Living Stones – Tuesday, December 5, 2017
Sin in the family tree
John 9:1, 2
Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Yesterday we looked at the issue of the connection between “sin and sickness” as Jesus did not refute the possibility opened up by the question from the disciples. There is another possibility that their question opened up that Jesus also did not refute, and that is the connection between sin and affliction in the family line.
One of the benefits of modern science and medicine is that we are able, very early, to establish connections between sickness and the bloodline. As soon as we go to a new doctor or medical establishment for the first time they try to establish our family history of sickness and diseases, especially in the case of chronic ailments.
There are some diseases that are decidedly hereditary and we, even those of us without any medical training or background, are aware that our chances of contracting some diseases or suffering from some ailments, increase if our parents or grandparents had the same afflictions.
That things follow the bloodline is no surprise to us. We see this in so many ways, like in particular physical features that show up in children and grandchildren. I always like to use the ‘big nose’ example. When you arrive in a village in the countryside and you see a child with a big nose playing with the others you ask that child if his father is home. You just assume, from his big nose, that he is a Graham since all of the Grahams seemed to have their grandfather’s big nose.
We have found in ministry that people more readily accept that there is a connection between physical characteristics and the next generation than accepting that there is a connection between spiritual characteristics and the next generation. There is no reason, even in pure logic, to not accept the connection in things that are spiritual. Just examine the declarations we make when we observe behaviour or performance. “He’s just like his father!” that can sometimes be a good thing, but it is often exclaimed when bad behaviour is observed.
The Bible is full of genealogies and many of us are reluctant to read them, we tend to skip the several verses of “begats” because we are bored by them and can find few spiritual lessons in them. We may do well to go back and take a new look at who begat whom.
When Boaz married Ruth, the people made declarations over their family that were rooted in the family line and the family history. Ruth 4:11-12, “And all the people who were at the gate, and the elders, said, “We are witnesses. The Lord make the woman who is coming to your house like Rachel and Leah, the two who built the house of Israel; and may you prosper in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. May your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring which the Lord will give you from this young woman.”” Read on also to Ruth 4:13-22.
Also, read the story of Jacob in Genesis. He was a deceiver and he seemed to have learned deception from his mother Rachel. When, because of his deception, he had to flee his home from his brother Esau and go into exile with his mother’s family at Uncle Laban, he was several times deceived by the said Uncle Laban. Deception was a family sin and they were adept at deceiving each other in the family.
The disciples put this question to Jesus because they were familiar with the Old Testament teaching and the idea that children often bear the consequences of the sins of their fore parents. “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,” Exodus 20:5. Then, in the beautiful Psalms we have this, Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord, Psalm 109:14. And then this in the prophets, “Behold, it is written before Me: I will not keep silence, but will repay— Even repay into their bosom— And let not the sin of his mother be blotted out. Your iniquities and the iniquities of your fathers together,” Says the Lord, Isaiah 65:6-7
Many of us today are familiar with the focus on preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV. We know that pregnant women who are diagnosed with HIV are given HIV medicines during pregnancy and childbirth to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the disease. In some cases, a pregnant woman with HIV may have a planned cesarean delivery in an effort to prevent, or at least reduce the possibility of mother-to-child transmission of HIV during delivery.
We need to be careful to prevent parent-to-child transmission of sickness and diseases that may result from the sins of our family line. David understood this very well. In Psalm 51:5 he says “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.” But then later in verse 10, he starts to pray saying, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
Where we have our own children, our efforts should be focused on giving them a new legacy, a new lineage, a different kind of birth to counter the effects of parent-to-child transmission. This was the case for Timothy, as Paul recognised and noted in the letter, 2 Timothy 1:5, “I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also.”
Think on these things:
- Look at your family tree, see what things were passed on, physical, attitudinal, medical, etc
- Have you detected any things that have been passed on that should be dealt with?
- Are there things that you wouldn’t want to be passed on to the generations after you?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that we would be able to identify those things in our family line that need to be stopped, especially sickness, and ask God to show us the source that we might continue to pray against them.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex
