What To Do With Your Irreversible Mistakes

As we meet Jacob today, we find him in a place called Shechem. Shechem is an interesting place because it is the place where God will meet with Jacob in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament, Jesus meets a certain Samaritan woman there as well.... at a well. Jacob’s well it is called.

After an exchange of words, Jesus offers the woman salvation and a clean slate. He even calls what He offers her by “living water.”

Shechem was a significant place that Jesus said “He must go to.” In John 4 he said: “I must needs go through Samaria.” Yet, while it was the place God wanted Jesus to go, it was not the place God wanted Jacob to go...but he want anyway.

Following God’s direction is imperative for our lives. Yet, there are many people in the Bible who refused to go in the direction God intended for their life.

· Instead of going to Nineveh, Jonah got on a boat headed in the opposite direction to

Joppa.

· Instead of going to Rome, Paul insisted on going to Jerusalem.

· Instead of going to Bethel, Jacob decided to go to Shechem.

One thing is for certain, in each instance and illustration in scripture, going in a different direction than God’s leadership was disastrous.

Today’s story is a series of stories. Stories about mistakes that all started with Jacob going his own way.

In Genesis 28, long before Jacob left the promised land, God met with Jacob in Bethel, and later would call him to return there. Yet, in disobedience, Jacob went to Shechem. He went his own way. He charted his own path. He made his own plans.

I guess we’ve all done that haven’t we? Isaiah 53:6 says: “All we like sheep have gone astray, each one has turned to our own way...”

Often we feel we’ve made irreversible mistakes. So what do we do with the mistakes of our past? Let’s let Jacob teach us from his own mistakes.

Transitional Sentence: What do I do with my irreversible mistakes?

I. Don’t Repeat Your Mistakes

vs. 1-6- “Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had born to Jacob...”

Explanation:

One of the things that we learn from Jacob is that he consistently repeated his mistakes instead of repenting and changing; he kept making the same mistakes.

The reason? Jacob had preferences. He did not want to go to Bethel; so he went to Shechem, build an altar there, and basically was saying to God; I don’t want to go back to where your promised to meet me again; I want you to meet me in Shechem.

The Bible does not tell us why Jacob chose Shechem as his new city. It does not give a lot of detail about it but from ancient studies of the city we know that it was a popular place to live. The ancient historian Josephus even tells us that the city had “festivals” and “entertainment”.

As a matter of fact, Josephus adds to the Genesis 34 story declaring that Jacob’s daughter Dinah was on meeting the girls to attend a festival in Shechem when the events of Genesis 34 transpired.

Jacob had preferences.

Yet, he didn’t just have preferences when it came to his “hometown” he had preferences when it came to his home.

One of Jacob’s primary mistakes was the mistake of favoritism.

James 2:1 says: “My brothers, show no partiality (favoritism) as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory...”

Yet, Jacob was consumed with favoritism in his family life and the ugliness of his favoritism was replicated and ravished his family continually.

In Jacob’s family there were VIP’s---namely Rachel and Joseph. We saw this in the previous chapter as Jacob expected Esau to attack his family, and Rachel and Joseph were aligned in an order that provided them the most security.

At the bottom of the pecking order of Jacob was Dinah. After all, Jacob had preferences. He preferred “the boys” and specifically Rachel’s boy Joseph.

Dinah is the only daughter of Jacob and Leah. Honestly, this chapter sadly gives testimony of Jacobs lack of concern for her. For one, she’s a girl; and he preferred boys. Second, she’s not the daughter of Jacob’s favorite wife. She is the daughter of Leah.

Interesting enough, in this chapter, the word “daughter” is used 14 times which seems to emphasize the value of her being his daughter, yet Jacob seems to ignore the value of his daughter, and be more consumed with the value of his reputation. (But we will get to that)

As the story unfolds we read verse one that reads: “Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she borne to Jacob went out to visit the daughters of the land.” Vs. 1