Hypotheticals Are Not Certainties

“And they journeyed: and the terror of God was upon the cities that [were] round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob.” (Ge 35:5 AV)

The thing Jacob feared the most never came to pass.  Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, was sleeping with a Gentile man out of wed-lock.  When the man’s father came to speak with Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, met him.  They convinced Shechem and his son to circumcise all the males among them.  From head of household down to servant, every man was circumcised under the guise the two nations would unite.  The third day after surgery, as the men were too sore to stand, Simeon and Levi entered the city and killed them all.  They took what was left.  Correctly stated, the two men accused Shechem and his son of treating their sister like a harlot.  Jacob was not a happy person.  He feared the allies of these men would ally themselves to destroy their little family.  Yet, the above verse tells us that wherever Jacob went, those whom they met were struck with the fear of God.  Simeon and Levi did the right thing.  Because they did, all other nations feared them.  God struck Jacob’s potential enemies with the fear of God.  The thing Jacob feared never came to pass.

We have all had these moments.  Fear became the major factor in a decision and it cost us something.  Hypotheticals became more important that certainties.  What might happen was of more concern that what we knew would happen.  Without risk, there is little reward.  Regret is sown in the garden of fear.  I cannot begin to tell you how many people I have ministered to who, going through a midlife crisis, wished they had made different choices.  Failure to trust the LORD or strike out at opportunity left them is doubt many years later.  In fact, we all live with this.  We all struggle with what might have been.  We never fully trust the LORD and because we do not, we fail to see the LORD work in ways that He might have otherwise.

Fear cannot dictate what is right or wrong.  Fear cannot be the deciding factor to determine absolutes.  Fear is a good thing.  The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.  But fear, being the sole determining factor in our decisions, is going to lead us down a path of ineffectiveness and fruitlessness.  Jacob had a promise.  He had a promise that he never fully trusted.  As we mentioned yesterday, he manipulated a birthright when God had promised it to him.  He manipulated a family and household when God would have blessed him, anyway.  Now, he doesn’t trust God’s promises and refuses to defend his daughter.  When his sons do, they get a rebuke.  Jacob is a man who tries as best he can, but he can not seem to fully trust the LORD.  God uses him anyway.  God blesses him anyway.  Praise the LORD.  One wonders what Jacob would have missed out on if he had allowed God to work and did the right thing when it counted.