Peter Barnes | Genesis 19:1-25; 34:1-31
SERMON NOTES
DESTROYING ALL BOUNDARIES
Genesis 19:1-25; 34:1-31
– Jonathan Edwards compared physical desire to a fire in a house: ‘very useful while kept in its place, but if left to take possession of the whole house, soon brings all to destruction.’
1. Sexual violence.
– H. C. Leupold advised all preachers not to preach on Gn.34.
– 34:1-5. Dinah was probably about fifteen; even before the law of Moses, ‘such a thing ought not to be done’ (34:7).
– Simeon and Levi exact a terrible revenge. Jacob feels isolated and vulnerable, while the brothers refuse to climb down from their high horses – 34:30-31. This has far-reaching ramifications – Gen. 49:5-7.
2. The homosexual juggernaut.
– 19:1-5. Martin Luther said that he could not read this chapter without a feeling of deep revulsion. Long before this, Lot had decided for the wrong reasons to live in the wrong place – 13:10, 13. Derek Kidner calls him ‘the righteous man without the pilgrim spirit’.
– Chuck McIlhenny’s When the Wicked Seize the City. Calvin: ‘let us not think that that is far from us’. The emperor Nero ‘married’ a young boy, Sporus. Ernst Röhm (head of the SA) got Hitler into power.
3. The fruit of the Spirit is self-control.
– Gal.5:22-23.
– our society arouses the passions, then has to do something about containing them.