There is an old Russian parable about a hunter who came to a clearing and encountered a bear. The hunter raised his rifle to shoot when the bear said, “Wait, what do you want?”
The hunter replied, “A fur coat.”
“That’s reasonable,” answered the bear. “I want a full stomach. Let’s sit down and talk about it.”
So they sat down and after a while, the bear walked away all by himself. He had his full stomach, and the hunter had his fur coat. (Christianity Today, April 13, 1973)
Compromise isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes, it can be very dangerous and destructive, and that is especially true when it comes to spiritual matters. If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Genesis 33, Genesis 33, where we learn with Jacob just how dangerous compromise can be.
Genesis 33:18-19 And Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, on his way from Paddan-aram, and he camped before the city. And from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, he bought for a hundred pieces of money the piece of land on which he had pitched his tent. (ESV)
God called Jacob back to Bethel (Genesis 31:13), but Jacob stops about a day’s journey short in Shechem. You see, Shechem was at the crossroads of trade, while Bethel was in the middle of the wilderness. Shechem offered material prosperity and greater comfort; and besides, it was close to where God wanted Jacob. It was a nice compromise, and Jacob could still worship God at Shechem just as well as he could at Bethel – or so he thought.
Genesis 33:20 There he erected an altar and called it El-Elohe-Israel (ESV) – which means “God, the God of Israel.”
Jacob stops short in his obedience to God, but he thinks building an altar is going to make up for it. Jacob has compromised in his commitment to God. He is trying to serve both God and money, thinking that his prayers and spiritual activity can compensate for his lack of full obedience.
And some Christians do the same thing. They try to ride the fence between God and the world, thinking their prayers and piety will cover their disobedience.
But that will never work. Jesus Himself said, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24).
Trust in the American News Media is at an all time low since the election with only 46% of Americans indicating that they trust it (that’s 57% Democrats and 18% Republicans). That’s down from 59% in 2019. (Trust in media hits new crisis low - Axios, January 21, 2021).
That’s because the media has been distorting the news for a long time. In fact, according to Bernard Gopldberg, it started in the early 1970’s. In his book, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News, he recounts a pivotal moment in television news. In the early 1970s, CBS president Dick Salant told staffers, “I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is, for the first time in history, CBS News made money last quarter. The bad news is, for the first time in history, CBS News made money last quarter.”
Goldberg writes, “Salant knew, everyone knew. If news could actually make money, the suits who ran the networks would expect just that. Sure, they would want quality in theory. But they wanted ratings and money in fact.”
In the words of Don Hewitt, creator of 60 Minutes, “Before they would say, ‘Make us proud.’ Now they tell us, ‘Make us money.’” (Bernard Goldberg, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News, Perennial, 2002, p. 90; www. PreachingToday.com)
A reporter cannot be faithful to the truth and faithful to making money at the same time. He has to choose which master he will serve, and so must you. You cannot be faithful to the One who is the Truth, Jesus Christ, and faithful to pursuing this world’s pleasures at the same time.
You have to choose which master you will serve. Either you commit yourself fully to Jesus Christ, or you commit yourself fully to making money. Either you choose to obey the Lord completely, or you choose to enjoy the pleasures of this world. Please, don’t try to do both, because just like the hunter and the bear, you end up being consumed by sin, and it only puts you under a lot of stress in the meantime.
Ron Hutchcraft, in an article entitled Living Peacefully in a Stressful World, describes a visit to Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina:
As the tour boat approached Fort Sumter, he wondered whether the guides would be dressed in blue or in gray. Sumter had been a Union fort in Confederate territory when the Civil War began, and it had changed hands several times.
Well, they were greeted at the gate by a “soldier” wearing a blue coat and gray pants! Hutchcraft says, “This uniform would not have worked very well back in 1861. It would have gotten its wearer shot on both ends!”
In the same way, it’s not a good idea for a follower of Christ to send double signals to his world either. Compromise increases stress over the long haul. The deception, the half-heartedness tears us apart. (Ron Hutchcraft, “Living Peacefully in a Stressful World,” Men of Integrity, Nov/Dec 2002; www.PreachingToday.com)
So please...
DON’T COMPROMISE IN YOUR COMMITMENT TO CHRIST.
Instead, choose to obey Him completely. Choose to be fully committed to the Lord, and don’t try to cover up your disobedience with acts of piety. Otherwise, there will be trouble just like there was for Jacob.
Genesis 34:1-3 Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the women of the land. And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he seized her and lay with her and humiliated her. And his soul was drawn to Dinah the daughter of Jacob. He loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her. (ESV)
Literally, He spoke to her heart.
Genesis 34:4 So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying, “Get me this girl for my wife.” (ESV)
Dinah, Jacob’s teenaged daughter wants to make some new friends in their new home. Only, she attracts the wrong kind of friend – the governor’s son. He rapes her, then woos her with tender words and wins her heart. Dinah is in love with a scumbag! The bear is starting to gobble up Jacob’s family. His daughter is violated, treated with the highest disrespect, and Jacob is passive and indecisive.
Genesis 34:5 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. (ESV)
This is going to be Jacob’s response throughout the ordeal. He is going to keep quiet, because he is in a quandary about what to do. He likes the Canaanite money, but they are hurting his family. That’s what compromise does. It makes people indecisive. What seemed so black and white before becomes gray, and decisions become very hard. Jacob is passive, but his sons become very passionate in their response.
Genesis 34:6-17 And Hamor the father of Shechem went out to Jacob to speak with him. The sons of Jacob had come in from the field as soon as they heard of it, and the men were indignant and very angry, because he had done an outrageous thing in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, for such a thing must not be done. But Hamor spoke with them, saying, “The soul of my son Shechem longs for your daughter. Please give her to him to be his wife. Make marriages with us. Give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves. You shall dwell with us, and the land shall be open to you. Dwell and trade in it, and get property in it.” Shechem also said to her father and to her brothers, “Let me find favor in your eyes, and whatever you say to me I will give. Ask me for as great a bride-price and gift as you will, and I will give whatever you say to me. Only give me the young woman to be my wife.” The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully, because he had defiled their sister Dinah. They said to them, “We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one who is uncircumcised, for that would be a disgrace to us. Only on this condition will we agree with you—that you will become as we are by every male among you being circumcised. Then we will give our daughters to you, and we will take your daughters to ourselves, and we will dwell with you and become one people. But if you will not listen to us and be circumcised, then we will take our daughter, and we will be gone.” (ESV)
Where is Jacob’s voice in all this? His sons are taking the lead, and they want revenge. Now, in this day and age, the proposal of circumcision was not an unusual request, because at times it was seen as an initiation into marriageable status. So…
Genesis 34:18-20 Their words pleased Hamor and Hamor’s son Shechem. And the young man did not delay to do the thing, because he delighted in Jacob’s daughter. Now he was the most honored of all his father’s house. So Hamor and his son Shechem came to the gate of their city...
Now, the gate of the city was where all public transactions took place.
Genesis 34:20-23 So Hamor and his son Shechem came to the gate of their city and spoke to the men of their city, saying, “These men are at peace with us; let them dwell in the land and trade in it, for behold, the land is large enough for them. Let us take their daughters as wives, and let us give them our daughters. Only on this condition will the men agree to dwell with us to become one people—when every male among us is circumcised as they are circumcised. Will not their livestock, their property and all their beasts be ours? Only let us agree with them, and they will dwell with us.” (ESV)
Through marriage, the men of Shechem hope to gain access to all of Jacob’s wealth. So…
Genesis 34:24 And all who went out of the gate of his city listened to Hamor and his son Shechem, and every male was circumcised, all who went out of the gate of his city. (ESV)
Ouch!
Genesis 34:25-29 On the third day, when they were sore, two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, took their swords and came against the city while it felt secure and killed all the males. They killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword and took Dinah out of Shechem’s house and went away. The sons of Jacob came upon the slain and plundered the city, because they had defiled their sister. They took their flocks and their herds, their donkeys, and whatever was in the city and in the field. All their wealth, all their little ones and their wives, all that was in the houses, they captured and plundered. (ESV)
Because of Jacob’s silence, his sons completely overreact; and in their anger, they slaughter an entire city and loot its wealth. They themselves become murderers and thieves, much worse than the men of Shechem ever were.
Genesis 34:30-31 Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites. My numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.” But they said, “Should he treat our sister like a prostitute?” (ESV)
Jacob finally says something, but it is too little too late. The culture has corrupted his family, and now Jacob fears for their very lives. But that’s what compromise does to people and their families. It leads to indecision and indignation. It destroys integrity. It corrupts families, and it breeds fear.
Now, when Moses writes this account in the life of Jacob hundreds of years later, he is writing it to a generation of Israelites getting ready to conquer the land of Canaan. In essence, he is describing the kind of corruption the Canaanites can bring to the people of Israel, and he is warning Israel not to intermarry with the Canaanites after they enter the land. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Moses is warning God’s people not to compromise with the Canaanite culture at all. They are not to intermarry. They are not to form alliances. They are not to corrupt themselves with Canaanite treachery and idolatry.
But this is not only a warning for God’s people back then. It is a warning for God’s people today. Oh my dear friends, by all means don’t compromise in your commitment to the Lord. But also…
DON’T COMPROMISE WITH THE GODLESS CULTURE THAT SURROUNDS YOU.
Don’t form alliances and intermarry with those who don’t follow Christ. Instead, separate yourself from this world’s attitudes and actions lest you find yourself and your family consumed by the corruptive influences of our day.
It’s like the bear eating the hunter. There can be no compromise with our corrupt culture, because we don’t influence it; it consumes us.
In 1973, a man attempted to rob a bank in Stockholm, Sweden, but the police trapped the man inside the bank. So he took three female hostages and one male hostage and held them for 131 hours. During that time, he terrorized them, firing his Russian automatic assault weapon and threatening to kill them on numerous occasions. He put nooses around their necks and threatened to hang them, but he didn't harm any of them.
When he finally surrendered, something very unusual happened. Ted Childress, an FBI hostage expert, said, “We expected the hostages to be antagonistic toward the hostage taker. But instead, they said they feared the police more than the hostage taker. They also said they didn't hate the hostage taker. They refused to testify against him, [and] one of the ladies [actually] became engaged to this hostage taker.”
That’s where the term, Stockholm Syndrome, comes from. It describes this phenomenon, first observed in Stockholm, in which a hostage, under so much stress, begins to transfer his hatred. Instead of hating the one who captured him, he begins to hate those who would rescue him. There is a denial of what is really happening, and the hostage actually develops a love relationship with his captor.
It happened years later, when Moslem terrorists took over the American Embassy in Beirut. After weeks and months of holding American citizens hostage, the terrorists put on a banquet for their hostages in a luxury hotel on the Mediterranean. After a while, a number of the hostages began to express sympathy for the terrorists’ viewpoints. (Donald Hoke, “The Stockholm Syndrome,” Preaching Today, Tape 30; www.PreachingToday. com)
That can happen to the sincerest follower of Christ! He or she can become sympathetic to the world system, which only wants to enslave and destroy them. They can begin to love the one who would enslave them and hate the One who would rescue them – Jesus Christ Himself!
That’s why the Bible warns Christ followers, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him (It’s not that God stops loving you, no! You stop loving God). For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:15-17).
The world says, “One more drink won’t hurt, one more snort, one more look at porn won’t destroy you.” But it will!
And Jesus came to rescue you from all that. That’s why He died on the cross. He died not only to rescue you from the penalty of sin, but from the power of sin in your life, as well.
So please, don’t fall in love with the world, which will destroy you. Don’t even sit down to talk with it. Don’t compromise with the world one bit, or it will consume you and your family. Instead, Turn to Christ, and let Him rescue you from this world’s destruction.
D. A. Carson warns, “We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated” (D. A. Carson, quoted in “Reflections,” Christianity Today, 7-31-2000; www.PreachingToday.com)
My dear friends, don’t let it happen to you. Don’t drift towards compromise. Don’t compromise in your commitment to the Lord, and don’t compromise with the godless culture that surrounds you, lest you be consumed by it.
But someone says, “Phil, I’m already consumed by my culture. I’ve made compromises that have hurt me and my family. What can I do?”
Well, you can do what God told Jacob to do. Look at Genesis 35:1 God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel…” (which means “the house of God”). If you’ve drifted away from God, God Himself calls you to come back to Him, and that’s all you need to do. Come back to your Lord and Savior and let Him rescue you from your sins.
N. T. Wright talks about a friend of his, who described the reaction when he went home, as a young teenager, and announced to his mother that he'd become a Christian. Alarmed, she thought he'd joined some kind of cult. “They've brainwashed you!” she said. He was ready with the right answer. “If you'd seen what was in my brain,” he replied, “you'd realize it needed washing!”
Of course, he hadn't been brainwashed. In fact... the light of Jesus had begun to make things clear. N. T. Wright says, “It's our surrounding culture that brainwashes us, persuading us in a thousand subtle ways that the present world is the only one there is... A mood is created in which it seems so much easier to go with the flow. That's what happens in brainwashing. What the gospel does is to administer a sharp jolt, to shine a bright light, to kick-start the brain... into working properly for the first time.” (N. T. Wright, John for Everyone, Part 1, WJK, 2004, pp. 43-44; www.PreachingToday.com)
Let Jesus do that for you. If the world has brainwashed you, let Jesus kickstart your brain into working properly, perhaps, for the first time.
