One had invested in family and walked with God and there was a Godly legacy – the legacy of a stable family, a good marriage, a legacy of grandchildren who loved their grandfather. The other one had an unstable marriage, unstable family, and no legacy to grandchildren.
So we understand God’s plan is that a legacy flow from one generation to another. We can align with Christ and leave an intentional legacy, or we can live a destructive life and other things come on our family. So if we walk with God, blessings begin to flow into our family, without us even realising it. They are blessed because we have walked with God - and this is what the scripture tells us.
I can remember when I was in Indonesia some years ago, and I was taking a meeting, and there were about 2000 people there. I had my son David with me, and he had come with me on more than one mission’s trip. Normally when I plan them, we do all the training of the leaders, and after we’ve trained the leaders, then we do the ministry. So we got to the first day, and I’d asked them: train leaders, then ministry - but it was a holiday, so they had meetings - and we had no one trained. So no one knows what to do, and they’ve all come wanting deliverance. It was only David and me, and more than 1000 came up in the altar call - it was a monstrous altar call - rows and rows and rows of people.
So I remember looking at my son saying: well Dave, you can do half of them, and I’ll do the other half, and so we got going. I got praying and things were happening, people who were slain in the spirit, demons coming out everywhere. Suddenly I thought: I need to have a look and see how Dave’s getting on. All around him, people are on the ground and demons have been coming out. He’s just had a major move of God around him. I spoke to him a little later about it. I said: “What happened?”
He said: “Well, about 3 months ago, I decided that what was on your life from God was an inheritance for me.” So I began in prayer to take hold of what belonged to me. Isn’t that something? He said: “...and this is what happened today”. So, there’s an example of Godly legacy. He stood up and said: what is on your life is mine to have. What he’s saying is: I don’t have to pay the price you paid, to get that. I can have that, because I’m connected to you, we’re family. Interesting thinking isn’t it?
So we can have what is upon Christ, because we are connected to Him - He is our elder brother. We just have to arise and take hold of what Christ has provided for us. He is the elder brother, who broke through and became blessed. We are blessed because we’re in Him - we just need to take hold of the blessing.
Now, notice the two sides of this. We see then that families are interconnected. Now He says this: The Lord your God is a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me; but showing mercy to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. So God is saying in this scripture here, that there are generational consequences of sin. Of course the most obvious one is Adam. Adam sinned, and we’ve all been born in sin. In this particular scripture, God says: certain kinds of sin will have generational consequences; and this is echoed in other scriptures.
Let me read another one for you. Lamentations 5:7. In this chapter 5, the prayer is for God to bring restoration. It starts of in verse 2 - Our inheritance has been turned over to aliens, and our houses to foreigners. 3 We have become orphans and waifs, our mothers are like widows. 4 We pay for the water we drink, and our wood comes at a price. 5 They pursue at our heels; we labor and have no rest.
Now look at what he’s saying. He’s saying: we are in reproach. That means we’re incredibly ashamed and embarrassed of our condition. He said: the Godly inheritance has been taken away from us by other people. He’s saying that the blessing have been stripped away. He said: we’ve become orphans, or no one to father us, we’ve lost parents. He said: the water that we drink, which should be free, we have to pay for. The trees which we should be able to cut down for wood, we have to pay for them as well. He said: we are labouring, or working, and there’s absolutely no rest; and we’re in bondage to the Syrians and Egyptians. So that’s a very unhappy condition isn’t it? So what’s he saying, we’re in bondage, we’re in slavery.
Notice now what he says in verse 7, he actually says what the cause of the problem is. 7 Our fathers sinned and are now no more, or have died, but we bear their iniquities. What he’s saying is: our parents did something wrong, and we’ve experienced the consequences. What they did has brought problems to us. Or in other words, their sin has had a generational impact. That’s exactly what he said in Exodus chapter 20. So there are many scriptures that are like this.
Let’s go back to Exodus 20. God is speaking specifically about idolatry and iniquity. Let’s first of all, talk about idolatry. Verse 5 says: I the Lord your God, am a jealous God. We need to understand what that means. When it says: God is jealous; He’s talking about having a passionate love for us. It says: I’m passionately in love with you. So when I see someone else be your lover, I am extremely upset by this. It’s not saying that God has got some evil nature to Him. It’s saying that I love you so immensely; it hurts Me deeply to see you follow some other person. He’s using a marriage language here. He’s saying: I’m like a jealous husband.