So turn with me again this morning to Exodus 34. Our study this morning is going to resume at verse 7b, the last part of verse 7. Just to quickly set this up, you'll recall that in our last study we looked at six of the seven things that God wanted to reveal to Moses about himself in terms of his various perfections. In case you were not able to be with us, these included the Lord's being compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness and truth, his reserving loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, and his unwillingness to leave the guilty unpunished. This morning we move on to the seventh thing that God revealed to Moses. And that is, according to the last part of verse 7, his practice of visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. Now, needless to say, this particular portion of this passage has been quite controversial over the years. First things first, I think it's important that we remember that this is not the first time that the Lord has said this to Moses. You can go back to chapter 20 with the Lord's issuing the Ten Commandments to the Israelites, and in verses five and six, we read this. You shall not worship them or serve them, that is, any idols that have been created, for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing loving kindness to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments. Now, what does this mean exactly? Well, this simply means that God is a God of justice, God is a God of complete and utter fairness, but there are still some who believe that children may be punished for the sins that are committed by their parents, their grandparents, their great-grandparents, whatever the case might be. Now, is that the case? Is it possible that a child might actually be found guilty of sins committed by anyone coming before them in the family. No, that's not true at all. And thankfully we have Ezekiel 18. Go to Ezekiel 18. Here in Ezekiel 18 verses 19 and 20, it's made patently clear that God doesn't operate in this particular way. In case you're not up to speed with Ezekiel 18, just to set this up in its proper context, in the previous verses, the Lord explains to Ezekiel how all souls are his, the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son, and the soul who sins will die. He goes on to explain that if a father behaves righteously, he will live even if he has a violent and unrighteous son who will die for his own sins. Conversely, if the son has an unrighteous father but he doesn't follow his sinful example, the son will live while the father will die. Read with me at verse 19. The prophet says, yet you say, why should the son not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity? When the son has practiced justice and righteousness and has observed all my statutes and done them, he shall surely live. The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity. The righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself. And again, that's a fairly straightforward explanation of what has been over the years a fairly controversial subject. It's also, as I said a moment ago, in perfect keeping with the fact that God is righteous, he is just, he is fair, and he is an impartial judge. So what does the Lord mean when he says that he'll visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations? Well, there are a couple of things being addressed here, actually. First of all, there's no denying that the sins of one's parents can make it incredibly difficult for their children to live peaceably in the world around them. There are things that as parents we can do to so sully our family name that it makes it nearly impossible for subsequent generations to ever recover from those things in a timely fashion. There are other more practical considerations here such as children of divorce, children who come from A home where the parents have divorced have a much greater difficulty putting their lives back together. When you remove this primary family unit of mom and dad being in the home together, raising the children, it not only puts an incredible amount of peer pressure on children, like at school or out and about, around kids that have two parents at home. It can also cause them to wonder whether they're actually loved by one parent or the other to the degree that they feel that they should be. It can also cause a lot of problems when you've got kids shuffling back and forth from one parent to the next every weekend. There are profound difficulties to be faced by those who are engaged in the sin of divorce. Divorce is a sin. at least on someone's part. And I understand we have people in this congregation who have suffered through divorce. I'm not casting any blame on you except to say that somebody sinned and caused the divorce and the children will suffer in some tangible way or multiple tangible ways as a result of that. Think also of the sins of anger, racism, narcissism, These can also be significant stumbling blocks for children. If the parents fit any of those categories, children can have an unbelievably difficult time, especially among some of their friends who might be of different ethnicities, different racial profiles and backgrounds. It's going to be much harder for them to grow up in a multicultural and multi-ethnic world. So those things can and often do provide significant impacts on subsequent generations of children. But as true as this is, this is not really what's being spoken of in this passage. This is not the kind of thing that the Lord is talking about either here or back in Exodus chapter 20. What we're reading about here has to do with the likelihood that one's children will choose to repeat the sins of the fathers. the grandfathers, the great grandfathers, and so on. Where our text this morning is concerned, God is addressing what he knew would be a multi-generational tendency for the Israelites to commit the same kind of idolatry that their parents and their grandparents and their great grandparents had committed. Israel was known as a people prone to be disobedient, prone to be obstinate, prone to idle worship, and God is simply stating that there's a real danger that if you parents don't straighten up and fly right, your children are going to likely, very likely, repeat the same mistakes that you've made. The blessing in all of this is that the children of subsequent generations of Israelites could avoid judgment. They could. How? Simply be obedient. Behave righteously. I mean, this is kind of an axiomatic thing. If you, as someone who had really cruddy parents growing up, sinful parents, if you want to avoid falling into their footsteps, what do you do? You insist on not walking in their footsteps. You insist on rising above all of that and behaving righteously. The decision is still yours as to how you're going to behave in the world in which you live. In fact, this is exactly what we read back in Exodus 20. God would, in fact, visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and fourth generations, but note carefully the qualifier there. This would only happen among the generations that hate him. Very important qualifier. God is not saying I'm going to pick on your children because you're such a sinner. I'm going to make it difficult for your children to be saved simply because of the sins that you've committed. No, they could be saved if they would be obedient and act righteously. The only time this visitation of the iniquity of the fathers would be placed on to subsequent generations would be if those generations turn out to hate him as in previous generations. And then in verse six, he offers them a way out, right? He says, but I will show loving kindness to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments. Now you might, again, you might suffer for the sins of your parents, grandparents, et cetera, It happens, but you don't have to follow in their footsteps because the God who is merciful and gracious is able and willing to save you from such things. Going back to our text in Exodus 34, this brings us to verse 8. How did Moses react when he heard all of these wonderful truths about God's various perfections? And understand this as well, this is just a small example of some of the things that God could have told Moses about himself. But as we discussed last week, these things fall in the category of God's communicable attributes. In other words, God is telling Moses, this is who I am, this is how I operate in the world around me. And oh, by the way, you would do well to follow my example in all of these things. But how does Moses react just to this small sampling of God's perfections. Verse 8, Moses made haste to bow low toward the earth and worship. He said, if now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, I pray let the Lord go along in our midst, even though the people are so obstinate, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as your own possession. I love how we're told here that Moses made haste to bow in worship. Think about this for just a minute. As I said, Moses has just been shown seven of God's perfections out of the many that he could have been shown and his automatic reaction is to immediately bow down in worship. This should be very convicting. Why? In addition to these seven perfections that God has shared with Moses, we have so much more, don't we? We have the privilege of possessing the whole counsel of God's word in written form. Not only do we have it in written form, we have it in audible form, we have it all over the World Wide Web. You can avail yourself of the Word of God if you have a smartphone. You can avail yourself of the Word of God any moment of any day and you can take in any part of the Word of God that you so desire. You can do an exhaustive study of God's perfections well beyond the seven that Moses has shown here and yet Why is it that we don't react similarly? Why is it that we've become so accustomed to hearing the Word of God? Why is it that we've become so comfortable with our thrice holy God? And not only comfortable, but kind of inoculated against the effect that the word of God should have on us. We have grown lazy. We have grown complacent. We have been lullabied, as it were, by the heartbeat of God. He has become so familiar to us that, as I often say, familiarity breeds contempt. Not in a hateful sort of way, but most of us will have to admit that During the average week, we're not nearly as focused on the Lord or the things of the Lord as we should be. And we need to admit, all of us, even though we might be focused on the Lord as we should be, we don't respond as we should all the time. When's the last time you were truly humbled, brought low in that spontaneous desire to worship? Again, it's a very important question. It's a question we should all ask and answer. We should all make haste to worship him at every turn. Moses goes on to say, if now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, I pray let the Lord go along in our midst, even though the people are so obstinate. and pardon our iniquity and our sin and take us as your own possession." Now, notice again Moses' insistence on using all of these plural personal pronouns. God has already told Moses that the only reason I'm going with you all is because of my love for you. The others are benefiting from my great love for you, Moses, and I'm pleased On the basis of my preference for you over the others, I'm pleased to go along with all of you. So, yet again, Moses finds it needful here to remind God, it's not just me, I need you to go with all of us. I need you to be a God to all of us. I need to know basically that all of my labors as the emancipator of this people will not have been in vain. God wanted Moses to understand that the only way that the other Israelites could ever be brought back into covenant relationship with him would be for him to renew the covenant that he had made back in Exodus chapter 24. This is why he says in verse 10, behold I'm going to make a covenant. God has finally heeded Moses' prayers And again, we need to understand this in the proper way. He always intended to do what he is about to do. Moses didn't know that, but Moses' importunate prayers, Moses' insistence that his God be a God of his people has finally been met with God's promise. Behold, I'm going to make a covenant. Before all your people I will perform miracles which have not been produced in all the earth nor among any of the nations and all the people among whom you live will see the working of the Lord for it is a fearful thing that I'm going to perform with you. Now what happened the first time God made a covenant with them? Well back in Exodus 24 you'll recall Moses took the book of the covenant, he read it to all the people And what did they all say in unison? All that the Lord has spoken we will do and we will be obedient. How'd that work out? Folks, remember we're not on a timeline at this point of years, we're on the timeline of months. And really in the span of Exodus 24 to 34, we get the impression that we might be talking a timeline of weeks. Right? So this is what makes their disobedience so astounding. They promise one thing, and then not long after, they do just the opposite. Moses then took the blood of the sacrifice, as you'll recall. This blood was intended to ratify the covenant, and he sprinkled it on the people, saying, Behold, the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words. And again, how did that work out? Well, it wasn't long before they broke the covenant. They broke the covenant. They continually violated their part of the covenant, which in turn rendered the whole thing null and void. And so began Israel's long history with covenant breaking. They had partaken a covenant, and what would they do? They would break it. They'd be given another covenant, they would break that covenant. They'd be given another covenant, they'd break that covenant. Remember, they were guilty of breaking the Abramic covenant, they broke the Mosaic covenant, they broke the Davidic covenant, and in so doing, they rendered those covenants null and void, at least in terms of what they promised. Now, let me just ask you this. Why is it that these covenants would have never succeeded. Anybody know? Because we're dealing with sinful, fallen individuals. Notice every covenant made in the Old Testament is a bilateral covenant. In other words, it requires two parties to hold up their ends of the covenant. God says, if you'll do this, namely, if you'll be obedient, then I will bless you. They are disobedient, covenant is broken. Next covenant comes along. If you'll do this, then I will bless you. What happens? They break the covenant and on and on and on and on it goes. This is what makes the new covenant. The covenant ushered in by the sacrificial death of Christ, ratified by his precious blood. This is what makes the new covenant so unique. You'll recall from the letter to the Hebrews that the new covenant is not like the old. And in view there, of course, is the Mosaic covenant. It's said to be better in every way. In fact, look over at Hebrews 8. Hebrews 8. Beginning at verse 7, we read this. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second. In other words, if you just obeyed the first one, there'd be no need for another one. And again, this is a reference to the Mosaic covenant that had to be reinstated by the Lord because of the Israelites' disobedience. Verse 8, for finding fault with him, he says, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will effect a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt for they did not continue in my covenant and I did not care for them says the Lord." Now stop there. This is a quote from the prophet Jeremiah in which the Lord promises that the kind of covenant that he made with Israel at Sinai would be replaced by something entirely new, something that would not be like the previous covenant. So in what way would the covenant The New Covenant be different. Keep reading. Verse 10. The Lord says, For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws into their minds. I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen and everyone his brother, saying, Know the Lord. For all will know me from the least to the greatest of them, for I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. And notice how the writer adds this clarification in verse 13. He writes, when he set a new covenant, he has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear. Now at this point, it's helpful once again to understand who's being talked about here. In the dispensational mindset, this is talking about physical Israel. This is talking about the Israel that is Israel by ethnic connections. That is the fleshly Israel. We know better, right? Not only are we told throughout the early chapters of Romans that this is not the case. Remember what Paul said, not all who are of Israel are Israel. It's not the children of the flesh who are to inherit the promise, it's the children of the promise, right? It's the spiritual children of Abraham. Thus, when Abraham was promised all of these things by the Lord, namely that his descendants would number as the sand on the seashore, or the stars in the heavens, that was a promise made by God to deliver all kinds of people from all kinds of places, and they would forever be known as, according to Galatians, as the Israel of God. It's not confusing. People are prone to say, well, that's just, that's pure replacement theology. It's not. It's biblical theology. Replacement theology is just a faulty understanding of dispensationalism in which you have the wrong constructs from the very beginning. But if you understand what God himself says about the nature of true Israel, true Israel is the people of God. And again, challenge me if you might. I suspect there's some of you who are reacting with a little bit of chagrin this morning. Search the scriptures and you'll find these things are not only true, but they are very easily identified as truth. It's not rocket science. And so when we're told here that this new covenant would be given to the people, it makes perfect sense. Because let me just ask you, according to this prophecy, who is it that God places his laws into their minds? The redeemed. Who is it that has God's law written on their hearts? It's God's redeemed. It's not this one people. This is, by the way, why later on we read that there is now no distinction between Jew and Gentile, Greek, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man. How can that possibly be? Only under the new covenant in Christ's blood where all distinctions, superficial distinctions have been removed. Is that possible? And so this promise is for the redeemed of God. Now, what part of the Old Covenant became obsolete? Well, there are a couple of things in view here as well. First, the ceremonial and civil laws bound up in the Old Covenant became obsolete. And aren't you glad? I don't know how difficult it would have been to have to be so observant of every little jot and tittle associated with every little tradition, every little ceremony, every little civil law such as the Levitical laws, the dietary laws. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to live under that paradigm. And here's the thing, this is where it gets really muddy in the minds of many people and why it gets so muddy in the minds of many people. There are scads of people alive today who still are beholden to the ceremonial and civil law of the Jews thinking that they are still under an obligation of a bilateral covenant. This is what every works-based religion is predicated on. God has made with His people a bilateral covenant. I have to do my part. I have to live up to His righteous expectations and only then can I be assured that I'm going to be saved. Well, we know that's nonsense because according to James, in James chapter 2, how much of the law needs to be observed in order for us to be right with Him? All of it. To what standard? Perfection. Can anybody do that? No. No. Try as you might, you can't do that. Now what part of the Old Covenant remains? God's moral law. God's moral law is that law that's been written on our hearts. He didn't write all of Leviticus on our hearts. He wrote all of His moral law. This is why Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount doesn't even touch the ceremonial and civil law, where does he go? Right to the moral law. He's asked, which of the great commandments is greatest? Well, they're both the same, he says. On the first tablet, you've got love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. On the second tablet, that can be summed up as in love your neighbor as yourself. On these two things, he says, depend the whole law and the prophets. That sermon would have been a lot longer if he had gone through all 613 laws of the Jews, ceremonial and civil. But he didn't. Unlike the Old Covenant, and here's the best news imaginable, unlike the Old Covenant, the New Covenant is completely unilateral. Thank you Jesus. Unlike the old covenant that depends on my ability to perform, the new covenant depends on one thing. The efficacy of Christ's finished work. Now I get it, there are a lot of people who don't like that. You know, I don't really like that because what you're doing is you're just giving people license to live any old way you want to live under this once saved always saved doctrine. You're just giving people license to go out there and live like the devil under the guise that they're still saved. No, see, this is where a lot of that, just dispense with the caricatures. You know, I have long been weary of those who come off half-baked when it comes to biblical theology. You've got to tell the whole story. Because in addition to God's law being written on our hearts, we have the Holy Spirit. We're new creations in Christ. We've been given God's Holy Spirit to convict us when we do sin, to compel us to live more righteously, to remind us of what God's word says, and to teach us what it means. We've got the precious Holy Spirit as those who have been transformed by the grace of God. We now have the ability to do what Paul talked about in Romans 12, one and two. where he said, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. He did that with the knowledge that the only people who can do that are those who have been made new creations in Christ, those in whom God's Holy Spirit dwells. I mean, that's right up there with that old argument about God dragging people kicking and screaming into heaven who don't want to go to heaven. I mean, if you're going to come up with various caricature-like arguments, you need to do better. God doesn't drag us kicking and screaming into heaven against our will. God simply says, you're mine, and here's a new heart of flesh. that will forever be inclined to love me and to follow me. Again, it's not that difficult. You know what makes theology so difficult for so many people? Theology. Because there's so much bad theology out there. But if you'll stick to the scriptures themselves, If you're a workman who need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth, truth will be yours. We're gonna talk about that in the next hour, putting on the belt of truth and what that means. The only people who have that belt, by the way, are the redeemed, those to whom God has been pleased to give that belt. The conditions bound up in the Mosaic Covenant were put in place by God for a very particular reason. Remember what that reason is? God built into the Old Covenant a definite sense of futility. Can you imagine what it's like to be the most observant, righteous-minded Jew you can be? Because after all, everything foreshadowed by that was really just a foreshadowing of our need for Christ. But can you imagine, as I've said before, you go to the temple to offer your sacrifice. You've either got a full-blown spotless lamb, or you've got two little turtle doves, or even some little scrawny birds that you bought, because that's all you can afford. God would accept it. You take your sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, which, by the way, is one time a year. You take this sacrifice on the Day of Atonement to the high priest and you lay it before him and he slaughters the sacrifice and you breathe a heavy sigh of relief. Once again, I'm right with God. Once again, what I've done has placed me back into a right relationship to God. And then you're wearing your sandals and you start leaving the temple grounds and you stub your toe on one of the limestone blocks and out come a stream of expletives. What happened to your redemption? What happened to your atonement under that process? It's gone? You forfeited it. In so many ways, you could forfeit it. That's the futility that's built into the law. The futility is actually rooted in the fact that God demands perfect obedience. No man's perfect. So even under the best of circumstances, you had no real assurance of your salvation because you knew yourself not to be perfect as God is perfect. Once again, the writer of the Hebrews is helpful. Hebrews 10, one through four. And again, this goes back to the point I made about the old covenant, the law, especially the law of the sacrificial system was just a placeholder, a foreshadowing. Don't take my word for it. Hebrews 10, verse 1. For the law, what law? The whole of it, including the ceremonial and the civil. Since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, this law can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins? But in those sacrifices, there's a reminder of sins. year by year, for it's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins." Talk about futility. Can you imagine being a Jewish person hearing that for the first time? It was never possible. Not even in your ancestors, it wasn't possible. Then he goes on down in verses 11 through 14. He says, every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But He, that is Christ, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet. For by one offering, He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. Who are the sanctified? Well, once again, I would point you to Romans 8, 29 and 30. Those who are sanctified are those who have been forloved, predestined, called, justified, and glorified. Those who, in the mind of God, in eternity past, for reasons known only to himself, were made or designated as the objects of his grace. And this was all secured by one offering. And in Christ, this is again why the imputed righteousness of Christ is so critically important, in Christ I am perfect. When God looks at me right now, wearing the righteous robes of Christ, I'm perfect. Do you understand that? Now again, what should that realization cause me to do? I think it goes back to what we read at the very beginning. That realization should cause me to make haste, bow down, and worship him. But again, the question is, are you doing that? Are you prone to do that? Do you even care that that's the case? Or have you become so comfortable in the realization of your own salvation? Let me caution you against that. Christianity is not a spectator sport. Christianity is not something that we walk an aisle, we say a prayer, and then we're secured forever, even though there's been no real change made. Christianity, true belief in Christ, will work itself out in demonstration after demonstration after demonstration of the indwelling Holy Spirit, of the transforming power of God's grace. Well, Lord willing, we're going to be looking next time at the specifics of this reinstated Mosaic Covenant. Remember, he's going to make another covenant beginning at verse 11 here in Exodus 34. Until then, I'd simply remind you, if you've not done so lately, just make it a point to thank the Lord for giving us Himself and enabling us to obey the conditions of the first covenant in Him. It is a new covenant. It is a better covenant. But really, in terms of the moral law, it's the same covenant. It's just that Now we have the perfect, active obedience of Christ on our behalf, which keeps us in that unilateral covenant.