Yahweh Our Gracious Judge "I Am Who I Am" [3 of 12] Tim Mackie (The Bible Project) 3/9/2014

um i invite you to open your bibles and turn with me to the book of exodus the book of exodus it's the second second book of the bible uh exodus chapter 34 and we're uh well into this uh series that we're doing for a few months here called i am who i am and we're exploring the uh identity and the character of the christian god the specific god that we believe in of yahweh the god whose story is told in the scriptures who chose the people of israel as his covenant people and ultimately came in our midst we believe in jesus of nazareth and we're exploring the true identity and the character of this god because it's so easy without even knowing it we constantly tend to devolve into distorted unhealthy ways of thinking about god and god's character and just like you know you think in any relationship or friendship that you have where have you ever had a situation actually maybe you've done this before where you have a friend and there's some tension there's some issue you're working out and you are playing through the conversation that you need to have with that person and you answer on their behalf in this little theoretical conversation in your head you guys know that you've never done this you totally have done this right and so you find yourself answering on their behalf because of course you know what they're going to say don't you right and then you know and and what are you basing that off of you're basing that off of your knowledge of their character and then of course when you actually go and have the conversation half the times you're way off base and they're totally like they didn't say what you thought they would and they're more awesome than whatever so that's what we're getting at here we we start relating and thinking about and and connecting to jesus or to god in ways that are actually not true to who god really is and so we're taking months to just go at this from every different facet um so that we can actually know truly this this one that we say we're relating to and so um exodus chapter 34 contains we're spending two sundays on it this is the second this is uh the the longest most dense description of god's character uh anywhere in the whole bible it has the most descriptions of who god is and god's character all packed into just a couple lines right here it's the longest most detailed description of god's character in the whole bible exodus chapter 34 verses 6 and 7 we'll just read it read it aloud here and he that is yahweh passed in front of moses proclaiming yahweh yahweh the compassionate and gracious god slow to anger abounding in love and faithfulness maintaining love to thousands yet forgiving wickedness rebellion and sin yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and the fourth generation hmm know exactly what's happening in the room right now don't ya so our hearts were warmed by verse six for sure we're loving that we're like compassion and grace and patience and love and faithfulness and we're getting stoked number seven love and forgiveness and so on and then punish guilty children run away stop stop it stop it no right come on that happened that just happened to most of us right now right when i read this aloud and this happens to us a lot when we read the bible it's like whoa this was so awesome and then it bad ending or something i don't know what so so what's happening here first of all the language of these verses um is difficult and it's actually pretty unclear i think it's capable of a few different uh interpretations which we'll talk about but i think at the core this this verse we're excited about verse six we're stoked on yahweh's mercy love and compassion and so on and then we get to verse seven about something about punishment and we're like no i don't i don't i don't like that i want to cry right now and so here's a here's how i would depict i think the challenge of what's going on here we have two character traits of god um verse six is very clear and it's in verse seven two he abounds in love and faithfulness he maintains love to thousands and so on and so you have this and we like this this makes us feel good and then you get to the latter half of verse 7 and where all of a sudden you could use different different words to describe this i'll use the word god's justice but you could also use god's judgment or his wrath or something like that and these are two parts of god's character that i think just really befuddle most of us and or we don't we might affirm both of them but how they actually work together or i think most of us we tend to just kind of think of god as one or the other or if he's both one trumps the other or something like that i think most of us are just puzzled and this isn't just a theoretical puzzle this is a relational challenge for us like how do you relate to someone who you think is loving most the time but then you're like worried about what they're doing when nobody's watching or stop punishing children that's weird and so you know what i'm saying so what how do we go at this and that's what we're going to do do this morning so how do we go at this first of all there's just one there's one core skill that you have to develop when you're learning how to read the bible if if the bible is god's revealing his story and his name and his identity and character to us we have to just pay serious attention to the form that it takes and here's something very interesting about the the way god is described in the bible you will almost never find passages in the bible that engaged josh mentioned this last week in kind of speculation about god's attributes of being like everywhere present or his changeable and he's the uncaused cause or this kind of greek philosophical ways of thinking about i guess it's totally absent in the bible and there's none of that what you do find is the primary way the bible is trying to reveal yahweh's character to us is through narrative and poetry through stories and through poems now just stop and think about that and we might even say well this wasn't uh like versus six and seven it was a list of attributes exactly that occurs right smack in the middle of a really important story a really important story in fact i would argue that you can't really grasp the full significance of verses six and seven if you haven't really sat down with a cup of tea and thought about the story that you find this description in turn back just two pages um to exodus 32. i just want to point something out to you so this self-description of yahweh occurs right smack in the middle of a story and if you look at chapter 32 exodus 32 just if you have like chapter titles or chapter headings or something what's going on in exodus 32 what story is this the story of the golden calf if you don't know the story it's a crucially important story in the plotline of the story of the bible so far and i have to summarize it or else verse 7 that we read that makes us want to cry and go home will remain impenetrable to us but if you really think about what the story that leads up to what yahweh says about himself it all kind of starts to fit into place here so so yahweh delivered the people of israel out of slavery in egypt and it was act of sheer mercy and grace keeping his promises to abraham he redeemed them out of slavery and he brought them through the wilderness to the foot of a mountain what's the name of this mountain so it's mount sinai and that's where the story takes place and yahweh um i don't know why i'm looking up right now but i think it's a so they're at the foot of a mountain it's i guess mountains are tall and yahweh appears to israel personally in the form of this cloud and thunderstorm that settles on top of the mountain for a long long time and he reveals himself to them i'm yahweh you're my people i rescued you i loved you i'm committing myself to you and in a covenant don't go after the other gods i mean i'm yahweh the god that rescued you the other gods as josh said last week it's really apt image the other gods are pimps and they will use you never give you what you really need to flourish as a human being and they'll spit you out don't go after them yahweh i rescued you i've already showed you that i'm committed to you and so the first request or command that he gives them in the ten commandments is i'm yahweh your god don't go after the other gods don't try and represent me with some image or idol and try and worship me the way that the other nations worship their gods it's the first request that yahweh makes and what is the first thing that they do forty days go by after the ten commandments and moses is up in you know with yahweh on the cloud and so on and what do the people do it's 40 days the cloud is still hanging out on top of the mountain and what do they do exodus 32 they do exactly what yahweh asked them not to do and so they're like moses we don't know what happened to that guy and so yahweh who's this yahweh who's in a cloud up there that's kind of weird and so oh here's the thing that we could do let's make a little molten calf out of our gold earrings and so on that's a great idea you know and so that's what they do that's totally what they do and that's not the only thing that they do so they represent yahweh with this little molten cast calf that they make but that they uh begin this huge religious festival to it it's a big party and if you read the story in verse six it says they eat and they drink so they fill their bellies get hammered and it says some of our translations have and they rose up to play or others of your translations have they rose up to engage in revelry and what they're trying to do is is um be polite that's what our english translations are doing because the word that's used here has sexual connotations right right through it and everything is weird you make a calf the whole bunch of people have this festival worshiping the calf that represents yahweh and then they get plastered and then they have sex like what is going on here that seems odd to us but where would these people get the idea that this is how you should worship a god well where have they been where has this family been living for 400 years they've not been worshipping yahweh for 400 years no way he's revealing himself to them because they've they don't know who this god is anymore and so here's what the tragedy of this story is he always just revealed himself to them and their first effort to actually try and worship him they go about worshiping him as if he's just another egyptian or canaanite deity and so how do you worship the fertility gods you have ritual sex and so on and ritual meals and that's how you'd do it and yeah obviously and understandably yahweh is ticked and very disappointed because it's the first thing he asked them not to do is exactly what they're doing and so yahweh invites moses again again to remind you getting the story is crucial for understanding what yahweh says about himself he invites moses to come intercede on behalf of the people because he always says you know this was maybe a bad idea this is what he says it's a bad idea let's like wipe them out and just start over with you moses and moses says no that's als that's even even worse idea right it's been worse idea you don't want to do that because you are yahweh and you're merciful and compassionate and you made these promises to abraham that you were going to do something with this family and you always says oh yeah good point okay i'm not we're not do that i'll forgive them and so yahweh forgives them he doesn't sever his covenant commitment with these people but there are three thousand of them who engaged in this whole party feast ritual and so on and those three thousand uh face the music they die so yahweh forgives and doesn't sever his covenant with israel but at the same time for those israelites just in terms of flagrant f you yahweh we don't care you asked us not to do this we're going to do it anyway they face the music and there you go that's the story and moses is very overwhelmed after that happens and so he says yahweh show me your ways i want to know you i want to understand you you're a god of justice but you're also a god of love and and then yahweh shows up to moses and then here we are reading these words are you with me that's the story so here's why it's important to re-tell that let's go back to exodus 34 6-7 this list of yahweh's attributes is not just some random list just trying to describe who he is in the abstract what yahweh is doing is telling moses the kind of god that he is he's summarizing how he's just acted in the story that's what i'm trying to get at he's not he's actually what kind of a god is it that would do what just happened in chapters 32 33 and 34 and yahweh summarizes those verse six he's he's yahweh yahweh he's compassionate with josh and pack last week he has emotional concern for the well-being of these people and so he's hurt deeply because of what happens he's gracious which is not about emotion that's about action giving people something they don't deserve and so because he's pained and he cares for them so much he he maintains his covenant with them even though that's not what they deserve he's slow to anger which doesn't mean he doesn't get angry it means he can hold his anger and that he's been holding it for a long time and this is not the first time israel's been total jerk to yahweh read chapter 16 and so on and so they have had some other incidents along the way so he's slow to anger he's abounding in love and in faithfulness and then verse seven is also a summary of what just happened in the story and so here's what we're going to do we're going to tackle verse 7 today but again the whole point is that it's anchored in this story that reveals how yahweh just behaved the story summarizes what yahweh just did that's my main point you guys with me okay so verse seven let's read it again and uh i'm gonna throw it up here on on the screen and we'll just dive into the excitement here so he maintains loved thousands forgiving wickedness rebellion and sin yet he doesn't leave the guilty unpunished he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation i'm going to throw a different translation it's adapted from a translation some of you some of you have called the english standard version that i think brings out the key elements here really really helpfully there's four there's four things being said about yahweh here in verse seven um and they're not unrelated they actually all come together and form this really coherent statement that's all about this all about yahweh's love and yahweh's justice and how they harmoniously work together instead of being contradictions like they are in our in our thinking now one thing about verse seven that's really really cool so i've put that uh last word there generation and yellow you all see that right there okay so uh the word here's what's funny about the last sentence of this verse here is that that word generation actually doesn't exist in the original language which is hebrew um it's very awkward if you were to literally translate it means visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the grandchildren to the threes and the fours that's what it says in hebrew which is terrible english i hope you would never talk like that but it's wonderful hebrew it's great hebrew it's exactly how you would say it in hebrew and what it means is generation it means generation but it doesn't say that it says to the threes and the fours now here's why that's significant is because look at the very first line the first line and the last line are meant to correspond he keeps his covenant love for thousands but he'll visit the iniquities on to the threes and the fours do you see how there's something going on here those two relate in some way and this is why to go to the next slide a number of your translations have thousands of generations to match and correspond to the threes and the fours and i think this is correct and why many of your translations have thousands of generations actually it reads that in your translation and i think that's correct in other words and here's what's cool verse 7 is a little uh it has a poetic structure to it this is literary art in the bible it's one it's all over the place once you start looking for it and uh do you see that um some of you poetry geeks among us you you see this form quite often it has do you see how the statement has a symmetry to it it's called chiasm is the geeky word for it but it's where you you match the outer part of the poetry and then the next lines they correspond in the next lines you know you can make however big or small you want do you see it there i did it with the a b b air are you guys with me so the a matches the a the b matches the b so i went for a walk to go to the store in order to buy some milk to get some dairy products is why i went to the supermarket [Laughter] so that's my that's my did but did you see it did you catch it so i did the same thing it was just a dumb version of it so this is much more much more profound but that's the idea it's a poetic way of talking here so here's here's just the basic observation i want us to make because this is very powerful verse 7 is a coherent statement about how god's love relates to his justice and and so we're told here at the very beginning that yahweh keeps his covenant love and we'll talk about that word covenant love in a second he keeps his covenant love for thousands not thousands of people thousands of generations now how long is that it's a very long time so you know even just 1 000 generations would be like 40 000 years or something like that so the point is for it forever eternal it's poetry right so eternally forever he keeps covenant love for thousands that's his eternal permanent commitment but somehow that that doesn't mean he will excuse or not deal with the sin of individuals or families or generations to the third and the fourth generation now just we'll talk about what the third and the fourth generation mean and all that but just look at the numbers and just say if you put these two in a scale just put these two numbers in a scale which way should i be leaning right now like you don't understand like this are you with me so the uh james has a way of putting this in in the new testament uh he talks about god is just god is love he's merciful he's also a god of judgment and god's love doesn't cancel out or contradict his mercy but god tends this direction he in the way james says mercy triumphs which doesn't mean cancels out means they harmoniously work together so that yahweh's love is is always the primary thing that he's accomplishing even through his justice so i just want you to see this here just do the numbers and the balance make sense to you here so if you're if your vision of god is that he's primarily out to get you and he's primarily like detention police and monitoring your behavior so that he can catch you that's a distortion of god's character god cares deeply about how we treat each other and how we act as human beings but he does it as an expression of his eternal permanent binding covenant love to us are you with me yeah so this is key all right and we'll come back to that basic that basic point here so god tends towards mercy which of course you see in the story already if he wasn't like this he would have just ditched israel and began with moses just begin the story all over again right but he didn't do that because he's he's committed to covenant love for thousands so here's what i want to do i want to work through these four movements of verse 7 and see how they tie all together here and we'll just see what happens you guys with me okay so um he he keeps his covenant love some of your translations have for that first line steadfast love or kindness some of your translations just have the word love which um it is fine it's fine but you have to you have to think things through the hebrew word that yahweh uses here that's the word it has the kh which is the clearing your throat letter khasid want to say it with me it's good well done class so it's very it's a very difficult concept to translate into any language um so love here's our problem with our word love love is a frustrating and virtually useless word in the english language right as i say because i can say i love pizza i love star wars and i love my wife and if it means the same thing in all of those sentences i have real problems in my relationship with my wife right if it means the same thing so we use the word love to talk about preference or like but then also to talk about like the most important relationships in our lives right and our commitment and our affection to those people and so what an unhelpful word why not just have two or three words right so but we use this this this clunky one instead so and in american english love refers primarily to an emotion it's something that you feel and that's not the case in the scriptures tested is a is about a commitment or covenant that's my little abbreviation for covenant right here and so it's in the bible god's love and when humans show hesed it's about action not a feeling that you have it's action that i do that seeks the well-being of another person regardless of how they respond to me why on earth would i do that because i made a promise dude i made a promise that that's how i would behave and do i feel like seeking this person's well-being married people in the room do you always like the person that you said that you would love on your wedding day do you always like that person no chance no chance at all no way not only i mean sometimes you straight up dislike them a lot right and but you but this that's the whole that's the whole point and so yahweh it doesn't like it it doesn't mean that he's happy with what we're doing all the time in fact that's the profound thing of what's going on right here is that yahweh has eternally for thousands of generations bound himself permanently in a covenant commitment with people that he knows are deeply flawed and deeply selfish are you with me that's what it's saying right there so some of us we've had a scenario like this maybe with friends or a family member where and you know don't say their name or anything but you know you've had this experience where you watch someone that you care about and they're really awesome and then they end up like getting hitched to total scoundrel or something you know and you're just like ah what why it's just what are you you're signing up for a lifetime of grief right because you're you're binding yourself in a commitment to someone and you it's going to go horrible it's going to go horrible and that's that's in like a sad tragic example but there's also something i tell couples that when i do weddings too so you might say oh it's kind of a downer but it's really important the easiest day to make a covenant permanent lifetime commitment to somebody is what day this the first day your wedding day that's the easiest day to sign your life away to this person right and so here's what it means if if if you're signing your permanent commitment to seek this person's well-being when you feel like it and when you do not it means you are signing yourself up for a lot of conflict and resolution and tension in this because you're you're flawed human beings and this is exactly what yahweh is committing himself to and he knows it he knows what he's signing up for when he binds himself to these people he even says it multiple times man you are stiff neck people can't believe again but here but here we are i i'm yahweh and so this is what i do because this is who i am i keep my covenant love perpetually now that raises the question then okay so if you're going if yahweh is going to keep his covenant commitment eternally to really flawed screwed up sinful people what is he also signing himself up for in this relationship and we might say grief right but what he says is this forgiving iniquity transgression and sin how is how is yahweh going to maintain permanent covenant commitment to people that he knows are going to be totally faithless and turn away from him how is yahweh going to maintain that covenant commitment and what does he say right there by forgiving them forgiving them and forgiveness is not something that comes apparently reluctantly out of yahweh it flows from his being because that's just who he keeps his promises therefore when the other side of the covenant relationship breaks the promise i'm ready to forgive i'm ready to forgive now there's a lot going on here in this in this word too so um the the hebrew word for forgive um there's this one right here which you can if you can see it n-a-s-a which what do you want how do you all want to pronounce that you want to say nasa right but don't say nasa don't say that uh say nasa yeah now here's what's great if you're interested in learning hebrew this is a really easy word to memorize because nasa means to pick up or to carry so nasa is the standard hebrew word for just picking something up you pick up a thing or you pick up a does that a podium i don't know there's a podium is this a podium a stand so nasa anyway so you pick it up you can pick up a box you can pick up a rock and pick up a person and you you use this word to describe that this is also the word for forgive which means there's a whole conception about sin and forgiveness that's at use when this is the standard old testament way of talking about forgiveness so this the scriptural vision then is when i'm if i'm a human being made in the image of god here i am i'm made for a purpose to exist in covenant relationship with my creator and to express that by love and covenant faithfulness to the human beings that are around me here and when i when i fail to be that human being that god has made me to be or that my moral conscience you know even apart from god or anything because my moral conscience can instruct me to a certain degree of what's an appropriate or inappropriate way to be a human being it fails us a lot more than we like to think but it's there you know and it is guiding us a lot of the time and so when we when we fail that way when we do wrong right when we commit moral wrong the the scriptures vision of what's happening there is not that it's just just kind of slip and then it float that wrongdoing floats off into the world or something the bible's view is is of sin is very insightful and profound it's that when we commit moral wrongdoing we're we're actually doing something that creates a real thing out there in the world now it's like when we send it's like heaving this big rock out into a pool that creates a splash and then that splash has ripples that's going to go off and the energy of that hurt is or that wrongdoing is going to go and it's going to start to bounce off of other people and affect them and it'll bounce off of them and you get this ripple effect right times 7 billion human beings of just like selfishness and what what goes out from that what goes out from the splash bounces off of people and hurt feelings and fractured relationships and shame and guilt and injustice and snubbing other people right and it just spreads and spreads and shreds it's this real thing out there it's sort of like maybe you've seen or heard about this documentary about these huge 200 square mile floating trash islands you know out in the middle of the pacific do you know about these i mean you wonder what actually happens to all of the plastic bags and water bottles that we throw away so trillions of them are ending up in the middle of pacific ocean you know about the trash island come on this made the news a couple years ago oh it's it's like the size of a huge island anyway it's very disturbing so so there it is so for us it's kind of like out of sight out of mind or whatever but it's like dude it's real like it doesn't just go away and float into nothing our moral wrongdoing creates something that's real and tragic in the world and it's accumulating and it's like this burden and and it needs to be dealt with and so yahweh's offer is that if we if we keep heaping out wrongdoing into the world but we we want to recognize or somehow come to terms with the fact that he's been there all along maintaining his covenant commitment to us if i come to yahweh with humility and with openness and i just own my failures and just put it out there he is eager and ready to carry your sin so what are you saying here he knows that you're going to fail it's not like that's a surprise to him so how is he going to maintain this covenant commitment with you and me even though we perpetually fail and turn away it's because dude he's ready to forgive and he'll carry it he'll carry it now let's just stop let's just stop right here so yahweh's offer is eternally to be available to pick up and take away and carry your sin and to carry it himself some of us say we believe that but you don't actually believe that and you know you don't believe it when when you might have this this trail of wreckage right of stupid decisions or maybe just a handful of certain things or regrets and they're back there so that fractured relationship or that stupid thing i did that had those consequences or whatever and it's just you it's always going to be there in your story that's part of your story but you know you don't really take yahweh at his word when you feel like you have to keep rehashing that again or you feel like you re your the shame and the guilt from that you feel like is actually you still deserve that you you still actually deserve the whatever the bad feelings or you might begin to interpret your life circumstances something goes wrong in your life and you'd be yes exactly i knew it you know this thing is hanging over my head is probably god punishing me or something right we go there and i know we go there because i have cups of coffee with a lot of you and we process through these things together i know this is how we think it's how i think and it's wrong it's just straight up wrong we're dishonoring what yahweh is telling us about himself which is that if we turn to him with our failures he is right there to take away your sin i'm not i can't think of any too many more creative ways to say it you know this is right there and we just don't believe it we don't believe it it might be the most significant step of faith for some of us to take to actually believe that we're forgiven and it's very difficult for some of us but this is what yahweh is putting in front of you he's right there to meet you and to carry your sin there are consequences to our decisions and we live out those ripple effects and so on but when it comes to you and yahweh if you allow him to do this for you you guys are you're clean and you move forward it's a new day that you always offer right here now here's so our heart our hearts are strangely warmed by this and we love this we think we don't cross stitch this and put it on our wall right so we're like riot covenant love for thousands and forgiving iniquity transgressions and sin but the corresponding part but he will by no means clear the guilty what wait which one is it so will he forgive because of love or is he gonna like hold me to it and i'll have to you know you know meet the maker one day so to speak what what's going on here again you have to turn to the story that yahweh is summarizing here so there's a whole bunch of israelites the levites and moses and and certainly others who owned up to what they did and yahweh met them and and carried their sin into himself there were a whole bunch of israelites we're told their numbers around 3 000 who they don't care this is what we're going to do this is what we want to do and so yahweh says okay well if you don't want me to carry your sin for you then i will let you carry it yourself and which means that you will face the consequences of carrying your own stupid decisions you don't have to but if you choose to he will not clear the guilty who won't let yahweh take away their guilt and their sin are you with me here these two lines are not in contradiction the key turning point is how we respond to this covenant god yahweh is who he says he is he will meet you and carry your sin yet he will by no means clear the guilty some of us you know when we read the first half of this we're like he keeps covenant love eternally and he's always going to forgive my iniquity transgression and sin you know and some of us read that and we're like oh really does it it actually says that does it does it really does say that so blank check right sweet blank check like i can apparent i can do whatever the heck i want and then yahweh has to freaking me give me because he said he would right and then i can get my butt out of hell and that whole thing but do whatever the heck i want you know for however long i'm alive there's there are lots of people who who process things in that way and maybe that's some of us sitting in the room here and so to that way of thinking presuming on yahweh's mercy and generous grace yahweh says dude you've got another thing coming for someone who's who looks at this and says what they see is a loophole for me to go now live and do whatever the heck they want to do what that person is actually saying they don't want yahweh to forgive them you know and some of us have been in this mindset before it's like yeah i'll just like do it and then you know i'll tell god to you know forgive me later or something like that and it's like dude let's just be honest what i'm actually saying in that moment i don't want god to forgive and take away and carry and free me from that sin what i want god is to minimize to minimize my sin and to overlook it or i might actually have come to a place where i just straight up disagree with yahweh so you say this way of being a human way a human being is is wrong and i disagree with you yahweh and so i'm going to go this route and like i can forget you or something you know and yahweh says okay if you don't want to be forgiven i i won't clear those who are heaping out rocks into the pond and not caring about it and and some of us when i say okay okay i'm tracking with you there but really be honest you guys do you do you really want to live in a world where there is no hope of a future accounting and setting right of all wrongs do you really want to live in a world where there's absolutely no hope that there is some god to whom we are all accountable for our behavior and who will sort out this huge mess that we have made do you really you do you really not want to believe in that god because if you don't i don't there's just no hope for our world what hope is there for our world if there isn't a god who will not clear the guilty are you with me i mean there's there's so much tragedy and evil in our world this is why jews and christians throughout the years they plead with yahweh bring your justice set things right and show mercy to those who will turn to you shall show mercy and yahweh says i absolutely will but not it's not at the expense of is justice they don't contradict each other so we'll explore explore that more uh in a moment here so let's let's move on to this last one here because i'm guessing this is the one that really makes most of us want to run out of the room right here so he keeps covenant love by forgiving yet for those who do not want to be forgiven he will not clear the guilty he visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the threes and the fours that is to the third and the fourth generation what what is going on here now a very common way of reading and understanding that sentence uh that last sentence right there uh is this you could play out a little scenario so you've got grandpa john and he's bad he's a bad man and whatever he's he's got his issues he completely gives in to them you know he's slept around and he was unfaithful to grandma and uh he totally abused alcohol and gave into that addiction and he was abusive himself and so on you've got grandpa john and then you've got two generations then you've got grandson jimmy and grandson jimmy he's not living or acting like that but apparently god is going to visit on him the sin of his grandpa john even though he didn't actually act like that you guys with me so that is one way that you could in my view misunderstand the wording of this language but you could you know you could casually read over that and be like oh okay god's holding everybody accountable for grandpa john's actions so there's a number of reasons why i think that's dead wrong dead wrong and and if if you've grown up in a tradition where uh often this idea is called a generational curse or something like that where there's somehow i don't know judgment or god's disfavor hovering over your family or something because of something somebody did in the past i'd i that idea has no grounding in the scriptures i believe and is a deeply damaging and dangerous idea that hurts people and and actually hurts yahweh because we're saying things about him that are actually not true of how he deals with his people i believe that deeply and so so if it doesn't mean that why don't i think it means that for a few reasons first of all there's a handful of other biblical passages that are contemplating and exploring this exact question on how yahweh deals with generations of people who turn away from him and so on so for example the next slide here two two passages deuteronomy 24 this is yahweh speaking and yahweh says parents are not to be put to death for their children nor children put to death for their parents each will die for his own sin and deuteronomy 24 is talking about how they were to organize israel was to organize its you know judges and judicial system and so on ezekiel chapter 18 again yahweh speaking here and he says children will not suffer for the iniquity of their parents nor parents suffer for the iniquity of their children the righteousness of the righteous will be their own the wickedness of the wicked will be their own and this is occurring in a context where you have a bunch of israelites who are sitting in exile in babylon and saying man how did we end up here you know it's because of our parents they were horrible horrible people right and that's why we're here and ezekiel comes along saying no dude you guys are just as dysfunctional as they were you just aren't owning it that's what he's saying here yahweh holds each generation accountable so it could be that what yahweh says about himself here and what yahweh says about himself in exodus is a total contradiction he's talking about two sides of his mouth that's possible um i don't think that's likely let's go back to verse seven here so i think the most likely understanding of what yahweh is saying here it begins with the threes and fours there's a couple proverbs in the book of proverbs where the poet says you know there are three things in the world that i just don't understand you know even four that are really puzzling to me have you read those proverbs before they're in chapter 30. there's actually a whole bunch of them he says like there are four things that are really bad in the world excuse me three things that are bad and four things that are even worse and so on it's a little it's a hebrew thing to say three and then four it's a little hebrew turn a phrase the prophet amos i'm in amos chapter one and he's taking on and listing all of the horrible things that israel and the nations are doing and he begins every one of his accusations he says for three sins of israel even for four i'm going to hold them accountable and so on and you're like wait which is it three or four it's like no you're missing the point it's a it's an idiom which means whatever number whatever number of things they did wrong yahweh is going to hold them accountable and i think that's exactly what it means right here is what amos means by using this phrase right here in other words in other words yahweh is eternally committed to love and forgive those who turn to him perpetually and eternally however yahweh will visit his justice on whatever number of generations that he needs to to hold people accountable now who is yahweh holding accountable he's holding people accountable for the sins of the fathers can you think of a story where you have children perpetuating the sins of their fathers oh right like the one that we just read like it happened in exodus chapter 32 that this words are summarizing are you with me here in other words you have to read the words in light of the story and what the story is about is about the children who are perpetuating the sin of their parents and of their grandparents of worshiping the canaanite gods in all of the ways that yahweh say are dehumanizing and and sinful and so i i'm i think that's exactly what yahweh is getting at here he keeps his covenant for thousands by forgiving them yet he won't do so at the expense of his justice he will bring his justice on however many generations keep perpetuating the same destructive behaviors until they get it until they get it so this is about grandpa this is about grandpa john but also grandson jimmy who looked at grandpa john and is like that's totally a legit way to be a human being and he just keeps on perpetuating or maybe to say it a different way is that yahweh holds each of us and each generation accountable regardless of the influences that might give us a disposition to act in a certain way and so this is very important i think for us in in kind of the the american there's there's often you know the word dysfunctional we all had dysfunctional families like what's new that's not an excuse the fact that you had like the crappiest worst parent setup that any anybody knows of that's and as i'm speaking as your as your pastor and i've processed so this kind of thing with so many of you over cups of coffee and i'm so sorry that happened to you but at the end of the day as an adult an image-bearing human being before god you own your decisions your parents don't make your decisions for you it means you have a unique set of challenges or strengths based off of your family of origins but it's your choice whether you're going to perpetuate the sin of the parents or you're going to find freedom and let yahweh pick up and carry those things for you and begin to heal and change you are you with me and as i think exactly what yahweh is saying he'll do what's necessary but his heart is to show covenant covenant love okay how you guys doing that was really dense i know it's really dense but i think this is important and so i wanted to to really go at it let me wrap let me wrap all this together by uh telling a story about the two little cavemen that i live with so i live with two little cavemen their names are august and roman uh the oldest caveman is two and a half two and a half years old and i won't be able to tell these stories for much longer but he's clueless about the world right now and so i can keep keep telling his story so this happened the other day and this is exactly what i think is is going on here so um i get home from work and uh we have a park close by and so i take him out of my wife's hair and we go to the park together and lo and behold i found all these other moms and dads there who were doing exactly the same thing right so the kids all get together all these little cave people right and they run around in this little swarm this little pack right around the playground and the parents hang back and you meet your neighbors and chat and so on and it's great so this happened the other day so new neighbor i don't even remember their name you know they have a daughter who's playing in the dog pack and so on and so they call little sally out and um sally looks at dad with venom you know like it's time for dinner we have to go what a stupid reason you know to have to leave right now you know and so she and it's the full on like no i would not go right now with this kind of thing and what are all of the kids in the pack doing at that moment you know they're just like oh it's how's this going to go down and so on and so they you know and so in this case she would just like went ballistic and you end up having to do the pickup and the flailing thing and carrying carrying them home and so you know 10 minutes go by and it's time for us to head home and so on and so like hey roman hey buddy you know time to go to the park can you what are the odds of how you think he's going to respond you mean you know what's you know what's going to happen like no no and so he's doing this thing now where somebody was not funny it's actually sad but kind of funny at the same time so he he he is beginning to understand that he can say hurtful things this is a new realization to him and so we tell him we love him all the time and he says that he loves us and so he's now understood that if he says he doesn't love us that's a that's like a sting that will hurt right and so when we're doing when we cross his will you know come to dinner or something like it'll be this thing be like i do not love you no i do not love you you know and so we're like okay all right it's gonna be one of these scenarios and so you gotta dive in and i'm talking to him and it's not gonna work and so you know it's very unpleasant two blocks home whatever okay now i love him and i'm committed i'm utterly committed to this little caveman and helping him become a genuine human being right so can i if i claim to love and seek his well-being can we just get home and it's just like whatever just act like it didn't happen like we need to we need to sort what out sort out what just happened right if i love him i know that this is a destructive way of dealing with negative emotion and disappointment and he can't perpetuate this like we have to deal with this and so i need to somehow find a way to bring justice so that there's he can see there's consequences that's not an appropriate way to behave right now that's two minutes in the rocking chair timeout it really is effective with him and i'm really happy because it's not that difficult actually and so so do we talk it out two minutes in the chair and he's really ticked off about that he doesn't like sitting in the chair and he's yelling at me and so we have to do another round of two minutes and so on and so we do that and then and then he told he gets it he clues in he's a little caveman and then he's really nice and he apologizes and so on and so so there we go do i care in that moment does it matter where he learned that behavior no it doesn't what matters is him and his future and so i am visiting the sin of the playground buddies on roman in that moment are you with me i think that's exactly what yahweh is saying right here and however many times it's necessary i will visit justice on that behavior through timeouts and working through it even though it's unpleasant because because i love him and because it's because i'm committed to him that i bring justice do you understand so these aren't at odds my bearing justice on the situation is is one expression of my love now this is key and i'll end here is justice the only way that i express my love for him of course not so what do i wish would happen what i wish would happen is he would be like yes dad and then we would skip home together you know sing and sing songs and i'd tell them stories whatever about bumblebees and we would it would be like yes whatever so that's not what happened his his sin ruined that situation and so we work through it we'll carry it and we'll get back on the same page again but my love manifests itself to him in all of these abundant ways i want to draw with him and tell stories and go teach him how to skateboard and do all these things but sometimes justice is an expression of my love it's not the only expression i do it when it's necessary to the threes and the fours but my commitment to him is unchanging are you with me this is exactly what yahweh is saying in chapter 34 verse 7. it's actually a very beautiful statement about how yahweh gives dignity and honor to the moral choices of human beings and he won't let us get away with behaving inappropriately and sinfully as human beings and the most flabbergasting thing about this is precisely this statement is that he will carry our sin for us and so as we think to the bigger story of what on earth we're here to do the cross becomes this place where all of the attributes and the character traits of our god come together in harmony and beauty we're out of his permanent covenant love for us yahweh absorbs and carries our sin into himself on the cross both fulfilling his perfect justice but enabling a means to show us grace and love whenever we come we come to him amen and so as we go into worship today you know there's just there's so many stories in the room and there's so many ways that we don't take yahweh at his word there's ways that we don't actually believe that yahweh is willing to do this for us there's ways that maybe some of us are burdened under a deep misunderstanding of who yahweh is and that he's out to get you as opposed to the fact that he's out for your well-being and wants to carry your sin for you and so i don't know how you need to respond in the time of worship that we have but but you need to you need to let me close on the word of prayer

Channel: Bible Nerds & Tim Mackie Fans

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Keywords: Tim Mackie, Bible Project

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Length: 53min 55sec (3235 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 04 2021