Sins of our fathers

February 10, 2008

Exodus 34:6-7 KJ2000
(6) And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,
(7) Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.


I always thought it was not fair. Why is God going to punish children for the mistakes of the parents? That did the children do. They most likely were not even born yet.

As I thought on this verse I realized it does not imply punish at all. In the king James it is visited. The Greek word is paw-kad' and it means according to Stroud:
to visit (with friendly or hostile intent); by analogy to oversee, muster, charge, care for, miss, deposit,

That last word is the one that caught my eye, deposit. When you deposit some money in the bank, you are putting some money in. When you live in open sin before your children, God allows for that sin to be deposited in to their spirit. What you do affects them not just now, but for the future as well. Since their sin will affect their children, what you do today will affect generations to come.

My dad was an angry drunk. I lived a lot of my life angry myself (some how I escaped the drunken part). In the pas few years I have chosen to learn how to, for the most part, control that anger. The sins of the father do not have to be passed on if you want to change it. Is it easy? No! Habits, especially those learned in childhood do not change easily. It requires an effort to change. When a chance to get angry happens I have to make a decision not to get to the point that my anger does not spew all over everyone else. I could not decide to and just let the habits continue and the cycle will continue.

What are you depositing into your children? What of that did you inherit from your parents? What do you need to change?

Read through the Bible in one year in Historical order
Today
Exodus 33:1-35:35
Tomorrow
Exodus 36:1-38:31

http://tinyurl.com/24beby for a daily reading tool link.