You're GROUNDED!!

Has anyone else ever had to suspend a punishment? Come on parents, be honest. I've discovered that when I punish in the heat of the moment, I often go too far. However, when I send my wife to her room to think about what she's done...just kidding sweetheart! When I send my child to his or her room, most of the time it gives me a second to put it all into perspective. I'll remember that they are only four. I acknowledge that they had no clue that what they were doing was wrong. At the very least, the punishment will better fit the crime and the "criminal" and hopefully they'll know that their Dad loves them and only punishes to help them learn. God says that He is just. The guilty are punished, with no excuses or loop holes available.
 Let's look at the rest of  Exodus 34:6-7.

And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and 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 fathers to the third and fourth generation."

Let's start with the word "yet". When yet is used as a conjunction (http://www.english-grammar-revolution.com/what-is-a-conjunction.html) it is joining two ideas together. As we talked about last week, God will forgive wickedness, rebellion, and sin if we follow Him. God is also saying the He will punishes those who are guilty of sin. It would be very easy to explain this away by saying that God only punishes those who aren't Christians;  that's not how it reads to me. The New International Version has put a period in to make this verse more easily understood for younger readers. By contrast, the King James Version and the New American Standard are versions that translate word for word. This makes it a little harder to follow because of all the semicolons and comas but if you take the time to wade through them you can get a clearer picture of what is being said. Here's the King James:

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.

Here's the New American Standard:

who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.

While these are definitely two separate thoughts, they go together. I am in no way a Hebrew language scholar. However, when I look at the literal translation I found it reads like this:

keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquities transgressions and sin, and that will by no means clear;

The word "clear" has a multitude of words and translations that are used. Every one of them relate to being clean. God forgives our sin, but He doesn't clean it up for us. We must still face the consequences for the things we do wrong; even as followers of Christ. The book of Jeremiah covers the forty year work of the prophet by the same name. For forty years he proclaimed that God's punishment was coming to the nation of Judah who refused to turn away from the sin they were committing. This is what the Lord says in Jeremiah 9:7-9

Therefore this is what the LORD Almighty says:

"See, I will refine and test them,
for what else can I do
because of the sin of my people?
Their tongue is a deadly arrow;
it speaks with deceit.
With his mouth each speaks cordially to his neighbor,
but in his heart he sets a trap for him.
Should I not punish them for this?"
declares the LORD.
"Should I not avenge myself
on such a nation as this?"

When we think of God's punishment, we often jump right to Hell. I think we do this because we know as Christians that we aren't going to Hell, so God's punishment isn't for us. Here in Jeremiah, we see that God's use of punishment is not always final and never ending. He is punishing to refine us. He is trying to remove impurities from our lives. But sometimes, we are stiff-necked. The nation of Judah was all that was left of the nation of Israel. The other part had already been wiped out by the Assyrians because of their disobedience. Jeremiah had been preaching for years for the people of Judah to repent. They wouldn't listen. Jeremiah 52:4-9, 27-30 shows their punishment.

So in the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army. They camped outside the city and built siege works all around it. The city was kept under siege until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah.

By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat. Then the city wall was broken through, and the whole army fled. They left the city at night through the gate between the two walls near the king's garden, though the Babylonians were surrounding the city. They fled toward the Arabah, but the Babylonian army pursued King Zedekiah and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his soldiers were separated from him and scattered, and he was captured.

So Judah went into captivity, away from her land.This is the number of the people Nebuchadnezzar carried into exile:

in the seventh year, 3,023 Jews;
in Nebuchadnezzar's eighteenth year,
832 people from Jerusalem;
30 in his twenty-third year,
745 Jews taken into exile by Nebuzaradan the commander of the imperial guard.

There were 4,600 people in all.

God is slow to anger, but His anger does come. This is one reason bad things happen. This is why the drunk driver isn't killed by God before he wrecks into a school bus. This is why women are abused by "loving" husbands. God gives everyone the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and return to Him. But if we continue to ignore His commands, He will remove His hand of protection from our lives. Sometimes the consequences of our actions do us in. Sometimes, God takes matters into his own hands. God supernaturally saved Israel and later Judah countless times. Many times they were even conquered, but when they turned back to Him He restored their kingdom. God could have saved them from the Babylonians, but they refused to turn to Him as a nation. Thankfully this was not the end. Since this was God's chosen people, he provided for them through their punishment. Since He had made a covenant with them hundreds of years earlier, He remained faithful to them and waited for them to return. In Jeremiah 46-50, we have four chapters on God's eventual judgement on all the nations that had harmed His people. Because these nations never entered into a covenant with God and acted wrongfully, he wiped them away. There is no more Babylon, or Moab. Assyria doesn't exist. The kingdom of Egypt is not a kingdom any more. But God's proved His faithfulness to His chosen people in Jeremiah 46:27-28 despite their refusal to follow Him,

"Do not fear, O Jacob my servant;
do not be dismayed, O Israel.
I will surely save you out of a distant place,
your descendants from the land of their exile.
Jacob will again have peace and security,
and no one will make him afraid.
Do not fear, O Jacob my servant,
for I am with you," declares the LORD.
"Though I completely destroy all the nations
among which I scatter you,
I will not completely destroy you.
I will discipline you but only with justice;
I will not let you go entirely unpunished."

In Jeremiah 50:4-7, He even promised that He would restore their relationship to Him when they come to Him repentant.

"In those days, at that time,"
declares the LORD,
"the people of Israel and the people of Judah together
will go in tears to seek the LORD their God.
They will ask the way to Zion
and turn their faces toward it.
They will come and bind themselves to the LORD
in an everlasting covenant
that will not be forgotten.

"My people have been lost sheep;
their shepherds have led them astray
and caused them to roam on the mountains.
They wandered over mountain and hill
and forgot their own resting place.
Whoever found them devoured them;
their enemies said, 'We are not guilty,
for they sinned against the LORD, their true pasture,
the LORD, the hope of their fathers.'

Because God made a covenant with the nation of Israel, they had hope. As the nation was crumbling He left them this hope through the mouth of the prophet they had ignored and abused. God foreshadowed that they would return and and seek the Lord in tears. But it would take a harsh punishment for them to learn this lesson.

Before we finish, I wanted to take a moment to address the last phrase in our Exodus passage,

"he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation."

To most of us, especially parents, this phrase sound absolutely horrible and as far from justice as it can be. But let's look at it a different way. I believe that this is a warning to parents and their children alike. God is not saying He will punish you for something you didn't do. He's saying that you have no excuse for your sin. Think about it this way, if I repeatedly told my child that the sky was green and the grass was blue then they would believe it. It would work even better if my wife and I always referred to the colors this way whenever the child was around. When my child gets to school and has a worksheet on colors, he's going to get it wrong.  

Let's take it a step further, if I explain to my daughter than men have one less rib than women because God took one out when He made Eve, then she will believe me. It would be even more convincing if I pulled the Bible out and showed her the verses in Genesis. But what's going to happen when she gets to Biology class in high school? At best she might have a fight with the teacher about it and eventually learn the truth. At worst she'll get the answers wrong on a test.

Here's the last one; If I tell my son that lying is wrong, then he'll believe me. But if I constantly lie to other people, to my wife, or to him then I have taught him that the real rule is, "Lying is okay as long as you don't get caught"or "Little lies don't really hurt people" maybe even "You have to lie to get what you want." When my son grows up, what will he do? He will most likely lie. There is plenty of research that shows children imitate their parents. God is telling parents that their kids are watching and will follow them in their sin. He is telling the children that just because your dad did it, it doesn't mean you won't be punished. Why does God specify the third and fourth generation? To be honest, I don't know. Maybe it takes that many generations of punishment for parents to notice a pattern and teach their kids right. It could simply be another time where the Bible uses large numbers to imply the infinite lengths God is willing to go to. By the way, the reverse is also true. Just because your parents have a relationship with God, it doesn't mean that you do too. Being a Christian is not like citizenship. You are not born into it. 

I close with this. Yesterday, on May 1st 2011, Osama Bin Laden was reported dead in a fire fight with soldiers. Facebook, along with other sites on the Internet, was filled with comments about justice finally being done. Sadly, most of the time it was spoken with much happiness and rejoicing. News channels showed footage of cheering people dancing in the street. I'm not saying it was wrong for Bin Laden to be killed. I know the things he has done and I know that he needed to be kept from repeating his actions. What brought me up short was studying these Bible verses. By researching God's character, I know that since Bin Laden was created by God just like I was, God loved Him too. While his deeds against our country and others were heinous, and he still would have been punished, God would have welcomed him into His arms if he would have repented. The truth is, Osama and I aren't that different by God's standards. The only thing different between he and I is I've openly made the same covenant with God that the nation of Israel did. By his statements and actions, it doesn't seem that Bin Laden did. I've lied. I've coveted. I've turned from God and done my own thing. What separates us? One decision. Because of that decision to follow God through Christ...I have hope.

In reading God's justice on the nations around Judah and in knowing that it was carried out...I am hard pressed to find joy in someone's death who most likely didn't know Christ. God loved me so much He sent His Son to die for me so that I could be with Him. But John 3:16 says that God loved the world this much. I know that if I had not accepted His gift from Jesus, God would have been grieved that I would spend forever apart from Him. In my heart, I know that God is grieved that His son, Osama, will spend eternity apart from Him. God is just, but I am eternally grateful that He is forgiving also. May you find His forgiveness if you are experiencing His justice.

All scripture was taken from the New International Version unless noted otherwise