Consequences

"You shall not make for yourself a carved image--

any likeness of anything that is in heaven above,
or that is in the earth beneath,
or that is in the water under the earth;
You shall not bow down to them nor serve them.
For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,
but showing mercy to thousands,
to those who love Me and keep My commandments."

There are things about God that bother some people. Most everybody likes to hear about the God of love, full of mercy and compassion and forgiveness. Not many like to hear that he is vengeful or jealous. And yet one place He says, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay." And here he says, "I am a jealous God." He is absolutely clear about this, leaving no doubt in anyone's mind. He alone is God; He alone is to be worshiped; and woe be unto those who don't honor Him with their lives.

Something else people don't like to hear is that sin has consequences. I'll never forget the words of my preacher daddy, heard so many times during my formative years: "If you get on the roller coaster, you have to wait 'til it stops to get off." In other words, sin is a decision we choose to make; but we need to be aware that for every action on our part, there is a reaction on God's part. And unlike the laws of physics (or whatever), it's not necessarily equal or opposite.

Sin separates us from God. Sin stops up His ears from our prayers. Sin corrodes and corrupts our lives, eating away at us from the inside out, and sometimes from the outside in. Paul writes in Romans 1 that we reap in our own bodies the consequences of our actions. Sin is a transgression against the will and nature of God, a falling short of His high standards of excellence. Such failures on our part are always sins against God, sometimes against another person, sometimes against our own body, and always against our own soul.

And there are always personal consequences for our sin. Of course we recognize that the wages of sin are death. What we often fail to realize is that the consequences may affect more than just ourselves. In His commentary on this second of commandments, God elaborates on His jealousy by saying that He will visit the sins of the fathers upon their children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate God. Consequences can be reaped in a person's life and family for decades to come because of what we thought was one little mistake. So be careful what you choose to do; the consequences could come back around to haunt you in the lives of your children or theirs.

But see that it says, "Of them that hate God". When we repent, He is faithful and fair, and He does forgive! We just need to to stay in a heart of repentance, and do what we can to put a stop to the cycle of sin and its consequences in our own lives and in the generations of our family. Because He shows love and mercy to the thousands of thsoe of who love Him and demonstrate their love by their obedience to His commandments.