Exodus Chapter 34 Verse 1
• I want you to see this. Moses messed up. Any way you slice it, Moses in his anger, whether justified or not, destroyed something that God had given him. He literally, like physically, broke all of the laws of God in one moment. And yet God is ready to restore to him what he has broken. But how? God will write it…the content will be God’s and the completion will be God’s action, but Moses is to prepare the tablets. It is the same with us…saved and unsaved alike.
• We can’t do the saving, we can’t do the healing, we can’t do the anointing, the restoration…on our own we can’t even do the repenting. 2 Timothy 2:24-26 says, “And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.”
• It is true what Jesus said in John 15:5, “without Me you can do nothing.” It is a work of God the saving the healing the growing…even repentance is a work of the Holy Spirit in my heart but all of those things, it’s still MY heart…and I have to cut it up and bring it to Him. I have to be willing to be undone, broken, not-okay on my own and I need to prepare my stony heart to receive His work. That’s my job.
• Why? Because I’m the one that messed up. If God does it all then I learn that messing up gets me blessed…it doesn’t. Coming to God broken and prepared for Him to work, that’s where the blessing is at…and that is where Moses is here…and he is about to be blessed like never before.
Exodus Chapter 34 Verses 2 – 3
• No one this time…not Joshua you’re most trusted confidant this time… It could be that God was like, “Leave him to watch the people because Aaron is inadequate,” but I think it’s more than that. When you finally do put down the flesh, when you’re finally ready to just fall into Christ and be made whole and made new, that’s when you no longer need anyone telling you to do it…it’s your decision, your action, your initiation alone…and that is when it’s the realest!
Exodus Chapter 34 Verses 4 – 5
• Do you want to meet the Lord face to face like Moses did? Hearing Him clearly and understanding without confusion…Do you want to know the name of the Lord and in that His character and His purpose? To see past the surface and press into a real relationship, one-on-one with the Lord…? Then listen, you must do as Moses is doing now…just as the Lord has directed, obey Him.
• You’re like, “But I know the name of the Lord. It’s Yah, Yahweh, revealed and declared in the person and persona of Jesus Christ,” yes, but just when you think you’ve grasped something, going deeper with the Lord reveals such additional depth…look…
Exodus Chapter 34 Verses 6 – 7
• The name of the Lord is more than His title, it’s knowing Him! Think of someone now who you know of…but don’t know. Their name changes in your heart and mind and understanding when you get to know them personally. It’s the same with the Lord…so much more to understand and to know for each of us in a close relationship with the Lord.
• And I want to be very clear on something here…there is no such thing as a so-called “generational curse.” Let’s just be rational for a moment. You cannot blame your sin on your father. Your sin is your sin. If you hold to the false teaching of generational curse than you can blame your sin on someone else…but that is not at all correct, and you and I know it. Jeremiah 17:10 says, “I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings.”
• We may have challenges in our hearts because of what has been done to us but God is the Healer of hearts. To claim generational curses or generational sins is to deny personal responsibility and the power of God Himself.
• So, what does it mean here correctly, scripturally when God says, “Visiting the iniquity of the Fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation?” It means exactly what it says…that God sees the effects of my sin in the hearts and minds of my children and my children’s children and it grieves Him! It means that He is a generational God…above time, greater than man…and ultimately it means that my sin, that which I won’t deal with now, my children will be harmed…their hearts grieved to the point that it burdens their character…and it takes even generations for it to heal.
• My kids aren’t perfect…and here is the heavy calling of parenthood…the adulting that is required by all parents…and why it is especially tragic when a father or a mother sows carnality and pain into the hearts of their children…sin can compound upon itself. I deal with the sins of my parents even today, right this moment…it grieves me constantly…but on top of that, I still have my own sin…and my children have their own issues as well…and so as I bring them up, if I don’t take my load to the Lord given to me by the sin of my parents, then I just mix that into how I parent my own kid.
• God sees all that…we choose not to…we just live our lives…not caring or caring to see or caring to know or caring to believe what we are doing to our own most loved…but God cares…sees…knows…He is the God that observes/visits and I am thankful that He is the God who heals. I have taken to Him my childhood issues, and He has healed me so that what happened to me has not happened to my children…but if don’t take it to the Lord…even if the physical act/abuse that happened to you doesn’t happen through you…you pass on the grief and weight in the character…the iniquity travels…that is the correct teaching of what is so-called, “generational curses.”
Exodus Chapter 34 Verses 8 – 10
• Here again Israel has a decision. Either awesomeness of God will be known through them because of admiration or because of horror. Either way, God would be put on display for all other peoples through them.
• God is still doing that work today and let me tell you, specifically in my life…but in yours too. Each one of us are far from being a good court case as to why God should of would love us. Why God, perfect, holy, without any blemish and pure…would pardon our iniquity and take us as His inheritance…and yet that’s exactly what He has done. To the point that people look at you and they look at me and they see all of our mess and imperfection and yet they see the Lord’s work in your life…and they say , “You’re religious?” No man…I’m saved.
• “You’re a pastor…, how do you to that and work a full-time job?” Because pastoring is not what I do, it’s what God does through me! But you’re just a regular guy…yup…just as stiff-necked as the next guy…but the Lord loves me and I have learned that living for Him is far better than massaging my stiff neck, HA! You and I today still take part in this wonderful promise of God…to do marvelous awesome things to any life that would be given over to Him.