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Empowering multimedia ministry for bold Christian living: Weekend Messages, Deep End Podcast, Deep Dive Bible Study. Tim Hatch, Lead Pastor, Waters Church, 26 years of pastoral ministry, book author.
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Understanding the Ten Commandments 0:00 Are you ready for some bible study? I am.0:35 Commandments. The 10 words. I said last week, we don't call them commandments or the Bible doesn't call them commandments. The Bible calls them 10 words. You know, that you don't have to get too legalistic about that0:44 stuff. That's just, the fact of the matter is that god spoke all these words, the scripture says. Doesn't say commandments. We're not gonna get legalistic about that. Never get, you know, radically committed0:56 to some some view of the Bible like that. That's just an unhealthy way to go. Have flexibility with your study of the word of God. Trust me. You will be glad if you have flexibility.1:08 And part of that flexibility is letting god speak to you and letting him speak that things into your life that you may not wanna hear. So we're gonna go through commandments 1 through 5. Let me first1:21 erase a, misnomer that might be in your mind and that is that when Moses came down the mountain with the tablets, he had laws 1 through 4 or some say laws1:33 1 through 5 on 1 and laws 6 through 10 on another. Okay. That is actually a misnomer. There's a a lot of historical research being done into the idea1:45 of ancient covenants. We've talked about that on this channel already on this season of the deep dive. You know, cesarean covenants, ancient covenantal agreements and practices. We talked about the prologues, the1:57 preambles, the stipulations, the blessing cursing, the rehearsings. We talked about those 6 parts parts of ancient, near eastern covenants. But there's another 1 that will obliterate the idea of 5 on 12:09 tablet and 5 on another. And some say, again, 4 on 1 tablet and 6 on the other because the first 4 deal exclusively with God. But we're gonna talk about today that actually the first 5 deal with our relationship to God2:19 and we're gonna show you how. And then the the second 5 or some to say the last 6 deal with our relationship 1 to another or vertical commandments and horizontal commandments. Okay. We're gonna we're gonna blow this idea2:30 away. There is actually far more better research showing that according to ancient world customs, you made 2 copies of the same covenant. So guess what that means? The reason2:42 why a Moses had 2 tablets is because 1 was the people's, copy and 1 was God's copy. And 1 was placed into the and and I'm2:54 sorry. Both were placed into the ark to kinda seal the deal there. We come together through the through the law and the law is our, in the ancient world, pathway to Yahweh and then or3:06 our covenantal agreement with Yahweh, Christ comes and fulfills the law. He is our true ark. He is our true, Moses. He is our true, David and3:18 king and he is the 1 who makes a way for us to come back to God. So that might be, again, another small little thing that just kinda gets obliterated in your mind about this idea that there was 5 on3:30 1 tablet and 5 on another. Don't worry about it if you see even on this channel, we show you graphics like that. Don't worry about that if you see the 10 Commandments movie. You think, I can't watch this anymore. It3:40 should be 10 and 10. It shouldn't be 1, 5 and 5 or 4 and 6. No. Don't don't get worried about that kind of stuff. Again, flexibility. So when it comes to studying the word of god, we wanna hear what god3:52 says and that brings us to commandment number 1. And we're not gonna spend too much time with it because this one's pretty simple and it's very short. Exodus 2 verse 3, you shall have no other gods before me. The other4:03 word for that, word in Hebrew, before could be besides. And, Deuteronomy chapter 5 verse 7 says the same thing. So the oh,4:15 by the way, the word for before is alpana. If you are taking notes in Hebrew, I doubt that you are. But what this idea of being before him is the word could be, translated4:27 to my face. You shall not put any other god to my face before me. In other words, I'm looking at you. And the phrase is actually referred to in another portion of the Torah4:39 as the idea of taking a second wife. So you think about right here in the first commandment, God is setting the stage for the kind of relationship that he wants with his people. And this is also going to come out4:51 in law number 2. And the relationship structure is husband to wife or fidelity, faithfulness. God is going to resolutely commit himself to the people of5:03 Israel and through Jesus Christ, those who are called to him. And the people are to resolutely commit themselves faithfully to God. There is to be fidelity. There's to be this marital5:15 covenant between God and his people. So the second thing that this first law tells us is that God is 1. He is there is no other.5:27 There is no equal to Yahweh. Now, some people don't realize this, but Israel and Moses5:39 gave to the world something the world had never known before. It's called monotheism. Monotheism is the idea that there is 1 God. There is 1 God. Every other ancient people believed there were5:51 a multiplicity of gods. The Babylonians, the Mesopotamians, the Canaanites, all believed this. Any anthropologist worth his weight in salt will tell you the truth and that6:02 is the only culture, the only people that ever brought monotheism, 1 god worship to the world is Judaism, ancient Israel. This is a gift that God gave6:14 through that people to us. Before then, people worship anything and everything. They worship rocks. They worship stones. They worship land. They worship people. They worship stars. They worship celestial6:26 bodies. And, ancient people believed primarily in 3 categories of god. They believed in a personal god, so you would have household gods like Rachel does. Remember when Jacob leaves with Rachel Leah6:38 and Laban comes and chases down his daughters and say, hey. Hey. Hey. You lifted up my daughters. You didn't even say goodbye. And she fakes that she has her period so she doesn't get down because she stole the household6:48 gods from Laban. That's an interesting story. So but anyway, in the ancient world, the there was personal gods. There were family gods. You have a weird story at the end of the book of Judges where you have a guy who6:59 hires a priest and creates a shrine for himself to have his own kind of personal religion. And then you have the national god, which would be represented by a temple. This is7:11 maybe part of the reason and we discussed this in the life of David that David wanted to build a temple because he wanted a big temple to show off his big God. Anyway, those 3 categories are also planted7:23 by the idea that there is 1 God who is over all areas of your life. He is your national God. He is over the nations, not just your nation, but every nation. He is over the families of the7:34 earth. Okay. That's why the Bible deals with all these family relationships and families of the Earth. It talks about that in Genesis. And then you have the personal God. Now think about that. Right off the bat, we're7:46 only in the first commandment, and we're learning so much about God through his word to Israel. He is the God over all persons. He is the God over all families. He is the God over all nations. And there is no such thing7:57 as we talked about on Deep End last night. There is no such thing as multiculturalism. I know we want to think multiculturalism is a plus. It's what we want. We want to embrace all cultures. No, we don't. We want to8:08 embrace the culture that the Bible, the Judeo Christian ethic brings to the world. It is the freest culture. It is the most humane culture. It is the most civilized culture. It has changed the world. It's literally8:19 redefined history around AD and BC. Civilized world owes its civilization to the Bible and anybody telling you differently is lying to you or are just they're just ignorant of history.8:32 Judaism gives the world monotheism. Now, I said this last tonight on the deep end and it bears repeating today. When monotheism really took root in the ancient world was through Christianity, through the spread of the8:43 gospel. Jesus Christ, the announcement that he is the Lord God, the God the Son who has come to reconcile us to god the father and then fill us with the holy spirit, god the holy spirit. Monotheism starts to take over8:54 the Roman world, the Greek world, the foreign nations around Rome, beyond Rome. Well, you've got a spiritual enemy who's in the in the unseen realm saying, what do I do? What do I do? Monotheism has9:06 taken over. Guess what he does? He invents a duplicate, a counterfeit. And I talked about this last night. That counterfeit is what? Is is Islam. Islam is Satan's first monotheism. I'll never forget when I9:18 met a guy who used to go to a very liberal Lutheran church. I met him at a barbecue. This was years ago on a July fourth barbecue and he said, hey, tell me you're a pastor. I said, yes. And, he was going to a Lutheran9:27 church, very liberal Lutheran church. He said, tell me what your thoughts on our thoughts are on Islam. And I said, it's Satan's first monotheism. His jaw dropped. He said, I have been looking for a pastor to say that9:38 for I don't know how long. And, it's just a sad, you know, commentary on the state of many churches, many denominational churches, particularly mainline denominational churches, but it is also true. People are looking9:50 for truth. And he said, that's exactly right. I never put it that way. It is Satan's first monotheism because up until Judaism and Christianity, every other pagan religion, every other form of religion10:01 was polytheistic, polymany, theistic or theism, god, theos, god. So monotheism comes to us through Judaism and in the very first commandment, it10:13 is there's no other god. Now, by the way, the reason why you don't want, the reason why you want to practice this law is because no other god will do. Let's go to Isaiah chapter 4010:25 when god starts to speak comfort over his people and he talks about what he's going to do, But then he gets to this nitty gritty here in verse 11 and he starts asking some questions. He says, who measured let me just10:37 adjust my mic. Who measured the waters in the hall of his hand? Who measured the spirit of the Lord? What man can counsel him? He says, who did he consult? Who made him understand? Who taught the path of justice?10:48 Goes on and on like this for for a while. Gets down to verse 17. The nations are as nothing before him. Then he says, to whom then will you liken god or what likeness we compare11:00 with him? An idol, a craftsman crafts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts it for silver chains. He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will rot. He seeks out a skilled craftsman to11:10 set up an idol that will not move. Do you not know? Have you not heard? Have it has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth. He stretches out the11:18 heavens like a curtain, spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. On and on and on it goes, there is no god like Yahweh. That is the heart behind the first commandment. That is the heart11:30 behind you shall have no other gods before me. You don't have anyone first. Now, modern people will say, oh, we have moved on from worshiping, you know, trees and rocks and sculptures. No. We haven't. We've11:42 just replaced them. This is a modern tree. This is a modern idol right here. And if you're listening, I'm holding up the iPhone. Right? I could pick up my iPad and say, here we go. Here's a modern idol. The the what11:54 the thing about the modern idols of our ages, they do for us what we need to be doing for, in the name of God, don't they? An iPad is a wonderful tool. I'm using it right now to teach you the Bible. But an iPad12:06 can also be a convenient secular pagan babysitter for my child. Can it not? You can hand this to your child and never see your child for the rest of the12:18 day, and the child will be perfectly happy to have that little amber glow on his face for 24 hours or 16 hours or however long. You gotta be careful. These modern idols, computers, cars,12:30 houses, these are things that man makes and says, if I have that, I will be happy. If I own that, if that is mine, if I have this relationship to this huge, you know, I don't know, this community,12:42 if I live in this area, if I have this kind of spouse, if I have these kind of children, anything can become a god. Anything can become anything has the capacity to become our functional savior. And that's12:53 where the first commandment really hits the road for us. I am 16 minutes into this episode. I'm sorry. We've gotta move on or else I'll never get anywhere. And let's get to commandment number 2 because we're gonna really13:03 unpack these next 4 commandments. Commandment number 2, it says, the following. You shall not make for yourself an a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or is in the13:15 earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down bow down to them or serve them for I the Lord your God am a jealous God visiting the inequity of the fathers and the children to the third and13:24 fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. Okay. No idols. Now we always think that means no again, trees13:36 shaped into little gods or that means no stones carved into little images of false gods. But did you ever think about this? He's actually talking about don't make an image of me.13:49 Don't make an image that you think reflects me. This is very interesting if you think about it because we do this all the time. We break this commandment all14:01 the time. You just head over to Google, go to the image tab, and search Jesus. And what are you going to see? This is what you're gonna see. Because I just did this the other day. Okay. Let me14:13 just give you the straight dope on all those guys on the screen right now. That's not Jesus. And there is a good chance that14:24 he looked nothing like that. He was a Middle Eastern Jew from the first century. Probably brown skinned, maybe a little bit darker than brown. I don't know.14:37 Probably had some strange features. Did not have his hair conditioned. There was no conditioner. There were no gels. Okay? You you you've gotta watch out for this because14:49 people do this, particularly Catholic people. Catholics, if you're listening, I'm so glad you are, but be careful of your iconography. The little statues of Jesus, statues of Mary, statues of Joseph, the15:00 Holy Family. You think these things bless your life? They are not. They are inanimate objects. They are not able to bless you. If they focus your mind on God, do they help? I hear that in somebody's mind15:12 right now. You know, I think that they can hurt more than they can help. Interestingly enough, I have on my desk here. Do you know what this is? I went to Rome this past summer with my wife. This is15:24 the Colosseum in a, what is that called? A snow globe. There we go. There we go. It barely snows in Rome, but they sell these things because they'll sell anything. And this is the Colosseum. What does15:36 this do to the real Colosseum? It minimizes it. It shrinks it down. It makes it it makes it smaller than it really is. It it tells me that the Colosseum is not that impressive. We've got to be careful with iconography15:47 icon iconography because we can do that with God. We can make him smaller than he is. Okay? There we are not we have no idea what Jesus looked like. The other day, I had a guy come15:59 to my church. Actually, he comes to my church and he asked me in the hallway after church. He said, listen, let me ask you something. Why don't we have pictures of Jesus in the church? Church? And I said, because we have16:08 no idea what he looks like. And, this guy that I was talking to was a black man and I'm a white man or, you know, mostly white. I'm a pretty dark skinned Italian. Although the lights are so bright, I I look pretty white16:17 right now. Anyway, we're having a conversation. I said, isn't it great we don't know what he looks like because I can't claim him as white and you can't claim his him as black and nobody can claim him as their own white16:25 their own skin color. And I think god did that on purpose because he's not the god of the black people or the white people. He's the god of all people. And so we have to be careful that we don't make images of god,16:38 the true god, in ways that break this command, that reflect him. By the way, this commandment is interesting because as as God was giving this commandment to the people of Israel, to16:50 Moses on the mountain, to people of Israel, we're literally breaking this commandment. It is actually a sad commentary in the human heart. But if we go to Exodus 3217:02 verse 4 says, and he, Aaron, received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. You say, why calf? Because guess what? The Egyptians worshiped. They worshiped cows. That was17:14 1 of the plagues on the cattle of Egypt. He made it into a golden calf and they said, these are your gods, oh Israel. Look at what they say. Who brought you up out of the land of17:26 Egypt. Hello. They're giving god they're giving those golden calves credit for the unseen god's work, which means that the calves were an image to17:37 reflect the true god. Understand what idolatry does, and it leads to a very important theological concept. And I want you to hear this as clearly as I can possibly convey it to17:49 you. Wrong ideas about the right god are just as damaging as worshiping the18:01 wrong god. Did you hear me say that? Wrong ideas about the right god are just as damaging as worshiping the wrong god. This is why18:13 doctrine matters. This is why Paul tells Timothy, guard your life and your doctrine because if you if you do these things, you'll be saved. This is why we we have to find churches. If you're a bible believing Christian,18:22 get into your church where your pastor is teaching you doctrine, not just teaching you about feelings and all these other ideologies of mankind. We have to get back to doctrine, teaching the truth of18:34 scripture because people don't know God. They have an idea about God. They have feelings about God, but they don't know God. And what we have here right here in the second commandment is a command to make sure that we do18:44 not reimagine what we want him to be. He is not the God of our former life, the God of Egypt. He is not that golden calf. Okay? We even get the cultural euphemism. Oh, there's a golden calf in your life.18:56 Oh, it's a it's a sacred cow in your life. This is where that euphemism comes from because we can make sacred cows out of our denomination. Oh, I'm only this or I'm only that. We can make sacred cows out of our family.19:08 We We can make sacred cows out of our own religious practice. By the way, the second commandment literally obliterates our our ability to save ourselves through our own works because even your religious works can can19:18 become a sacred cow. Even your religious works. Well, I I do the Eucharist every week and I confess my sins to a priest and I, go to mass 7 times a week and okay. That's not saving you though. That's not19:30 saving you. Be careful that you don't let even your own religious practice become a sacred cow in your life. And you unintentionally or subconsciously start to worship God through the19:41 sacraments, through the processes of your religion instead of through the understanding of what he has declared once and for all. The faith given once and for all to the19:53 world. This is, also countering exactly what the devil did with, Eve right in the garden with the woman. She wasn't called Eve yet. But he says,20:05 did God really say and then he twist God's words, you can't eat any tree from the Garden of Eden. He's literally just reimagining God right there. This is what you you see in, Exodus 32 like we just talked20:17 about. This is what happens when Jeroboam starts his, you know, false religion and sets up the high places and and sets up the 2 altars in Dan and Beersheba. Sorry. No. In Samaria and20:29 in Beersheba. Yeah. We talked about that in the Kings of Compromise last year. So you have this regular temptation to worship the right god with the wrong20:40 imaginations. God cannot be what you want him to be and he will not be what you want him to be. He is who he is and it is our job. The second commandment is calling on us to20:52 discover him for who he is, not to make him what we want him to be. Let's read a little bit more from this commandment because it's imperative to our hearts and formation as followers of Jesus.21:04 He says in verse 5, you shall not bow down to them or serve them for I, lord your god, am a jealous god. By the way, this verse is the linchpin for Oprah Winfrey's abandonment of her Baptist upbringing.21:16 You can look on YouTube. You can find the testimony for yourself. I don't wanna play it because I'll get flagged on the content and you can look it up for yourself. But she said, I had a problem when I was in a Baptist,21:25 you know, kind of very charismatic, church service. There was a call and response and the pastor said, and he's a jealous god. And she stopped and she thought, everybody's cheering, yes, he's a jealous god. How dare god21:35 be jealous? Okay. That is a very human understanding of what this means in the text. The word jealous is kana in Hebrew. And it's literally the word that could be referring to heat and21:46 fire. Now, you will understand this if you're married and I understand when single people don't get this or even Oprah Winfrey as a child or as a young person didn't get this because you're not married yet. Once you're21:58 married and you covenant and you agree together to have only yourself for that 1 person, and then they break that covenant and they go and they mess around with somebody else. What what happens in here? Heat,22:09 fire, jealousy, rage. That is how God feels toward you. Now now let me ask you this question. Those of you who have a problem with God being jealous or if you have somebody in your life that you know has a problem with22:19 this idea of God being jealous, just ask them, are you married? What would happen if your wife cheated on you or your husband cheated on you? How would you feel? I'd feel hideously bad. I'd feel resentful. I'd feel22:30 hateful. I'd feel angry. Okay. That's what God feels when we walk away from him. See, not so bad when you put yourself in the position here of how he has chosen to relate to us.22:42 God but but but ultimately, what I wanna teach you from this text and this commandment is god feels he feels jealousy toward us and for us. And, you know,22:54 that's not a bad thing. We we we are invited in the second commandment to feel and experience the heart that god has for us. He longs for23:06 us. He desires us. When we don't have him, he is jealous for us. Now, these are human words. We can't truly understand God's heart fully23:18 this side of heaven, but we can kind of understand it in human terms. So it is also the idea of a parent who loves and and raises their children. But what if that child would rather go down the street and23:30 eat supper with their their friends, family? Doesn't the parent have the right to feel jealous over that child? That is good that is godly jealousy. Okay.23:41 Moving on. Look at this next part of the of the commandment. He says, I'm a jealous god visiting the inequity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate23:53 me, but showing, steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. Okay. This is another passage that people have a problem24:05 with. Does god punish people who didn't zit does he punish the children, the offspring? Okay. Let's talk about it. Let's discuss this. That's why we do deep dive Bible study24:17 for an hour on Wednesday nights because we could take our time. We could pause. We can go to other passages. We can look at it. Okay. The idea is generational sin. Well, let's take a look at Deuteronomy 24 verse 16. It24:27 says, fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor children be put to death because of their fathers. Each 1 shall be put to death for his own sin. Okay.24:39 First off, we're being asked here to see that there is something called legislative justice. That's what this text is dealing with. Legislative justice is the idea that the community24:52 will legislate and act justly when there's conflict, when there's sin, when there's crimes committed in the community. And in this passage, Deuteronomy 24, that's what it's25:03 about. You will not punish the father for the sins of the child. And conversely, you will not punish the child for the sins of the father. But listen, and25:15 this is so important. This is not talking about how God will treat generational sin because you literally have to be ignorant of every25:27 reality of human of the human condition to think that there are not consequences on the next generation from the sins of their previous generation. I mean, that's just that's just basic25:39 humanity 1 0 1. I I wanna tread lightly here because I don't want you to think that your situation is hopeless if you were raised by, you know, very wicked sinners or very bad people. That that that's the last thing that25:50 I wanna do here on this channel. I really wanna give you hope. Absolutely. But let's just talk about this a little bit clo closer. First, a scientific approach. Did you know that there is a good amount of scientific26:02 discovery going on right now about something called epigenetic change in the human condition. Epigenetic change is the study of how our behaviors and environment26:14 can cause, changes that affect the way our genes work. So your parents went through the great depression, and some of you know this, or your grandparents went through through through the great depression. So your26:25 parents are very tight fisted, and they were raised that way. And then maybe, you know, your parents were raised in the the dot com explosion, so they're very loose with their money and it comes into your life. You you26:37 have no idea. 1 generation affects another. There's no doubt about that. I found this research page at Discovery News. I forget the website. I think it's discover news dot com, but it was talking about the fact that26:49 grandma's experience this is the title of the article, leave a mark on your genes. And then it literally says, like silt deposit on the cogs of a finely tuned machine after the seawater of a tsunami recedes, our26:59 experiences and those of our forebears are never gone. Even if they have been forgotten, they become part of us, a molecular residue holding fast to our genetic scaffolding. Says the DNA remains the same but the27:08 psychological and behavioral tendencies are inherited. You might have inherited not just your grandmother's knobby knees but also her predisposition toward depression caused by the neglect she suffered as a newborn. And27:20 this is a fascinating fascinating field of science that is kind of interesting because the science proves and this is the this is why I bring the scientific discovery up to you. It only goes27:31 3 to 4 generations back. Well, what does god say in commandment number 2? I'm going to punish to the third and fourth generation. So even that DNA effect, that epigenetic change on you, it27:43 really scientifically has only been discovered to 3 and 4 generations, which is phenomenally important to prove that once again, what God says is true. There are generational effects27:55 for sin. So I hear what some of you are saying. You're thinking right now in your mind, well, that's just great because my mom was an alcoholic and my dad was a28:07 heroin dealer and I am barely saved. That I got no chance. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Let me show you something. Let me show you something from scripture that proves that god has28:19 the ability to turn all of that misfortune genetically around in your life. In fact, he is even merciful enough and powerful enough to undo that genetic coding and give you a28:31 blank slate fresh start with God. But to do that, I've gotta take you to Ezekiel. Let me show you this from Ezekiel chapter 18. It says the word of the Lord came to me. He says, what do you mean by repeating the words of28:41 this proverb saying, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge? So first off, let's pause there. You eat a sour grape. What happens? You go and your teeth get clench. Oh. 0.28:53 That's the that's the image here. So he says, why did you why do you guys start saying this stuff that the fathers eat the graves and the children have to suffer for it? He says verse, 3. As I live29:05 declares the Lord, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine. The soul of the father as well as the soul of the son. The soul who sins shall die. Okay. Israel is in exile. By the29:17 way, how long are they in a when when Ezekiel 18 is written? How long are they in exile? For 70 years. How many generations can you fit into a 70 year period? 3 to 4. In the ancient world, 3 to 4.29:29 What is God saying here? Israel is at its lowest point in exile in Babylon. And here's what he's saying. He's saying no more. I I am no longer29:41 going to allow you to think that you get to blame mom and dad for your condition. Yes. Their sins, and this is true. This is absolutely true. We we studied it in the end of the Kings of Copper, my study last year. The29:52 sins of the wicked generations led to their deportation to Babylon. And then that generation that was raised and grew up in Babylon, Daniel's generation, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego's generation, Esther and30:03 Mordecai's generation, They suffered exile because of the sins of their grandfathers and their parents. That's a fact. But the hope that Ezekiel offers here is God is no30:15 is able to say, we're starting from scratch because if I just keep perpetuating this generational consequence into your life, if I keep letting that happen, you you've got no hope.30:27 And so the thing that we have to see God speaking to his people here is, number 1, there are consequences generationally for sin. Number30:38 2, God can remove those consequences supernaturally and give you a fresh start and and start a new righteous line through you. He can turn that lineage around through you. But number 3, here's the big here's the30:50 big takeaway and I don't want you to miss it because this is why I don't wanna gloss over any text in the Torah. This is why I want to deal with the hard stuff in this study. What God is really saying is that your sins31:01 have consequences communally. Your children will suffer consequences for your negligence to the things of God. Now, if that just says to me, if you really want to love your children,31:13 love God. Put him first. Make sure he's number 1 in your life. Make sure you do not compromise. Make sure that you are committed to a local church in the word, loving the Lord, leading them to Christ, leading31:25 them in the faith because your faith will take root in their reality. And really what God is saying in this commandment when he talks about visiting the sins of the fathers31:37 and the children. Do you know what he's saying? Here's what he's saying. He's asking us to be responsible for each other. Perish the thought. Perish the thought in modern American31:49 life, in modern Western culture. Oh, you really want me to care about other people. Yeah. Yeah. You are not an island. You John Donne was wrong. You are not an island. You32:01 do not. Or actually, I think he said there no man is a island. John Donne was right. Your life has consequences. Your life does matter to others. It affects others.32:13 Maimonides, a twelfth century Jewish teacher, wrote about this. He said, moral responsibility is something altogether larger than legislative responsibility. He says it is,32:25 he says, let not a person say I have not sinned. And if someone else commits commits a sin, that is a matter between him and God. He says this is contrary to the Torah, end quote. I love that because and he32:37 was a Jewish scholar, not a Christian scholar. But he's right. The sins of others have an effect on the community. And remember and this is why we started in part 1 with the idea that there's a difference between32:48 American law and God's law. And American law is the individual is protected from the community and in God's law, the community is protected from the individual. And that is a huge baseline understanding of all of this33:00 teaching that your sins have an effect on the people around you. So, yes, perish the thought. Take responsibility for each other. 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