the basic message # E152
Exodus 20: 4-6
“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
I’d like to focus on the often misunderstood concept regarding the punishment for the sins of the fathers. For many years I simply assumed that if my great-great grandfather was a Godless man, then God would include me in the generations he would punish. I always struggled with that passage, since after all, I had nothing to do with my great-grandfather’s sinfulness, right?
If your Grandpa hated black people, passing that hatred to his son, (your father), and your father passed it on to you, that’s a sin of the father being passed to generations. God has nothing to do with our desire to continue in sin, since he gave his son’s life to atone for our sin. What are some common sins passed along? Substance abuse. Although Grandpa was probably addicted to moonshine and your Dad is addicted to Budweiser, maybe your favorite poison is marijuana. Maybe your kid’s choice will be cocaine or heroin. If our children grow-up seeing us abuse stimulants, guess what they’ll probably do without thinking about it? Oh, I know your kid won’t get into drug abuse- only my kid did that. Guess what? I never did any drug in my life, but the sins of the fathers of the kids my son associated with jumped all over him. You can have the cleanest and most honorable lineage in the world and still have the sins of someone else’s father visit your home. Perhaps the sin in your heritage is materialism. Maybe great-Grandpa was a Senator or owned a big corporation. His family was known to live in the finest home, have the finest automobiles, clothes, etc. Perhaps that insatiable desire for the finest things got passed-down for the next 3 or 4 generations. Perhaps your 15 year-old daughter simply had to have a new Corvette when she got her driver’s license. After all, the little brat next door got a Mustang GT, and we certainly can’t let her family show us up, now can we? We call it materialism, God calls it idolatry.
Let’s quit picking on Grandpa and focus on the Baby Boomers- my generation. I guess we’re famous for being hippies, whether we were or not. We virtually created the mistrust of authority between 1968 and 1975. We have successfully passed that trait down to our children, and they will likely pass it down to their children. The current wave of patriotism in 2001 will pass just as it did in 1991, and then it will be business as usual. Another Baby Boomer trait was our rejection of God. We were probably the first generation that simply decided we didn’t need to go to church. After all, we can commune with God anywhere and anytime without being in church. Although many Boomers “saw the light” and finally found the church again, the wheels of destruction were already set in motion. I see so many parents that find God after their children are in their teens and then wonder why their kids can’t get with the program just as they did.
So what’s the solution? Stop the madness right now. The sins of the fathers will continue without ceasing as long as we allow them to. I don’t care if Budweiser says you can “drink responsibly”, you know that it’s a potentially deadly habit. Get a grip on materialism. It has been said that we buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like. We might have inherited sins from our ancestors, but we don’t have to continue this crazy path. Right?