Faithbase

Hello and welcome to thinking about the Bible and this series thinking about God's law. Last session we talked about the second commandment which is to have no carved or no graven image no idol of any sort to represent God and and we saw that the principle there for us because most of us aren't gonna go out and make an idol to represent God but but we might worship God in a way that he says is inappropriate that is he says is wrong and we want when we want to know how to worship God one of the best place to look of course is in the New Testament where we see Paul giving directions to the church in Corinth for instance on how to appropriately worship but we didn't touch on verses 5 and 6 this is Exodus 20 verse 4 where we see the command but then in 5 and 6 there are some conditions or some sanctions you might say and first of all God says he's a jealous God and that he will visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate him but he will show mercy to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments I want to begin by saying that the word generations does not actually appear in the Hebrew it simply says visiting the iniquity upon the fathers to the third and fourth of those who hate me and so the the word generations is is supplied and it is because we assume that that's implied the interesting thing is that later in Deuteronomy it actually says generations and it says a thousand generations as well for blessings and so what is odd that many Christians do is suggest that God brings punishment to the third and fourth generation but he certainly wouldn't bless for a thousand generations because that just doesn't make sense to them because that would be like 30,000 years or something and most Christians or many I should say a lot of Christians don't believe that we have that much time left on earth I happen to think we do that we have plenty of time to experience the full blessings of God's of God's love and graciousness and generosity but what I want to touch on here very quickly is this idea of of cursing and punishment to the third and fourth generation first of all I want to point out that that is a blessing in then in that is limited to the third and fourth generation God didn't say I'll curse that family for eternity he didn't say that forever and generation after generation he says I'll for the third and fourth generation and by that point God will have intervened in some fashion and bring hopefully that would be the normal way of bringing that family out of that but you might even ask the question well what if the second or third generation that those children of that of that line come to know Jesus Christ as Savior well let me say this even though you come to know Christ as Savior you will often still pay a price of some sort for the sins that you've committed or the sins of your fathers let me give you a quick example here so we don't go too long but let's suppose that your parents were meth addicts they were thieves they were in and out of jail they were just bad people never came to know Jesus Christ as Savior never forgiven of their sins you were raised in a household did not come to know Christ until your adulthood and you lived a very similar lifestyle to what they had done well even though you came to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior at some point it may very well be that you still suffer the consequences of the past your own past and that of your of your parents because of financial difficulties for instance coming out of that kind of a lifestyle physical problems because of the drug abuse and so forth emotional issues that you have to work through and and on and on so you can see what I'm saying here that although the grace of Jesus Christ can reach in and make us a new creation one of the principles we see in scripture is that there is a consequence for sin we can't just do what we want and expect no consequence so God is loving and gracious he will break that hold of sin he will make us a new creation renew us and even though we limp as Jacob did after wrestling with the angel we still have the strength to carry on and to express the love and the grace of Jesus Christ to others so that's just one of the things I wanted to point out there in our second command we'll get back to the third command tomorrow God bless you and be thinking about this think about how you may have seen this in the in your own life when the lives of others and give praise to God that he has saved you or save others that you do know out of a life of sin and darkness we'll see you again tomorrow