Those who make them are like them - so you become like what you worship. So if you worship the idols, then what will happen is, you will end up becoming like them – cold and hard. So I have observed: that people who are involved in idolatry, usually have deep roots of bitterness in their lives, and emotional coldness and hardness. Literally, a spirit of death gets hold of them. So when there’s family idolatry, usually the people are very hard emotionally.
Let’s go back into Exodus 20. So God says: if you bow down to them, I the Lord am a jealous God, and I will visit the iniquity of your fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who do these things. Notice God says: He visits the iniquity.
The consequence of sin is death. God set that law in place – you sin, you die - and a number of sins in the Bible had death penalties. The problem is, if God kills you when you do that sin, it cuts of all the generations. So rather than kill you, the judgement on that sin is just spread generationally. So no one dies; but everyone’s affected.
The word iniquity then, means to be crooked. The Greek word ‘avon’ and the Hebrew language means: what you look at with your eye, will hook you in. So iniquity then, is to be crooked - to be twisted or bent. It’s to have a leaning towards a certain kind of problem. So iniquity is the driving power that turns people towards sin. Iniquity is the root, out of which the sinful acts turn up. Iniquity is a problem!
I want to show you a verse in Exodus 34:6-7 – 6 “And the LORD passed before Moses and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, 7 keeping mercy for thousands.” I want you to notice this very carefully – “forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin; by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”
We see here that God is proclaiming His name or nature. The first thing we see is God says: I’m a God of mercy. 1) Mercy. I give mercy - merciful, gracious, long-suffering, kind; also, He’s a God of justice. Mercy is greater than justice. God’s mercy means He forgives; is long-suffering, goodness. God’s justice - He requires us to come account for sin.
Notice what He says here – that God forgives 3 things: Iniquity; Transgression; Sin - those are 3 different things. We just tend to think of sin - I did something wrong, but the Bible distinguishes between them. Iniquity is one thing; transgression is something else; sin is something else - these terms all turn up in the New Testament as well. We tend to just use one broad word – sin. Jesus died for my sins. Actually, we need to understand iniquity, transgression, sin. All of them, the blood of Jesus has the remedy for it, but each of them is completely different.
Iniquity means to be crooked or twisted - it’s the bending in your life towards sin. That’s what we’re going to be dealing with, when we’re dealing with generational curses and iniquities.
Transgression – that’s something different. It means to deliberately break the law of God. You knew it was wrong, you knew in your conscience it was wrong, but you did it anyway - you broke the law of God.
Sin means to fall short of the mark; to cause an offense. It pertains mostly to things we have done but we didn’t realise ot. We did something wrong, but we didn’t realise we were doing something wrong - we did it ignorantly.
For example, you may not realise there’s a 50 km/h speed zone outside, and you went 80 km/h; and you were stopped, and they said: “You did 80, this is only a 50 km/h zone.” You say “Well, I didn’t know”. The policeman doesn’t say to you, “Oh, I’m so sorry you didn’t know - it’s ok then - move on”. He doesn’t say that, instead He says: “Whether you knew it or not, you still broke the law. You have to pay the fine”.
Notice now, three categories of issues that need to be addressed. 1) Iniquity – the twist in the person’s life. So even if they say they’re sorry, they still keep moving towards that. 2) the transgression – deliberate violating of the law of the Lord; 3) I made a mistake I didn’t know I was doing wrong, I’m so sorry.
There was an offering for sins of ignorance, and there was an offering for transgressions, so they were quite different. You notice in the Old Testament that when Moses required the people to apply the blood, notice what he did: apply it to the lintel, the post, the post. Iniquity; transgression; sin - Basic crookedness; willingly breaking the law; sins of ignorance – apply the blood. Why did he not say: just put it on the top one? Because the blood of Jesus Christ totally deals with every aspect of our sin and failure - iniquity, transgressions, sins. Notice that in applying it, they literally make a cross. So right back there in Exodus 12, God points out the cross and blood that will deal with iniquity, transgression, and sin.
Notice this – the transgressions that’s doing something wrong, the sins that’s doing something wrong - everyone’s responsible for their own. Everyone is called to look to account for their own sin. You are not blamed for the sins your parents committed. You are not blamed or responsible for their transgressions - but the iniquity you carry. We need to deal with the issue of iniquity – the cursing in our flesh, that seems to produce these troubles.
We’ll just finish with one more scripture. You notice that what is visited upon the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation is iniquity. In Deuteronomy 23, I just want to read you one other kind of cursing that passes from one generation to another. In verse 2 - 3: “One of illegitimate birth shall not enter the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation, none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the LORD. An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation, none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the LORD forever”.