind of mercy, preventing them from gaining access to their dreams and aspirations. And they too are partly right in this process.

Now, a question: with all those interests and all those feelings of grievance, offense, and need competing against one another, when society does not have enough elasticity or room to include them all—because that is the issue—how do you fit hundreds of interests and people in without that ship sinking or breaking into twenty thousand pieces, with the whole ship and everyone aboard going down? How can one make room for interests and worldviews, even spiritualities, that are mutually exclusive and that sooner or later will destroy one another unless there is a resolution? And that is this nation’s great dilemma at this moment.

And the Word of the Lord has counsel for us. I am simply framing this terrible process that we are experiencing in this time, because we need to pray a great deal for this nation and for the world, because, interestingly enough, what is happening here is also happening in many other parts of the world.

In Barcelona four or five days ago, fourteen people lost their lives, and more than a hundred people were terribly injured and run over by a vehicle driven by a seventeen-year-old Muslim young man who drove into Las Ramblas. We were there last year, walking along those streets, and it is a very historic, very special area of Barcelona, an incredibly beautiful city. And there all those lives were struck down in the cruelest and most terrible manner by Muslims who also have a profound sense of grievance against the West. These terrorists also have their own grievances, and they want to settle them with everyone else through violence, forcing their point of view on others in the most costly, most terrible, most destructive, and cruelest ways.

That is how the world is. Whether it is England, Holland, France, Germany, or Poland, wherever you look nowadays there is terrible division in the world, and only the Spirit of Jesus Christ, we believe, can set us free and show us the course to follow.

And what I want to do is fertilize your lives and my own life with what the Word of the Lord says. Give me a little while, okay, brothers and sisters, to unpack this and unravel it before you. I hope it will be a blessing. I believe this is part of the education of the people of God.

The Lord gave me this passage from Genesis 34 several months ago in other contexts, but it is very applicable to us, and I am going to read this segment of Israel’s history so that you can see how similar it is to what is happening in our nation, even though it took place more than three thousand years ago. This affected the sons of Jacob at the very beginnings of the people of God. “And Jacob had a daughter named Dinah,” and Dinah is a very tragic figure in Scripture.

It says that Dinah went out for a stroll, to walk through the land. She was the daughter of Leah, one of Jacob’s wives: “Now Dinah, the daughter Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land.” It says that she went to visit her friends; she went to visit young women she knew in different parts of the land. Unfortunately for Dinah, she was a very beautiful, very attractive woman, and Shechem saw her. He was the son of Hamor the Hivite, from a pagan tribe, a tribe that lived around the Jews, “the prince of that land; and he took her, lay with her, and dishonored her.” Shechem, a powerful young nobleman, sees this beautiful Jewish maiden and desires her and becomes passionate about her. It says that he took her violently, by force; he took her and dishonored her. You can imagine how disgraceful it was in those days for a maiden to have sexual relations with someone who was not her husband. And it did not matter that she was not a willing participant in what was happening, that she had been forced: she was dishonored, her life was damaged; he dishonored her.

But look at what happened to Shechem: “his soul clung to Dinah, the daughter of Leah.” What began as a bestial, animal appetite, a purely physical desire, ends in love, in his falling in love with this young woman. Shechem falls in love with her. “His soul clung to her,” it says in a very poetic way, “and he loved the young woman and spoke to her heart.” The English text says that he spoke tender words to her, that he spoke tenderly to Dinah. What words might Shechem have shared with Dinah? Perhaps he expressed his love to her; perhaps he wanted to speak to her soul and comfort her, and told her, “Do not worry, Dinah. I am in love with you, and I am going to make things right with your family. I want to marry you.”

And what happened with Dinah? We are not told much about Dinah’s feelings because we are talking about more than three thousand years ago, and the Bible is not writing a novel; it is summarizing certain events. Women simply are not given the same—and in this case it was simply a summary of what had happened. Did Dinah fall in love with Shechem? Might she have listened to his arguments? Might his words of love and tenderness have persuaded her? She was a woman living in the Middle East more than three thousand years ago; perhaps women at that time did not see things the way we see them in our time.

Perhaps to us it is scandalous, and we say, “No! How could she forgive this scoundrel who dishonored her?” It is possible that Dinah accepted his arguments. Besides, what else was left for her? No one would want to marry her. She was disgraced for life and possibly condemned to live all her years in shame, unable to marry, a burden to her family. And it is possible that when Dinah heard the arguments of this powerful young nobleman, she said, “Hey, all right, let’s get married; let’s move forward with this process.”

And then this young man’s father—it seems that the young man spoke to him and said, “Father, intercede for me with this family, who must be utterly offended and will want nothing whatsoever to do with me. Speak to them and offer them a way to make things right.” I want you to see what is being set up here: it is a drama; it is a scenario of justified offense.

These relatives of Dinah have every right in the world to feel anger and hatred over what has been done to their sister. At no point does the Bible—either here or in any other case—endorse the rape or abuse of a woman in any way, whether sexual abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse, or denigration of any kind, within marriage or outside of marriage. The Bible abhors the abuse of women—let that be clear—and of men too, where applicable, right? There is no effort here to somehow minimize Shechem’s terrible act.

But there is a very interesting complexity here, and it is the same in this time in which we live in America. Many groups have been offended, truly offended, and they have every right in the world to feel genuinely angry over what they have suffered and endured. But what should the response be? That is what one wonders in this time, when everyone takes offense and all of us have the right to ask for a little piece of justice, and when, if we continue in this way, there will never be peace in this nation, because everyone is demanding justice and there is not enough justice to distribute to everyone. What do the Word of Jesus and the Spirit of Jesus ask of us in the face of offense and grievance?

What does the Bible tell us? If you are offended, should you take up the sword and strike back? If you are offended, should you take your adversary before the judge and demand what you are owed? Nor are we saying, brothers and sisters, that courts do not exist to resolve conflicts peacefully, but the Word of God also speaks a great deal about grace, doesn’t it? About forgiveness, about mercy, about forgiving the wrong, about heaping burning coals upon those who persecute us by loving them, forgiving them, and giving them food and drink, yes or no? What is at the heart of the Gospel’s message of salvation? That Christ came to take enemies and make us one people.

That is what we were talking about last Wednesday: Christ removed the wall of separation; He removed, it says, the hostilities that existed between man and God. The Gospel comes to reconcile us to God, who is terribly offended by the sins of man, of His creation, which has demeaned Him, which has not given Him the care, respect, and reverence He deserves, and has instead given them to lizards, cows, and created things rather than to Him. And man has sinned terribly against God, but God, the Bible says, is rich in mercy and slow to anger. When we were sunk in sin, it says, He sent Christ to save us. God did not give us what we deserved for our offenses, but gave us reconciliation, forgiveness, and grace.

Christ is the example, and the Bible invites us to the same kind of behavior—and that is the terrible, difficult thing. Swallowing that pill requires a very high level of morality, and that is what God asks of us. Today, many people have the right to feel offended and to demand justice, but I believe the Gospel invites us to do something different. In this case, there is no doubt that this man did something terribly offensive and criminal, and that there is every right to demand the law of retaliation: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

But what does the Bible say even in this passage? This is at the very beginning; the Book of Genesis is the first book, as we understand the books to have been written. At the very dawn, at the very beginning of the history of God’s people—Israel and later Christianity—we see the concept of grace, mercy, forgiveness, tolerance toward the offender, and not repaying evil for evil but good for evil already strongly suggested here. And I believe that is what God is calling us to do in these times, in this nation of so many grievances and so many offenses: to show the same kind of mercy and meekness in the face of reprehensible offenses.

Then Shechem says to his father: Father, go and speak to them, it says; get this young woman for me as my wife. Go and ask Dinah’s parents for her hand, ask their forgiveness on my behalf, and let us see how we can make this right and resolve it. “Now Jacob heard that Shechem had defiled Dinah his daughter; but his sons were with his livestock in the field, so Jacob remained silent until they came.” He knew what these boys were like: they were violent, aggressive, and vengeful, and he feared what their reaction would be when they found out what had happened to their sister.

Jacob had a different spirit. He knew what it was to offend someone: when he wronged Esau, he took away his birthright through trickery, didn’t he? And he deserved—Esau wanted to kill him too, and he had to flee for his life, remember? Jacob has already learned his lesson; he bears his wounds. He was deceived by his uncle and had to spend many years being deceived in these matters as well.

And Jacob is now a man who has learned the hard way, a man acquainted with sorrows. His own cunning has cost him dearly, and by now I imagine he is a man of peace and mercy. He understands that this is a great opportunity for the situation to be healed, and he is afraid of what his sons will think, of how these hotheads will react to what has been done to their sister.

And it says: “Hamor, Shechem’s father, came to Jacob to speak with him, and Jacob’s sons came in from the field when they heard about it; and the men were grieved and very angry, because he had committed an outrage in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, a thing that ought not to have been done.” To me it is clear that Scripture is saying: there has been sin, there has been an offense, there has been rape; this should not have been done. The Bible is not excusing that terrible act, just as slavery, the abuse of the poor in this nation, the neglect of the weak, and all these other offensive things are absolutely reprehensible and inexcusable.

These African Americans feel as though a hot knife were being thrust into them when they see a statue that reminds them how they were lynched, how they were torn from their homes, how children were ripped away from their parents to be sold like cattle in another state and never saw their parents again, how their men were lynched from trees in the rural areas of Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, and all these places, and how they were not allowed to sit in a bus seat but had to go all the way to the back, nor eat what white people ate, nor use the same bathroom, because they were considered animals. These things hurt, and they should not have been done. I would write there: “a thing that ought not to have been done.”

But Hamor arrives and speaks to Jacob and his sons, and he tells them: “The soul of my son longs for your daughter. Please give her to him as his wife.” This is a father interceding for his son, who has seriously messed up: help me with this; I want to make things right with you—you know how boys are. And I beg you to give her to him as his wife.

Then it says: “And intermarry with us; give us your daughters, and take our daughters for yourselves.” Let us marry one another; let us join our family lines. Frankly, I am moved to hear this man interceding because of what has happened. How many times do parents have to suffer because of their children’s blunders—how many times? And if there were no people who forgive and show mercy, where would the world be?

Intermarry with us; give us your daughters and take ours; dwell with us, for the land will be before you. Live in it and take possession in it. And Shechem, the young man himself, said to Jacob and her brothers: “Let me find grace in your sight”—forgive me. Grace is a very clear word: favor, perhaps forgiveness; have mercy, let me find grace in your sight, and I will give whatever you tell me, because there were dowries, right? The dowries that had to be given, the payment for the woman who was to be married—those were the customs of the Middle East, weren’t they?

“Ask me for ever so great a dowry and gifts”—increase the dowry as much as you want; take advantage of me, squeeze everything you can out of me, because I want to make things right and I want to marry her—“and I will give whatever you tell me; only give me the young woman as my wife.” Beautiful words, almost poetry in a sense, although there is also that aspect of giving, as though she were a commodity, isn’t there? “Give her to me.” But those were—we are talking about three thousand years ago, about another world. We have to enter into that world. Worlds are not judged according to what we see, but according to what they were, and that is one of the things we have to understand.

God does not see the world as we see it. We are immersed in our own reality, and when you measure history and lived reality by your immediate circumstances, you make a very serious mistake. We Christians do not measure history by the moment in which we live, but in the light of eternity, in the light of the values of the Gospel—how God sees history, how God sees the world. Christians should have the eyes of a grandfather, a great-grandfather, and a great-great-grandfather, in order to see humanity as children who sometimes cannot tell their left hand from their right. We Christians must have a very broad and very generous vision, one that lets a great deal of water flow by, that forgives much, tolerates much, and waits a long time.

What does the Bible say? That love believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things, and I believe that is the idea. The more one learns to love, the more one tolerates, the more one endures, the more one forgives, and the more one believes—it believes all things. It is not that love is naïve; it is that love believes good can come from anyone. The criminal who once stole a wallet in a church may one day become a preacher who testifies that he once stole a wallet in a church, and you might want to say: Father, send a missile at him and split him straight down the middle from top to bottom! And then you say: Lord, give me patience and have mercy—but yes, at least give him a good spanking; yes, arrest him. That is what I have been praying. Keep an eye on your wallet and your belongings because every now and then the devil gets upset and starts doing things. And although he cannot do much harm, he comes and throws little stones from the other side—but that is all he can do. We rebuke him in the Name of Jesus.

But, brothers and sisters, we must have a vision that believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, loves, and sees as God sees. How many criminals and perpetrators of genocide will we have to live with for all eternity up there because they repented? How many serial criminals—we do not know—repented and were received by God into His Kingdom? And when we get there, thank God we will have a new and different nervous system, because otherwise, just imagine: there would be fights during the first days of salvation, with everyone pulling one another’s hair: “And what are you doing here? How dare you?”

The mercy of God, brothers and sisters, is incredible, and the Word calls us, insofar as possible while we are in this flesh, to love as God loves, to forgive as God forgives, to tolerate, to wait, to be patient, and to ask that the Kingdom of God come upon the earth and that His Will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And we cannot become filled with panic and hatred over something happening for one brief moment, because we do not know what will come afterward. The world can change in an instant, brothers and sisters.

Everything we are seeing—a visitation of the Holy Spirit—and this could change in a single day, I tell you. Or a cataclysm, a war, or a national or international tragedy could come, and men could fall facedown at His feet, be humbled in their arrogance, and have to appeal to God. In a day or two, all this spiritual arrogance we see in the world could change. God can do immense, powerful things, and God’s people must pray, cry out, wait, wage spiritual warfare, and send angels against the powers of the devil. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. It is not against the Nazis, not against antisemites, not against racists, not against Trump; it is against the powers of the devil beneath all human schemes, seeking to sow death, war, genocide, division, anger, and vengeance.

The weapons of the children of God are not carnal; they are mighty in God for the destruction of strongholds. We overcome darkness with light, hatred with love, and weapons with the Spirit. Meanwhile, we wait. It says: “Be still, and know that I am God.” “In quietness shall be your strength; in rest you shall be saved,” says the Lord.

The child of God sits like a spiritual ninja and focuses on the Spirit, sending energies of power all around, and through that changes history. The devil is defeated and put to shame when the children of God decide to love and forgive, and to bless instead of striking back, seeking their rights, and insisting on holding on to their grievances. The offense a person harbors and holds on to is like an ingrown nail that digs into him, kills him, and poisons him; that filthy nail poisons his flesh and infects him. Resentment is the most terrible thing. Free yourself from resentment.

If someone has offended you, forgive them. Forgive them, because that is the best way you can heal. Otherwise, you will be a prisoner of life all your life, and the devil will take advantage of your anger. We must live clean lives.

As soon as it enters, immediately engage in spiritual warfare to get it out. Get it out; flee for your life, because the feeling of resentment and the feeling of offense do nothing but kill and sow more resentment and more death. God is powerful to fight for us. I believe in the power of grace and in the power of forgiveness and mercy. The more people there are fighting for their rights, with each one fighting for their little piece of the yard, the more war, bloodshed, resistance, hatred, and resentment there will be. The devil loves it when people stand up with a sword to fight for their little piece of land. That is what he wants to do in this nation: set everyone against everyone else so that they devour one another alive, and raise up men of war.

Today there are men of war everywhere: Turkey, North Korea, Russia, China, and different countries of the Middle East. They are all groups that have chosen the devilish way of resolving their affairs, and here in this nation we also have an infection of the same thing. The devil is very happy to help himself with the largest spoon.

God’s people must offer a completely different alternative. This man comes—he has committed this act, he has made a mess of things, he has gotten himself filthy—but he comes asking for mercy and says: Whatever you want. And what do Jacob’s sons do? They set a trap for him.

They listen to him calmly, but they already have a well-devised, well-prepared plot, and they say to Shechem: We are sorry, Shechem, but we cannot do what you are asking because we are Jews, and if you want to marry our daughters, join our families, and become related to us, you are going to have to do one thing: all the men of the city will have to be circumcised. And look how diabolical and calculated it is—listen: they came up with something truly subtle and serpentine. Be circumcised, and then we will all intermarry; all of us here will have a great celebration of reconciliation.

And something occurred to me while I was talking with Meche upstairs during the interval between the two services: it is ironic that these men, in their excessive desire for revenge, used a religious symbol to carry out their sinister strategy—circumcision, the mark of distinction. And in one sense, one could say that these men, prophetically speaking, had now become Jews because they were circumcised, given that what they were telling them was: Accept this ritual, and then you will become like Jews, and then we will be able to marry you, because God forbids us to mix with a different race.

They use religion, just as religion can also often be used today to attack and to—brothers and sisters, let us not allow Christ to be kidnapped, to be abducted, or the Gospel to be dragged into the same struggle, the same conflict, the same fight, the same arguments as the world. Let us not allow our faith to be corrupted by the arguments of the devil and the flesh, by revenge. Christianity soars thirty-two thousand feet above the storms of history and humanity; Christianity is eternal. We Christians live in another dimension; we are in the world, but we are not of the world. We cannot allow our churches to become part of the struggle. And nowadays people come and say, “No, Pastor Miranda should go to this meeting where we are going to protest against this and that.” Thank God I was out of the country and had an excuse, because, honestly, I do not feel—I feel that this has to be resolved in other ways, with other weapons, with arguments, with a different conviction. The Gospel is what must prevail here.

People out there use the Church whenever they feel like it. They come to our churches to ask for what they want, and they want to use us. Whenever some politician stands up here, do not think that I am asleep over there or overwhelmed because, “Oh, so-and-so came.” I know very well what is going on, and my game is also being played there. No man or woman sways this congregation, you understand? The President of this nation himself could come here—let that be clear.

Many times people see the way we welcome others and think, “Oh, Pastor Miranda is like some excited country bumpkin over there, dazzled by so-and-so.” They do not know me, and they do not understand, brothers and sisters. Let them come and greet us, and we benefit in other ways for the Kingdom of God and advance its interests, as Paul did with his Roman citizenship—but make no mistake. This Church is coated in shoe polish, and the arguments of the world slide right off it; always understand that from now on. The Church of Jesus Christ has Teflon, and nothing sticks to it.

Christianity must never be kidnapped by the fights, conflicts, and pettiness of men. Unfortunately, these young men take Hebrew symbolism and use it for killing and genocide, because when these pagans, in their desire to make peace, are circumcised, the Bible is very blunt and very clear. That is one of the things that reminds me of its historicity: it is historical.

It says that on the third day after these men had been circumcised—on the third day, it says, when the pain was greatest and they were weakest—two of Jacob’s sons came, Simeon and Levi, leading this strategy. It says that each of them took his sword, came against the unsuspecting city, and killed every male. They put Hamor and his son Shechem to the sword, and they took Dinah from Shechem’s house. Dinah apparently was already there with her fiancé; she had remained in his house. And where was Dinah? These young men did not care about Dinah; what they cared about was their hatred. They were not thinking about how their sister would remain disgraced all her life and no longer had any prospects. The only thing that interested them was their sense of offended honor; they simply wanted to give expression to their hatred. And Simeon and Levi did as they pleased with every male in that city, “and their brothers came and joined them; they plundered the city because their sister had been defiled. They took their sheep and cattle, their donkeys, and everything in the city and in the field; they took all their wealth, carried off all their children and women as captives, and stole everything that was in the houses.” A fine example, a fine message about how the children of God act, isn’t it?

I have entitled this sermon “A Wasted Opportunity.” Why? Because what moves me most about all of this is that there was a great opportunity here for the people of God to give an example of grace, mercy, forgiveness, and reconciliation, and everyone would have benefited. Dinah would have benefited; Shechem would have benefited; the economy of those peoples would have benefited because they would have been able to pool their resources; racial relations throughout that region would have improved because these races would have joined together and shared with one another; the principles of the Kingdom of God would have been affirmed; these people might have been able to enter into Israel’s spiritual heritage. Yet all of that was wasted, and instead of all those beautiful things emerging from something bad, what emerged was diabolical, satanic, infernal: death, destruction, civil war in every conceivable form.

If it had happened and nothing had been said, perhaps we would say, “Well, they were right.” But the Bible is very clear: it should not have happened. Harm had definitely been done; there was reason to feel offended, but that was not the right way to behave.

Look at what Jacob says to Simeon and Levi in verse 30: “You have troubled me by making me abhorrent to the inhabitants of this land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites; and since I have only a few men, they will gather against me and attack me, and I and my household will be destroyed.” But they answered, “Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?” What do they care about their sister? They do not care about their sister; they care about themselves.

It is interesting that later, while reading the next chapter, I saw a blessing from God for Jacob. God calls Jacob and invites him to go to the altar, and it says that God put fear on Jacob—it says in verse 5 of chapter 35: “And they journeyed, and the terror of God was upon the cities that were around them, and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob.” In His mercy, God saw Jacob’s heart and said to him, “Do not worry. I am going to defend you, and you will not suffer the consequences of the harm done by your sons. I am going to put holy fear upon that people so they will not take revenge on you.” The fact is that God looks upon the repentant heart and the heart. Sometimes when we make mistakes, or our children do, we ask forgiveness, and God has mercy and does things.

But do you know what is most graphic and dramatic? Years later, on his deathbed, Jacob speaks words that confront us with the magnitude of the sin of Simeon, Levi, and their brothers. They show us that their revenge, their vengeful attitude of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, was not approved by God, and that although they had reason, there was no justice or love in them—rather, there was no love or grace in them—and it was not in keeping with what God wanted. The Bible says, “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are beneficial.” Perhaps it was legally permissible, but not spiritually permissible.

Decades later, in Genesis chapter 49, Jacob is on his deathbed in a prophetic trance. This old man already has one foot and one hand in eternity, and he is still lying in his bed, but he enters a prophetic trance and begins to prophesy over all his sons who are gathered around him. These are the last words these men heard from their father before he died, and what was supposed to be a moment of blessing for them becomes a moment in which their father curses them. What a terrible wound these two men would carry for the rest of their lives: that their father—a descendant of Abraham, and for a Jew at that time—instead of blessing them, left them a curse and a legacy. Because that is what happens when there is anger, when there is revenge, when there are acts of rage and violence: a price is paid. Do not worry about justice; God carries out justice at His moment and in His time. He takes care of it.

Look at how old Jacob speaks about his two sons, Simeon and Levi, who led this great tragedy. Verse 5 of chapter 49 says: “Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of iniquity are their weapons. Let my soul not enter into their counsel, nor my spirit join their company, for in their fury they killed men, and in their recklessness they hamstrung oxen. Cursed be their fury, for it was fierce, and their wrath, for it was cruel. I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel.”

Oh, what pain these men must have carried for the rest of their lives! Their father’s curse would pursue them. God is like that, brothers and sisters; God is sinister when He has to be as well. God’s justice is final; we cannot question it. I prefer to let God carry out justice.

This nation paid for slavery with one million men and with trillions of dollars that it has continued to lose in thousands of ways throughout its economy. Every time a young Black woman becomes pregnant or has an abortion, or does not go to high school, and this nation loses thousands of dollars from its economy in different ways, that is payback; it is payment for all the disasters they have inflicted on African American culture in this nation, in thousands of ways.

Simeon and Levi were cursed all their lives, and we Christians, brothers and sisters, must act differently in this time. What will heal this nation is not every one of us demanding justice and fighting, allowing ourselves to be swept along by the arguments of men and politicians who do not know God and want to solve things, whether they are on the left or the right. The Church of Jesus Christ has another methodology, other weapons, another spirit. It is the spirit of the Word in Philippians 2, which says: “Let the same mind be found in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, being equal with God, did not regard equality with God as something to cling to, but emptied Himself.” He robbed Himself; He became man, took on human likeness, and, being in the likeness of man, became obedient—obedient unto death, and not just any death, but death on a cross. He humbled Himself to the uttermost.

He did not claim His right. He could have said, “No, I am God. How am I going to put Myself inside the skin of a baby and endure all the idiocies that a man has to suffer in his flesh, go to the toilet like anyone else, and experience the same feelings, the impure temptations that human beings feel? I, God, do that to save a humanity that does not deserve to be saved?” The Lord said, “Father, if that is what You want, I am going to get inside the skin of a—yes, something just a little higher than the apes—and I am going to live in that skin and undergo all the experiences of a man. Then I am going to climb onto a cross so they can shame Me and expose Me.” He did not regard equality with God as something to cling to.

But it also says that Christ did this and God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him a Name above every name, so that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those on Earth, in heaven, and under the earth. To me, that is a paradigmatic expression, a paradigm of how things work in the world of the Spirit and the Word.

We, the children of God, do not cling to our rights; we do not fight with the weapons of man. We, the children of God, take our rights, set them aside, clothe ourselves in the garments of the cross, and then fight on the cross. There on the cross, we achieve a victory that no other human weapon can accomplish. The Bible says that on the cross Christ defeated principalities and powers. There He canceled the record of decrees that stood against us and exposed the principalities and powers before the entire multitude, as a defeated army is put on display. On the cross—a symbol of powerlessness, defeat, and shame—that is where the Lord defeated the power of the devil, because the devil is not defeated with diabolical weapons, but with weapons of light and weapons of the Kingdom of heaven.

I call you—and I call our Church, brothers and sisters—not to get involved in the petty conflicts of men or use the tools of this world and this age. We are a people who fight with weapons of love, mercy, tolerance, equality, and silence, as Mary did when she did not understand the mystery of this son she had; it says that she simply pondered.

Things are happening in this world that we should not yet rush to judge. Ponder, think, pray, be silent; do not jump into the fight as everyone else does. We, the children of God, wait a great deal and ponder a great deal, because sometimes God is doing things that are so mysterious that we cannot understand them. We must wait; we must give God time to unwrap His package. God is a strategist who has a billion pieces on His board, and sometimes He moves one piece and we say, “But why, if they are going to capture it?” No, He is going to capture twenty pieces after they capture those, because that is the way He is.

God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and sometimes we see things that seem foolish, but later we are going to say, “Wow, He took them all.” Wait, pray, love greatly, and obey—that is what I declare: that spirit over Lion of Judah, not the spirit of Simeon and Levi. The spirit of love, mercy, grace, forgiveness; believing that good things can come out of a heart that made a terrible mistake; loving much, forgiving much, waiting much, remaining silent much, blessing those who offend us. I, who preach this message, need to apply it to myself every time I go out onto 93 and a car cuts in front of me (laughter), but I know what the Word calls me to do.

I am not going to excuse my mistakes by putting lipstick on a monkey (laughs); no, I know what the Word tells me. And even when we make our mistakes, let us return to the Word. Lord, I bind myself once again to what Your Word says. Forgive me for having done this in that way, but I accept the love, the mercy, the love and the grace. Help me to be more loving, more forgiving, more tolerant, more patient next time. That is the only thing that can save this world, brothers and sisters. May that be the spirit that spreads throughout this congregation right now.

Stand up, and let us cry out to the Lord for this nation, for this Church, which the Lord wants to establish as a place of reconciliation. This morning we were ministering to African Americans, white people, rich people, poor people, children, adults, homeless people—all gathered in here—and right now we are ministering to nations from different parts of Latin America: Black people, white people, light-skinned people, blond people, brown people of every kind, white people of every kind, washed-out people—but how beautiful! Wow! Indigenous people, descendants of the Aztecs and the Mayans—glory to God! How beautiful! That is what God wants: the races mixed together, so that no one can tell whether someone is white or Black because they are so mixed that you can no longer tell. That is the beauty of our people, and from now on it must always be a people of reconciliation, love, kindness, and mercy, where the rich person looks at the poor person and says, “Wow, teach me, instruct me,” and the poor person says to the rich person, “Hey, show me; give me a few little tips, because I need to go make money, right?”

The educated person says to the illiterate person, “Look, you have something, a wisdom that I do not have. Your children are beautiful, and so are your marriage and your wife. Teach me.” And the uneducated person says, “Well, I will teach you if you tell me how you made your money, got into Harvard, and went to college. I want my children to learn. Come to my house and talk to them; set an example for them; inspire them with your intellectual success.” That is what God wants: for the races to mix.

May Hamor and Jacob become family; may Shechem, Simeon, and Levi, instead of killing one another, learn to love and forgive one another; and may the races mix. That is why God made white people and Black people and made them different: so that they would mix and form a symphony of love expressing the complexity of God’s character. That is what God wants for us. That is the spirit we proclaim right now: Father, may that be the prevailing spirit in this congregation. May Lion of Judah be known as a Church of mercy, love, grace, hospitality, grace, gentleness, forgiveness, tolerance, comfort, and counsel.

We invite the Spirit of Jesus to fill this Church, to fill its pastors and leaders—the love, mercy, gentleness, and grace of Jesus; weapons of light, weapons of kindness, weapons that make no noise, where the devil has no place and does not know what to do because there is no room for him, nothing resembling him.

We renounce hell; we renounce false justice; we renounce vengeance; we renounce affiliated weapons. We take up the weapons of light; we embrace the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Begin with me, Lord. And we repudiate everything racist, everything antisemitic, everything vengeful, everything supremacist, everything lacking in mercy, kindness, and love, everything that demeans the poor, the helpless, and the weak. As a Church, brothers and sisters, we love and choose love.

Glory to You, Lord, and we give glory and respect to the principles of the Kingdom of God. Father, may this sermon be like a part of our constitution, a clause in our spiritual constitution. We plant it there as a declaration, as the highest aspiration of our hearts for this Church for as long as it remains here on Earth before Christ comes. May that be its hallmark. May no element of division or anger enter this body, Father. We reject it in the Name of Jesus, and we ask You to help us dwell in love and gentleness, so that Christ may feel comfortable dwelling among us. Forgive us if we have been anything less than that; help us get there. We ask this in the Name of Jesus. And God’s people say, “Amen.” God bless you, my brothers and sisters. May the grace of the Lord be with you.