Exodus 34:5-7 “And the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him, and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” Today's episode discusses these various aspects of God and also explains what the last line in the verse is talking about. What does it mean that the iniquity of the fathers will visit the children and the children children, to the third and the fourth generation? Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
What is God Like?
Exodus 34:5-7 “And the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him, and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, can you even imagine? The Lord our God just coming down in the cloud and standing with you? Sometimes I think Moses was so lucky. He was so loved by the Lord and He had so many great conversations with the Lord. He had interactions with the Lord that most of us only dream of. As I write that, I wonder if that is a true statement? Could we have interactions with the Lord, like Moses did? While I think we could have interactions like Moses did, I don’t think most of us do because we are not willing to trust like Moses did. We are not willing to sacrifice and be obedient like Moses. When I start to think about how lucky Moses was, the Holy Spirit reminds me of all Moses was called to do. Moses did not have an easy job. Going in front of the Pharaoh and asking him to release the Jews was not easy. Going back to Pharaoh again and again could not have been easy. Then he also had to lead the people out of Egypt.
When I pictured Moses leading the people out of Egypt I pictured a small caravan of people. I’m not sure if I thought it was a few hundred or a few thousand. Honestly I probably pictured a few hundred. When I read Exodus 12:37 and I learned “There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children,” I couldn’t believe it. When I think of how many people Moses was leading, I don’t feel he was lucky. I can’t even get my three boys to do what I want them to do, can you imagine being in charge of well over 600,000 people. Counting women and children some people say it was over 2 million people. Moses had a hard job. If he wasn’t as close with God I am not sure he would have been able to do it.
The next part of the verse talks about God, it tells us some of His characteristics. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. The Lord showed this over and over again with how he treated the Israelites. They constantly turned away from the Him and yet he kept forgiving them. God performed numerous miracles for them and they were always in awe and they celebrated, and praised Him, and then after a little time went by, they started to complain about their circumstances again. We do this too, don’t we? We are so happy when God answers our prayers, and we praise Him and thank Him. Then we go back to our normal lives, we get bored and we start to complain to the Lord because we don’t have all the things we want to have. God saved the Israelites from slavery and yet they were complaining because they didn’t have any meat to eat. They were romanticizing their life in slavery because they were comfortable there. This new life Moses led them too wasn’t comfortable. Yes, they were free, but they didn’t have the comforts they were used to.
Isn’t it strange how we do the same thing? We know we are being called to something different and yet we cling to our past because that is where we are most comfortable. Even if our past holds trauma, even if we weren’t free in our past situations, even if our past situations were hurting us, we can cling to what we are used to doing, what made us comfortable. We know that staying with that abusive partner is not safe for us and yet if we leave, what will we have? We may not even have a place to live, or money to buy food. God can do miraculous things for us, He can help us leave that abusive relationship, that job that was stealing all our time away from our families, that town that wasn’t good for us and yet once we leave that situation we may long for some of the comforts that life provided us.
God is merciful and gracious, he understands what we are going through. He is slow to anger. He understands that we will make mistakes and He stands by our side while me make them. I looked up the word steadfast as I wasn’t sure exactly what steadfast love and faithfulness meant. According to the Oxford Dictionary steadfast means resolutely or dutifully firm and unwavering. That seems to fit well with our God. His love and faithfulness is unwavering. He does not always like what we do and He doesn’t always approve of it, and yet his love for us never changes. Whether we have turned away or not, whether we are striving to be holy or not, God’s love for us never changes, it’s always there!
I really like the next part of the verse too. It says, “ Keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” I am so grateful that God forgives our iniquity and transgression and sin. Can you even imagine where we would be if God didn’t for our transgressions and sins? We are all sinners. None of us are perfect. I looked up the word iniquity because it is one of those words that I kinda know what it means, but I couldn’t explain it to someone else. I think if we are exploring these verses we will understand them better if we can explain each word to someone else. According to Oxford dictionary iniquity means, “Immoral or grossly unfair behavior.” Yup, that sounds about right. Where would we be if God didn’t forgive our immoral or grossly unfair behavior? I also love how it says that God is keeping steadfast love for thousands.
The last part of this verse was reassuring and yet a bit frightening, at least for me when I read it. The ending of the verse says, “But who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” The first part seems like a good thing. We love that God forgives our sins but we don’t want the guilty to go free. God is a good good Father and so sometimes He gives out consequences that we may not like when we do the wrong thing. He does not let us get away with things we shouldn’t get away with. God will call us our on our stuff. That part was not the frightening part.
The second part of that sentence where it says, “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” This part seems disturbing to me. Does that mean if my parents, or grandparents make a huge mistake then I will have to pay for it? If my great grandmother does something to upset God, then I will also have to pay for her sins? When I read this part of the verse I almost skipped over it. It didn’t make sense to me and if I don’t understand it how could I explain it. Also, it doesn’t seem to paint God in a very good light and I don’t want that either. The reason I didn’t skip over this verse is because we are on a journey to learn what the Bible is telling us. We can’t do that if we skip all the hard parts. So, instead of skipping I went to my good friend google and looked up what other people saying about this last part that seems to be discussing generational curses. I looked through a few articles, two of which seemed to explain it. If you have the time check out the articles as I felt the held a lot of good information.
One article said, “So here’s what the “generational curse” is really about: The skeletons in your closet weren’t put there by your dad or your grandmother or your great-aunt. They’re the work of your First Parents. You were in Adam when he broke God’s commandment. You were condemned with him. But that’s not the end of the story — praise God! Just as you were in Adam when he fell from grace, so now, if you believe in Jesus, you are in Christ through faith. This is what Paul means when he says that “one man [Jesus] did obey. That is why many people will be made right with God.” (Romans 5:19, NIRV). To get out from under the “generational curse,” you have to be grafted into a whole new family tree (Romans 11:11-24). God sent Jesus to die for our sins so we wouldn’t be condemned by the sins of others.” (Click Here for article)
The second article explains it a bit differently. It says, "It’s important to note that, even within the Mosaic Law, children were not required to suffer the penalty for their parents’ sins (see Deuteronomy 24:16). Nor was a child’s standing before God determined by the actions of his or her parents (see Ezekiel 18:1–32). However, there is no such thing as sin without consequence. When a parent sins, his or her children (and grandchildren) can expect to experience negative, earthly consequences for that sin. For example, if a father is an alcoholic, his children will not be punished for his sin; however, they will have to deal with the negative consequences of his actions, such as verbal abuse, a strained marriage with the mother, financial problems, and more.
Through Jesus and His death on the cross, all punishment for sin has been paid for once and for all and is not counted against those who have faith in Him (Romans 6:10; 1 Peter 3:18). In moments when we must deal with the consequences of other peoples’ sin, we can remember that God has given us the Holy Spirit as a comforter and helper (John 14:16–17) and that God has promised to work all things together for the good of those who love Him. (Click Here for 2nd article)
Both these explanations gave me comfort. Although at first glance it seems as though we would have to pay for our father’s or mother’s sins, or even our grandparent’s sins, it turns out that Jesus already paid for our sins once and for all. However, we may still have to deal the earthly consequences of those sins and for that we have the Holy Spirit to help us and guide us. God is so Good, he never leaves us alone. He knew we would need the Holy Spirit and so He sent him to us!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to see you for who you are. Help us to see all the amazing characteristics you have. Help us to feel your steadfast love and faithfulness. Thank you for being so merciful and gracious. Thanks for being so amazing and forgiving our iniquities, transgressions and sins! We don’t know where we would be without you. We are so grateful for you! We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!