The Sins of Your Ancestors

We blame the gun after I pulled the trigger, the cigarette company because I smoked, or the prostitute because I get a disease. Fans blame the coach for losing the match.

Mormons have a great plan for your dead ancestors. You get baptized in their place, their sins are forgiven, and they enter the kingdom of God.

Others have another take on the sins of your ancestors. You’re guilty of their sins 300 years ago and must pay the price through social justice. It’s Mormonism without the water!

Should you be held responsible for the sins of your ancestors? How would you know those sins? How many generations back will you go?

No one today, nor of the past, has clean hands. No tongue, tribe, nation, skin color, or individual – past or present – is innocent of horrible things.

Africans enslaved Africans over thousands of years. In the 1400s, the Inca in South America murdered their neighbors in violent religious rituals. Pacific islanders stole from one another and then ate each other. Five hundred years ago, Roman Catholics killed Protestants and Lutherans killed Anabaptists. My great-grandfather defrauded his neighbors with rotten potatoes. The whole world is a guilty mess!

What do you mean when you use this proverb concerning the land of Israel: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?”

“As I live,” says the Lord God, “you shall no longer use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine; the soul who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:2-4).

In the days of the Jewish prophet Ezekiel, people blamed each other for the sins of their ancestors, even creating a proverb about it. God told Israel to stop repeating the proverb because it wasn’t true. God holds each sinner personally responsible for his own sins and not the sins of others.

When Adam sinned, he blamed God and Eve. Eve blamed the serpent. The serpent was the only one in the Garden who didn’t pass the buck (Genesis 3:8-13). Blaming someone else (or their ancestors) is always easier than looking in the mirror to see where I miss the mark.

God saves and forgives individuals one-by-one by grace through faith in Christ. God’s Saviour meets the sinner where he is, not where his great-great-great-grandmother was.

We are His Workmanship

We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them (Ephesians 2:10).

The story of Samson is one of God choosing a man to deliver Israel from the Philistines before his conception. He would demonstrate God’s strength independent of a man’s background, resources, abilities, or strengths.

After announcing that salvation is God’s gift of grace through God’s gift of faith in His gift of Christ Jesus, Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:10 that we are nothing apart from Jesus. The blood of His nail-pierced hands is on everything about us. We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. There is no room for boasting about our free will, our choice, our decision, our prayer, our commitment, or our works. Salvation is not about “our” anything, but Him!

Boastful people we are, but any good found in us or in our deeds, is only the goodness of Jesus Christ shining through the dark and awful dung of our existence. Note Paul says we walk in Christ’s works, not make our own! Anything of value or worth found in me or done through me is for Christ Jesus alone to boast in. And apart from Him, nothing good in me doth dwell (Romans 7:18).

You and I were born again to shine the light on God. He saved us, and before time began ordained a life-time of light-shining works for us to do. These works only and ever draw the attention and praise of men and angels, demons and damsels, Heaven and Hell to Jesus. Anything which puts the light on us is not a work prepared beforehand for us to do. We were saved – not to depopulate Hell – but to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Only Refuge from Judgment

The once great city of Nineveh

Most people think of history as boring, though each day of our lives is history! So if you want to call your life boring, that’s fine, but history is filled with exciting events, fascinating people, and important lessons.

Understanding history is essential to understanding the Bible, as it contains both past and future events. The prophetic books feel harsh for revealing God’s judgment of sin and sinner. It reminds us that God is in control and holds us accountable for our actions, thoughts, words, and motives. Despite our preference for a more accepting view of sin, God’s love and judgment go hand in hand.

The three-chapters of Nahum begin declaring God’s character and works. Human are the same, acting because of who we are, and we are sinners at our core. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). 

God is very different from us. Nahum shows that He is both just and merciful. He punished the wicked people of Nineveh because they sinned against Him, but He also shows mercy to those who love Him.

The second chapter of Nahum describes with amazing detail God’s destruction of Assyria before it happened, exactly as God willed it.

Nahum’s final chapter is God’s indictment of Nineveh’s sin and His ridicule of those who believed they could avoid His judgment. But God provided only one shelter from His judgment, The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and He knows those who trust in Him (Nahum 1:7). He is the sinner’s only refuge.

Nahum is dark because our sin is dark. Yet Nahum provides glimpses of hope and light because God is merciful to those whom He loves. Romans 9:13-18 declares, As it is written, “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.” … “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.” So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.

God is merciful and compassionate toward those whom He chooses to love. His chosen have nothing to do with the individual’s will, activities, efforts, or works. God says His His mercy, compassion, and love are according to His will and work.

• Click here to listen to the sermon, The Praise of His Glory from Nahum 3:16-19

The Death of Moses

The view into Israel from Mt Nebo.

What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator…. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith (Galatians 3:19, 24)

A mediator stands between two parties to reconcile them. The Pentateuch identifies Moses as the mediator between God and Israel when His people sinned. He’s also God’s mediator of the law in Galatians. God’s righteous standard of the law condemned the nation as sinners rather than made them right with Him.

Toward the end of Israel’s 40 years of wandering in the Sinai Wilderness, God led Israel to a place without drinking water. Despite God’s faithful and ample provision for so many years, the people complained.

In Numbers 20, God told Moses to take up the staff he’d used in Pharaoh’s court and the crossing of the Red Sea, and speak to the rock which followed them those 4 decades. Miraculously, the rock would produce water.

Rather than speak to the rock, Moses beat the rock twice. God provided water for the thirsty, but also forbid Moses to bring this congregation into the land which I have given them (Numbers 20:13).

Poised to enter God’s land of promise, Moses climbed Mount Nebo where Jehovah graciously allowed the only person with whom He spoke face to face, to gaze into the land flowing with milk and honey, the land God swore to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their descendants perpetually (Deuteronomy 34:1-4; 4:40; Genesis 13:15).

Moses died on Nebo without entering the land, but God immediately took him into that better, heavenly country (Hebrews 11:16). God buried Moses’ body there, never to be found again.

Moses, the mediator who represented the law couldn’t produce entry into the land of promise; he could lead to the boundary of rest, but was powerless to get anyone across the Jordan. Entering Canaan’s rest was a task God gave Joshua, whose name means “God saves.” Translated into Greek, Joshua is “Jesus.”

Spiritually speaking, Moses, the mediator of the law, gave way to the greater Mediator, Jesus.

For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17)

We Must Preach Jesus

How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? (Romans 10:14).

We don’t decide who is worthy to hear. We don’t determine who will believe. As Christians, our responsibility is to simply, genuinely, and obediently tell others about Jesus as He gives the opportunity. Jesus commanded us to be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8).

A man heard one of my sermons on Youtube and found it necessary to criticize me for pleading for sinners to be born again. I explained that presenting Jesus as the only Saviour from man’s sin and eternal damnation must never be half-hearted, like throwing bread crumbs to pigeons. The Apostle Paul wrote that we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us; we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:20). Did you notice those two impassioned words pleading and implore? Yes, we must share the gospel of Christ faithfully and truthfully; not robotically but sincerely.

The Bible records how the prophet Jonah walked the streets of Nineveh calling its citizens to turn to God. He was faithful in the proclamation. He spoke the truth. He delivered the message. He was the first recorded street preacher.

I’ve witnessed many like Jonah. They stand on a street with microphone in hand, yelling at everyone who walks by. They are so proud because they’ve proclaimed the gospel. Passersby hear, but they don’t “hear.” They hear shouting, not love; screeching, not pleading and imploring.

Jonah was obedient while his heart was rebellious toward God and hateful toward his audience. He didn’t plead with his heart but preached with loud voice, clenched hands, and disingenuous heart. Yet God was greater than His servant, forgiving and saving the people of that great city.

Remember that you represent Jesus and it is He who speaks His heart through you to a spiritually dead generation.