Exploring My Strange Bible - I am who I am Part 2: Yahweh is our Gracious Judge

Episode Date: November 13, 2017

This teaching is about character and the role of God as a judge of human behavior (specifically human’s moral behavior). What does it mean to say that “God brings to bear his justice on our behavior and evaluates it according to justice”? Is that bad news or good news? We explore Exodus 34 to learn what it means for God to be a judge.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right. Well, in this episode, it's going to be the second of a 10-part series called I Am Who I Am. We're exploring the fundamental biblical portrait of God's character and identity through the storyline of the Bible.

And in these first teachings, we're exploring the portrait of God in the Hebrew scriptures of Yahweh, the God of Israel. of Yahweh, the God of Israel. This second teaching is about the character and the role of God as a judge of human behavior, specifically as a judge of humans' moral behavior. This is not a topic that brings warm fuzzies to most of our hearts. It's something that makes us sweat a little bit and get anxious or nervous because we're afraid that God's going to do something that offends us, as often happens in the Bible. The role of God as judge is one of the most difficult things that I think modern Western people, religious or not, struggle with when they listen to Christians or Jewish people or Muslims talk about the character of God as a judge. So what does that mean? What does it mean to say that God brings to bear his justice on our behavior and evaluates it according to justice? What does that mean? And is that bad

news or is it good news or perhaps is it both? So that's what we're going to explore is some of the fundamental biblical passages that talk about how God is a judge and what that means. Specifically, we're going to look at a passage in the book of Exodus, chapter 34, that talks about how God holds people accountable. Families hold generations accountable for their stupid, selfish decisions. I encourage you to open up your Bible. for their stupid, selfish decisions. I encourage you to open up your Bible. It'll be always helpful as we're going through these teachings, but especially for this one, because we're going to be looking at some words very closely. But anyway, I hope this is helpful for you, and let's dive in. I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Exodus. The book of Exodus. It's the second book of the Bible.

Exodus chapter 34. And we're well into this series that we're doing for a few months here called I Am Who I Am. And we're exploring the 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 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 start relating and thinking about 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 so that we can actually know truly this

one that we say we're relating to. And so Exodus chapter 34 contains, we're spending two Sundays on it. This is the second. This is the longest, most dense description of God's character 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 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 room right now, don't you? 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 on verse 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 a bad ending. I don't know. So what's happening here? First of all, the language of these verses is difficult, and it's actually pretty unclear, I think. It's capable of a few different interpretations, which we'll talk about. But I think at the core, this verse, we're excited about verse 6. We're stoked on Yahweh's mercy and love and compassion and so on. And then we get to verse

7 about something about punishment. And we're like, no, I don't like that. I want to cry right now. And so here's how I would depict, I think, the challenge of what's going on here. We have two character traits of God. Verse 6 is very clear, and it's in verse 7 too. 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 we like this. This makes us feel good. And then you get to the latter half of verse 7, and we're all of a sudden, you could use 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. Or 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 of the time, but then you're, like, worried about what they're doing when nobody's watching? Is that punishing children? That's weird.

And so, you know what I'm saying. So how do we go this? And that's what we're going to do this morning. So how do we go at this? First of all, there's just one core skill that you have to develop when you're learning how to read the Bible. 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 way God is described in the Bible. You will almost never find passages in the

Bible that engage, Josh mentioned this last week, in kind of abstract speculation about God's attributes of being like everywhere present, or He's changeable, and he's the uncaused cause, or this kind of Greek philosophical ways of thinking about it. 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 like verses 6 and 7. 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 6 and 7 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 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 the 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 plot line 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 Yahweh's delivered the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, and it was an 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, I don't know why I'm looking up right now, but I'm thinking, so they're at the foot of a mountain.

So 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 in a covenant. Don't go after the other gods. I'm Yahweh, the God that rescued you. The other gods, as Josh said last week, it's a 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 it. I'm 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 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? He's in a cloud up there. It's kind of weird. And so Yahweh, who's this Yahweh who's in a cloud up there? It'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. 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 then they begin this huge religious festival to it. It's a big party. And if you read the story in verse 6, it says they eat and they drink.

So they fill their bellies, get hammered. And it says, some of our translations would 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 be polite. That's what our English translations are doing because the word that's used here has sexual connotations right through it. And we're thinking, it's weird, you make a calf,

a 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 has this family been living for 400 years? They've not been worshiping Yahweh for 400 years. No way. He's revealing himself to them because they don't know who this God is anymore. And so here's what the tragedy of this story is Yahweh's 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, or ritual meals, and that's how you'd do it. And obviously and understandably, Yahweh's 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, this 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 Yahweh 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 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 Yahweh says, oh yeah, good point. Okay, I'm not, we're not going to do that. I'll forgive them. And so Yahweh forgives them. He doesn't sever his covenant commitment with these people. But there are 3,000 of them who engaged in this whole party,

feast, ritual, and so on. And those 3,000 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 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 retell that. Let's go back to Exodus 34, 6 and 7. This list of Yahweh's

attributes is not just some random list just trying to describe who he is in the abstract. 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 here. 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 6, he's Yahweh, Yahweh. He's compassionate, which Josh unpacked 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 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 7 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 7, let's read it again. And I'm going to throw it up here on the screen and we'll just dive into the excitement here. So he maintains love to 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 have called the English Standard version that

I think brings out the key elements here really, really helpfully. There's four things being said about Yahweh here in verse 7, 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 thinking. Now, one thing about verse 7 that's really, really cool. 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. It's very awkward if you were to literally translate, it means visiting

the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on 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 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 seven has a poetic structure to it. This is literary art in the Bible. It's all over the place once you start looking for it. And do you see it? Some of you poetry geeks among us, you see this form quite often. 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 match the outer part of the poetry and then the next lines, they correspond and the next lines, you know, you can make however big or small you want. 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. So that's my, that's my, but did you see it? Did you catch it? So I did the same thing. It was just a dumb version of it. So it's much more profound. But that's the idea. It's a poetic way of talking here. So 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 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. You know, even just 1,000 generations would be like 40,000 years or something like that, so the point is forever. So the point is forever, eternally. It's poetry, right? So eternally, forever. He keeps covenant love for thousands.

That's his eternal, permanent commitment. But somehow 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, 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? You know what I'm saying? Like this. Are you with me? James has a way of putting this in the New Testament. 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 it, mercy triumphs, which doesn't mean cancels out. It means they harmoniously work together so that Yahweh's love is always the primary thing that he's accomplishing, even through his justice. So I just want you to see this here. Do the numbers and the balance make sense to you here? So 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

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 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 he keeps his covenant love. Some of your translations have, for that first line, steadfast love or covenant love. Some of your translations have, for that first line, steadfast love or loving kindness. Some of your translations just have the word love,

which is fine, it's fine, but you have to think things through. The Hebrew word that Yahweh uses here, it's the word chesed. It has the KH, which is the clearing your throat letter. Chesed, want to say it with me? Chesed, it's good, well clearing your throat letter. Chesed. Want to say it with me? Chesed. It's good.

Well done, class. So, chesed. Now, chesed, it's a very difficult concept to translate into any language. 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? But we use this clunky one instead. And in American English, love refers primarily to an emotion, something that you feel. And that's not the case in the Scriptures. Chesed is about a commitment or covenant. This is my little abbreviation for covenant right here. And so it's, in the Bible, God's love,

and when humans show chesed, 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? But that's the whole point. And so Yahweh, 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 binding yourself in a commitment to someone, and it's going to go horrible. It's going to go horrible.

And that's in like a sad, tragic example. But there's also something I tell couples 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? 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 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 because 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-necked people. Can't believe. Yeah, but here we are. 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 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. Now, there's a lot going on here in this word too. So, the Hebrew word for forgive is this one right here, which 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. Say Nasa. 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. Nasa. Here I am Nasa-ing right here. So Nasa is the standard Hebrew word for just picking something up. You pick up a thing, or you pick up a podium. 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. You can pick up a person. And 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. This is the standard Old Testament way of talking about forgiveness. So 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 fail to be that human being that God has made me to be, or that my moral made me to be,

or that my moral conscience, you know, even apart from God or anything, 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'd like to think, but it's there, you know, and it is guiding us a lot of the time. And so when we fail that way, when we do wrong, right, when we commit moral wrong, the Scripture's vision of what's happening there is not that it's just this kind of slip and then that wrongdoing floats off into the world or something. The Bible's view of sin is very insightful and profound. It's that when we commit moral wrongdoing, we're actually doing something

that creates a real thing out there in the world now. It's like when we sin, 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 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 seven billion human beings of just like selfishness. And what goes out from that? What goes out from the splash bounces off of people in hurt feelings and fractured relationships and shame and guilt and injustice and snubbing other people, right? And it just spreads and spreads and spreads. 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, do 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 to all of the plastic bags and water bottles that we throw away? So trillions of them are ending up in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. You know about the trash island? Come on, this made the news a couple of years ago. Oh, it's like the size of a huge island. Anyway, it's very disturbing.

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 it needs to be dealt with. And so Yahweh's offer is that if we keep heaping out wrongdoing into the world, but 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. That's what he's 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. us say we believe that, but you don't actually believe that. And you know you don't believe it when you might have 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, 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 the shame and the guilt from that, you feel like it is actually, you still deserve that. 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. It's 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, that's how we think. That's how I think. And it's wrong. It's just straight up wrong. We're dishonoring what Yahweh's 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 can't think of too many more creative ways to say it. You know what I'm saying? He's just right there to take away your sin. I can't think of too many more creative ways to say it. He's just 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 clean. And you move forward. It's a new day. That's Yahweh, if you allow Him to do this for you, you guys are clean. And you move forward.

It's a new day. That's Yahweh's offer right here. Now here's 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, right? 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 going to, like, hold me to it, and I'll have to, you know, you know, meet the maker one day, so to speak. What's going on here? Again, you have to turn to the story that Yahweh's summarizing here. So there's a whole bunch of Israelites, the Levites and Moses and certainly others, who owned up to what they did, and Yahweh met them and carried their sin into himself. There were a whole bunch of Israelites, we're told their number is 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. 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, really? It actually says that. It does. It really does say that. So, blank check, right? Sweet, blank check. Like, I can do whatever the heck I want, and then Yahweh has to forgive 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 are lots of people 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 looks at this and says, what they see as 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.

And some of us have been in this mindset before. It's like, yeah, I'll just do it, and then I'll tell God to 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 being is wrong. And I disagree with you, Yahweh. And so I'm going to go this route and like I forget you or something, you know. And Yahweh says, okay, if you don't want to be forgiven, I won't clear those who are heaping out rocks into the pond and not caring about it. And some of us may say, okay, okay, I'm tracking you there. But really be honest, you guys.

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 not want to believe in that God? Because if you 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 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, show mercy. And Yahweh says, I absolutely will, but it's not at the expense of His justice. They don't contradict each other. So we'll explore that more in a moment here. So 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 is going on here? Now, a very common way of reading and understanding that sentence, that last sentence right there, 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 got his issues. He completely gives in to them. You know, he's slept around, and he was unfaithful to Grandma, and he totally abused alcohol and gave in to 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 Grandpa John, even though he didn't actually act like that. Are you guys with me? So that is one way that you could, in my view, like that. Are 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 if you've grown up in a tradition where 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,

that idea has no grounding in the scriptures, I believe, and is a deeply damaging and dangerous idea that hurts people 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 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 passages. turn away from him and so on. So, for example, the next slide here, 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. No 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 out two sides of his mouth. That's possible. I don't think that's likely. Let's go back to verse 7 here. So I think the most likely understanding of what Yahweh's saying here begins with the threes and fours. There's a couple of 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. And 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 Hebrew saying. To say three and then four, it's a little Hebrew turn of phrase. The prophet Amos, in Amos chapter 1, 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, well, wait, which is it, three or four? And it's like, no, you're missing the point. 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 these 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 a bunch of 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 sinful. And so 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 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 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 kind of the American, there's often, you know, the word dysfunctional. We all had dysfunctional families. Like, what's new? You know what I mean? So that's not an excuse. The fact that you had like the crappiest, worst parent setup that anybody knows of,

that's, and I'm speaking as your pastor, and I've processed 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 I think exactly what Yahweh is saying. He'll do what's necessary,

but his heart is to show 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 really go at it. Let me wrap all this together by 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. The oldest caveman is 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 telling his stories. So this happened the other day, and this is exactly what I think is going on here. So I get home from work, and 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 find 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 a 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 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 will not go right now. And I think, and what are all of the kids in the pack doing at that moment? You know, they're just like, oh, 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 them home. And so, you know, 10 minutes go by and it's time for us to head home and so on. So like, hey, Roman, hey, buddy, you know, time to go to the park. What are the odds of how you think he's going to respond? I mean, you know what's going to happen. Like, no, no. And so he's doing this thing now where somebody, well, it's not funny. It's actually sad, but kind of funny at the same time.

So 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 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 that, he'll be listening and 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 going to be one of these scenarios. And so you got to dive in and I'm talking to him

and it's not going to work. And so, you know, it's one of the very unpleasant two blocks home or 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. We need to 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 you 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 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 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 on.

So we have to do another round of two minutes and so on. And so we do that, and then 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 there we go. He clues in. He's a little caveman. And then he's really nice and he apologizes and so on. And 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's 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 I love him, and it's because I'm committed to him that I bring justice. Do you understand? So these aren't at odds. Bearing

justice on the situation 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 what I mean? Sing and sing songs. And I'd tell him stories, whatever, about bumblebees. And it would be like, yes, whatever. So that's not what happened.

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 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 in beauty. Where 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 to him. Amen? And so as we go into worship today, you know, there's just 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, 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 you need to. Thanks for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible podcast. Hope this was helpful, stimulating, thought-provoking for you. I hope you go into your day or evening, whatever time it is for you, with higher and better thoughts about who God is and about who you are in light of his character.

We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening.