Untitled Sermon (13)

We are continuing our series asking the question “Is God?” and today the question is: “Is God good and merciful?”

And I want to tackle one of those verses that can trip people up. I’ve had people who call themselves Christians ask me about this one, but it’s also one of those verses that I have been surprised by non-Christians being able to recite it when also asking -

how merciful, how fair God is.

It’s found in Exodus 20 & Deuteronomy 5 – as one of the 10 Commandments

Deut 5 v 7-10

7 You must not have any other god but me.

8 ‘You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind, or an image of anything in the heavens above or on the earth or in the sea.

9 ‘You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and upon the third and upon the fourth generation of those rejecting me, 10 but I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and of those who keep my commandments.

Speaking to friends about these verses and they came up with the same issues others have mentioned.

1) I’m a Jealous God

2) The idea of punishing the guilt of fathers upon their children, and their children, and their children.

My hope is by the end of this, you will understand some of the ‘Fathers Heart’ a little more even in so called difficult passages.

Pray: All scripture God Breathed and useful for us.

Firstly - I am a Jealous God. Not very positive

The Hebrew word could be translated “to become intensely red” because extreme and intense emotions affect the colour of our face - the term came about what it is translated into our bibles as: rage, jealousy or zeal.

This phrase ʾel kannaʾ is most frequently translated “a jealous God,”

Our culture disapproves of exclusivity, so this old Testament's picture of God easily causes us problems.

Yet so essential is this dimension of divine love to God's character - we find it used a number of times. Some for you to look at later are Exodus 20:5, Deuteronomy 4:24, 5:9, 6:15, Joshua 24:19, Nahum 1:2

Exodus 34:14 uses the expression "jealous God" actually AS God's name

You must worship no other gods, for the Lord, whose very name is Jealous, is a God who is jealous about his relationship with you.

But - we need to understand, that the word kannaʾ is used in the Bible exclusively of God, never of a human,

this speaks that the emotion referred to differs from the human variety in quality.

Whether you translate kannaʾ as “jealous” or “impassioned,” the word emphasizes that God cannot be indifferent to His creations. He is deeply involved in human affairs.

If someone described me as ‘jealous Tim’ it would normally be a negative comment – yet if I change that to “Tim is jealous for his children’s love” – is that is negative ?

The jealousy of God is a function of HIS promise, his commitment to his people.

God exclusively committed himself to them, and he's requiring loyalty in return.

In the context of committed love, the exclusion of rivals is right;

Song of Solomon 8:6

Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm.

For love is as strong as death, its jealousy as enduring as the grave.

In the right context, the exclusivity which God is displaying is re-assuring.

The promise of relationship between God and God's people really means something only if God is totally committed to it.

What would you think if I as a husband was not bothered about if my wife was faithful or not?

A God who was NOT jealous regarding the 2-way commitment of God's people would be as disgusting as a husband who didn't care whether or not his wife was faithful to him.

Part of the problem with this profound covenant is that we have come to regard spirituality, like everything else, as a matter of "consumer choice". We dislike exclusivities. But this incomparable living God makes necessary, exclusive claims regarding the right to a monopoly on our love.

But jealousy was the 1st part of what my friends, had a problem with this passage.

If jealousy is God's love protecting itself, the desire and direction of that love can be seen in v 9 & 10.

For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and upon the third and upon the fourth generation of those rejecting me, 10 but I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and of those who keep my commandments.

The idea that Sin, and especially the sin of idolatry, could reap vengeance in the following generations.

Does that seem a little unfair to anybody?

My girls have grown up a bit – but Imagine I was to say to one of my daughters back when they were 10 years old – “I’ve just found out your Grandmother was masterminding a Jewellery burglary, so you are grounded, no seeing friends outside of school, no youth group, no cinema – forget about it! It’s not happening , unless your Grandma sorts herself out”

Forget the COVID times we are currently in where grounding seems pointless - This would be harsh - YES?

Is that what God is saying here? Not at all.

We need to go through a process and remove some cultural lenses we have over our eyes –

To help us understand this, I need to spend a couple of minutes looking at aspects of this text

1) The nature of Hebrew poetry???

In English we recognise poems either by rhyme or by the rhythm of them, by the meter.

Poem

As we’ve dealt with before - the Bible was NOT written in English - but mainly Hebrew & Greek. And as much as we can do our best to translate the text, some of the context can be lost unless we dig deeper and make an effort.

Hebrew poetry works VERY differently to how we read poetry (we see this in Psalms) and its primarily read by something called parallelism.

The idea is - that there are two lines that basically express the same thought but with different words.

A classic example of this Psalm 19:1

1 The heavens proclaim the glory of God.

The skies display the work of His hands.

I’ve colour-coded it so you can tell that what's parallel.

And there are dozens of variations of them in books like the Psalms

One of the variations on this parallelism involves numbers, sometimes to emphasise a really important thought, the writer would use a pattern like

Pr 30:15

Three things are never satisfied;

four never say, “Enough”:

or

Pr 6:16

There are six things that the Lord hates,

seven that are an abomination to him:

Basic Maths - if you want to express this mathematically – the first line has some number – we’ll call it n then the second line would be that number +1.

The idea here isn’t that the writer all of a sudden thinks up a fourth thing, or a seventh thing that God does not like,

NO – it’s a way of giving poetic emphasis to a single point – it’s a kind of numerical parallelism but there is another variation on this one, sometimes numbers are not used to emphasise a point but to contrast 2 different things.

Again – couple of examples - Genesis 4:24 – Lamech says this:

24 If someone who kills Cain is punished seven times,

then the one who kills me will be punished seventy-seven times!”

The point is to contrast – If we are going to express this numerically – first line n ( 7), second line n x 11 - Lamech is saying if you think there was danger going after Cain, that is nothing to the danger of coming after me.

another example - 1 Samuel 18:8

8 This made Saul very angry. “What’s this?” he said. “They credit David with ten thousands and me with only thousands. Next they’ll be making him their king!” 9 So from that time on Saul kept a jealous eye on David.

Talking about Saul’s might in battle– the contrast here is that the people were saying Saul’s killed thousands but David more; n & n x 10. It’s a contrast & Saul is upset – the people saying David was greater than him.

A modern example of this type of poetry might be “Leeds United have suffered 10 years but Huddersfield Town have known wretchedness 10 times 10 years”

Let’s go back to Deuteronomy 5:9 - and see if we have removed some lenses

for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and upon the third and upon the fourth generation of those rejecting me

so, this punishment expressed numerically would be 3n, 4n

10 but I lavish unfailing love to (how many) a thousand generations of those who love me and of those who keep my commandments.

The second number is not 10n or 11n, 10 or 11 times bigger than the first but thousands of times bigger and there is NO example of numerical parallelism with that kind of a difference in all the Old Testament.

It’s the biggest difference by far.

Now we covered parallel statements of emphasis and contrast?

And notice this one starts with BUT – so it’s a statement of contrast.

but (CONTRAST TO THAT ) I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and of those who keep my commandments.

The teaching here IS that God is ready to punish sin, don't be deceived about this;

he will judge evil (News) BUT thats not what he longs to do, what he longs to do is show love.

God is willing to punish but he’s longing to love - before the fall there was no punishment - there was only love.

God’s longing is to redeem so he can deal with people in love without punishment. (Can you see a picture of Jesus there?)

Another thing that you need to notice in order to understand this, is a little phrase at the end of verse nine:

I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and upon the third and upon the fourth generation of those rejecting me, (your bible might say those hating me)

God is not saying he will punish a future generation of innocent people,

the punishment will come only if generation after generation, to the fourth generation hates God, only if they rebel against him as well. It is a very important warning here about what sometimes is called generational sin.

Let me unpack that.

The idea is that the unresolved, undealt with problems of one generation tend to plague the next generation coming up.

In abuse – they say Hurt people, hurt people.

Children who are victims of unmanaged anger and rage are much more likely to have anger problems of their own.

Children who grow up in families where lying is commonly practised are much more likely to grow having trouble speaking the truth.

Unforgiveness, Gossip & backbiting

The same goes for divorce and for sexual addictions and so on and so on.

(We have found this time and time again as we’ve helped with the FIC & EHS)

We look at the previous generation and we say to ourselves “I am never gonna do that, do what I saw my parents do” and yet we find ourselves caught in the same trap and it tends to happen year after year, generation after generation until somebody somewhere along the line makes a decision to say “NO MORE”

Kids however old you are find yourself saying things you hated when your parents said them.

Statistically some of us some of us watching here this today struggle with real deeply entrenched patterns of sin, and we also have children, grandchildren and we have to decide which we love more, the pattern of sin or our children/grandchildren.

We have to decide which one we willing to sacrifice; it is not enough to just try to manage my sin or try to hide it from my kids. Some people need to say :

“the suffering and the guilt and the pain stops here. I will do whatever it takes, I will bring this in the light, I will enter into an accountable relationship with somebody, talk to someone in my lifeGROUP, find a Christian counsellor if I need to, do the FIC course - I will make any kind of reparations I need to make but the chain stops here.

I want us to understand God has NOT condemned us to suffer the fate of our parents with their parents or previous generations however for back it goes - God has not condemned us to that, that is not the teaching of Scripture. That is not God's heart.

Gods whole desire is to heal and show love and He will wait a 1000 generations if He has to.

Last point -

Israelite extended family homes often included three and four generations living together, and the effects of one generation's failure (those who hate me) would negatively affect the next generation, who would grow up without correct teaching and an idolatrous example as an environment.

SO for 3rd & 4th generation we could replace the term – “living memory”

But hear God's heart.

While three or four generations may suffer for their sins – because they are implicated, they are part of it - God's agenda for blessing, extends for thousands of generations where there is loyalty and love.

A Thousand generations is a very, very long time

When Nina born we had a photo with 4 generations. Gran – 1st decade 1900, Nina – 1st decade 2000’s

4 Generations = 100 years

40 Generations = 1000 years

400 Generations = 10,000 years

800 Generations = 20,000 years

1000 Generations = 25,000 years

Oldest written text 5000bc (Dispilio Tablet) – so whats that 200 generations?

1000 generations much longer than recorded human history. It's as good as saying "forever".

Such is the nature of God, that God speaks of punishment in terms of living memory and of a covenant of love in terms of an unimaginable long distance future.

Is God good and merciful?

Even when we look at verses loaded with pretext like this one today – we can see his heart - before sending his son, with an outpoured heart of mercy and grace – we can answer yes.

It's a sad distortion and a popular caricature of the old Testament God - gets stuck on verse 9b – the punishment, but miss the breath-taking views of the promises in verse 10

- Any sin I need to repent of and break off for the generations around me?

- How can I be part of the loyal love to thousands of generations?