Questions & Answers with Pastor Osman

Adult Sunday School Q&A and the Purpose of the Session

Well, good morning, everyone. It's adult Sunday school class time. So if you're in the foyer and you're wishing to join us, please make your way into the sanctuary now. And if you're already in here, make your way to a seat and we'll get started.

All right. As advertised last week, Simon finished up his series on walking in the spirit. And so I have a Sunday here that I'm going to be doing a Q &A. That's what we're doing today is an adult Sunday school question and answer.

It's been possibly years since we've done one of these. So I'm glad to do it. And next Sunday, we're going to have a Q &A as well. You won't be asking the questions. I will be. And we're going to be asking questions.

I'm going to be asking questions of Joel Baker as he is here with us next Sunday and the following Sunday as well. So let's begin with the word of prayer and then we'll take some questions from the floor.

Let's bow our heads. Our father, we devote and commit our time here this morning to you. It is our joy and delight to gather together as your people and to worship, to give our minds, our hearts, our attention and the meditation of our hearts to to your word, to your truth, to doctrine, to walking in holiness.

It is our prayer that during our time here that you would guide us by your spirit, both in the asking of the questions as well as in the answers that are given. We pray that our time here would be profitable to the end of conforming us to the image of Christ and not just informing our minds, but also conforming our hearts to Christ likeness.

So we ask your blessing upon this time and for that purpose that you would be honored here through the thoughts and intentions of your people. And we pray that our time spent here would be profitable eternally as you use it for our sake and for the sake of your kingdom.

So we commit this to you in Christ's name. Amen. All right. It is question and answer. So here are the parameters. The goal of this is not to stump me. That's relatively easy to do. So instead, the goal of this is to answer questions that you would have about doctrine, theology, ministry, Christian living, Christian life, anything like that.

Even some personal questions are not unwelcome. So I will open it up to the floor and take questions. And if nobody here is willing to ask a question, then we'll take them from online. Yes. Okay. The question is, did the prophecy concerning Damascus in Isaiah 17, did that happen in Sennacherib's time?

Or is there something there yet future? And I would have to read the entire chapter here to get the context of it. First five verses. All right, let's let's read it. The oracle concerning Damascus. Behold, Damascus is about to be removed from being a city and will become a fallen ruin.

The cities of Aurore are forsaken. They will be for flocks to lie down in, and there will be no one to frighten them. The fortified city will disappear from Ephraim and sovereignty from Damascus. And the remnant of Aram.

They will be like the glory of the sons of Israel, declares the Lord of hosts. Now, in that day, the glory of Jacob will fade and the fatness of his flesh will become lean. It will be even like the reaper gathering the standing grain as his arms harvest the ears, or it will be like one gleaning ears of grain in the valley of Rephaim.

It was the first five verses. I hope I got that right. I don't have my my cheaters on. So I. It's kind of one of these things here with reading the small print. So the answer to that question is I'd have to look at the details of this passage and with Damascus, there is, I think, apparently a and with with I'm not going to say all prophecy, but with much Old Testament prophecy, there is both a near and a far fulfillment.

So you could have details of this Damascus taking place in Sennacherib's day, where sovereignty is removed from them, where invaders do come in and destroy the city for a period of time. Damascus could be rebuilt.

There could be a modern city named Damascus. And yet the future fulfillment of all of that would be would await the final judgment upon all the nations that Daniel speaks of and that the other prophets speak of.

Yeah, I would be willing to I would be willing to to say the question is, is this just a future thing or is it a thing in that day as well? My my my guesstimate, my educated guesstimate would be that there are issues of this prophecy fulfilled concerning some Sennacherib and Damascus.

There was a judgment upon the Assyrian nation and Damascus, obviously, in Sennacherib's day, when the kingdom was taken away from Sennacherib and given to his sons, killed him and given to the next heir to the throne.

So there's judgments that took place concerning Damascus that fulfilled Isaiah chapter 17. Now, whether every prophecy in this chapter was fulfilled completely. And finally, that's something I'd have to look at in more detail because there is a near fulfillment to prophecy as well as a distant fulfillment to prophecy.

Hope that helps. OK, another one. Yeah, so Lanny's question has to do with Zipporah being upset with Moses about the issue of circumcision and casting the bloody foreskins at his feet. Thank you, Lanny.

I appreciate it's great. Do you know what you remember what chapter that is? Is that Exodus or Leviticus? That's Exodus. It's after chapter 20, because that's the Ten Commandments. No, no, that's not right.

Answer another one. All right. You try and find that. Exodus four. Exodus 4, 25, verse 21. The Lord said to Moses, when you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders which I put in your power, but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.

Then when then you shall say to Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord, Israel is my son, my firstborn. So I said to you, let my son go that he may serve me. But you have refused to let him go. Behold, I will kill your son, your firstborn.

Now came about at the lodging place on the way that the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and threw it at Moses feet. And she said, You are indeed a bridegroom of blood to me.

So he lost my place. So, oh, so he let him alone at that time. She said, You are a bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision. All right. So your question is concerning what part of that verse? I don't want to have to answer more than you're asking.

OK, I'll answer. I'll try and answer everything that I think might be a question with this passage. So it seems as if Moses himself has been disobedient to the command to circumcise his son. And there is we don't know all that is going on behind the scenes here.

But I think that what we can read between the lines is that Moses himself had failed to circumcise his son, according to the Abrahamic covenant and the sign that God gave to Abraham and to his descendants.

This caused God to confront Moses with that sin and seek if Moses were to be impenitent to put him to death. And it is Zipporah who takes matters into her own hands, circumcises her son and is upset with Moses, casts the foreskin at his feet and almost curses him, saying, You are a bridegroom of blood to me.

So it seems as if Zipporah herself was in some way resentful of the ordinance of circumcision and and the whole circumcision issue. That is how I've understood it. Am I would I be wrong there? It seems as if Zipporah herself is is upset that this has to be a thing.

And if that's the case, then we can assume I think that's the case, that Zipporah was not of Jewish descent and it could be the case then that maybe the reason that Moses was not circumcising his son had something to do with the influence of Zipporah in that decision.

And finally, God had told Moses, You need to do this. This is what Moses knew what the ordinance was. And and he did not fulfill that. And so God, in opposition to Moses, seeks to put him to death. And that is not because God was trying to kill Moses, but failed to.

It is that this stern opposition of the Lord to Moses for that act of disobedience would have resulted in Moses' death. And Zipporah ended up stepping in, circumcising her son and thus fulfilling the ordinance and also shielding Moses from that act.

It's it's interesting that Moses himself is not the one who does the circumcision. And other than the details that are there, I don't know what else to make of that. Right. She she did it. Yep. Fulfilling his role.

For whatever reason, Moses did not do that. And Zipporah did. It ended up saving Moses life, her act of doing that. Now, that's a tough one. Good. Those two tough ones right off the oh, good, Paul, you had a tough one.

Good observation. And I'll repeat that for the recording. God allowed this incident to happen for the purpose of reminding Moses and everybody else involved that the Abrahamic Covenant is still in force at this point.

And in fact, God is in the Exodus itself. The Lord is going to bring Israel out of Egypt to give them that land to begin that fulfilling that Abrahamic Covenant, some of the terms of an Abrahamic Covenant.

Yeah, good observation. OK, so the question is in James five, when it says to call the elders, those who are sick, call the elders and anoint them with anoint the sick person with oil. What is the oil and does our church do that?

So this is not a passage. This is a passage you dealt with in your series, right, David? I did. I was not here for that Sunday school lesson. And somebody said I should listen to it. So I'm going to tell you what I think my I've never studied through James and say that passage in depth.

But here's my take on James five, that the anointing of oil there has a there's a medicinal quality to it. And I think that what James is saying is those who are sick should call for the elders and there should be the application of whatever medicinal treatment there should be for this illness.

And if that does not solve this issue, then the elders should pray and that that praying of the elders for healing should be accompanied by a confession of sin and repentance, if that is necessary, because perhaps the person who is sick in that situation is sick because of some personal sin.

So that's my take on it. Was that where you came to as well? Basically. OK, so does our church do that? The answer to that is, yes, we do do that and we have done that. So we have prayed for. There have been times when, as elders, we've met in my office after service and prayed for some of the congregation who has cancer, who has a diagnosis, who has an illness or a sickness, and they've requested that.

And we've met and prayed for them as elders. We've done that as often as we've been asked to do that. There was an incident, an example of this back some years ago. How many years ago, at least 12, probably 12, 15 years ago, we had a young lady in our congregation.

She was living with her parents. She was a teenager, actually, at the time. And she came down with some illness and it plagued her for several weeks. She ended up going into the hospital. She was in the hospital for, I'm going to say, probably two weeks.

And the doctors were baffled at what was going on. They didn't understand what was causing these symptoms. And it seemed the symptoms, you know, went from almost ready to release her to and she could go home to.

And we need to keep her here and watch her. And nobody knew what was going on. So the parents called us and said, will you come pray for her? And we did. So all the elders went down. We stood around her hospital bed.

And this was probably a memory service somewhere around like 10, 10 days, two weeks into her hospitalization. We stood around the bed and and we said, first, look, is there any sin that you have committed that you can think of that might have brought this affliction upon you?

And and no, she hadn't. So we kind of quizzed her about various areas of sin and types of sin. And she said, no, nothing had nothing that she was aware of. And we had no reason to believe that she was living in some covert sin, some undercover thing that she was keeping from everybody.

She was a godly young lady, still is. And so we said, well, we'll pray for you. So we prayed around the bed and had a great time of fellowship and worship with the family. And then we left and she was released the next day.

And those symptoms were were gone. Sometimes the Lord does that. So, I mean, I'm a cessationist, right? So I do people who say I don't believe that God heals people. That's not true. I do believe that God heals people.

I do believe that God heals people all the time. And sometimes it's an answer to the prayers of his people. So we have done that. Yes, the oil, I don't think I don't think that there's anything magical or mystical in the application of a certain kind of oil.

I think that the oil in the first century culture was used for medicinal purposes. It was a medicinal herb. Sometimes the oil was was the application to a wound. They would put oil with various herbs and elements in it for healing purposes as ointments, et cetera.

And so I believe that what James is saying is there you have applied with the application of the oil, that is the pursuit of medical treatment. And that does not solve it. It is appropriate to call in the elders.

So if somebody came to us and said, look, I have this ailment and I could go to the doctor and have this ailment fixed or cured part, we would say we would pray for you, but we would also counsel them.

You need to apply the medical technology and the medical the medical ability that we have in this age to this issue. There's nothing wrong with pursuing the gifts that God has given to doctors or to pursuing the application of medical technology to an ailment or an illness.

I think that that is one of the ways that God, by his good grace, has provided for us to be healed in our age. Yeah, the word anoint does kind of communicate the idea of of having some sort of a of an anointing ceremony.

But if it just means to apply the oil, apply the medical remedy or apply the oil to that salve or to that issue as part of that prayer process. And I think that to put it in one sentence, I think James's point is if you are sick and it is not a result of a specific sin that you're being chastened by or for and and that then do two things, pursue proper medical treatment for the issue and pursue the prayer of your elders of your church.

Those are two things that we should pursue. And I don't think that they have to fight against each other. You don't pursue them in exclusion to one another, but we pursue them together. There's nothing wrong with taking a little wine for your stomach's sake.

It's completely appropriate. I'm not condoning drunkenness. You get what I'm saying? The application of the tech, of the ability to the application of the the thing that would solve the issue, do it. Don't think that it's unspiritual for you to seek the advice or counsel or treatment of a physician or a medical professional.

Ministry Changes, Particular Redemption, and Biblical Eldership

Over my 20 years of ministry, where has my mind been changed? And so it's 30 years of ministry, almost 30. So the first 10 don't count. Yeah, the first 10 were actually where much of the changes happened, actually.

OK, so over my years of ministry, where has Scripture changed my mind on some issues? I'll give you a couple of them just off the top of my head. When I first started pastoring Kootenai Community Church, I was influenced by a book you may have heard of it, the Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren.

So I gave that book out to all of our leadership and we went through that and we talked about how to become a more seeker friendly church. And I was doing that with our leadership and sort of pursuing the idea of doing that as a church.

While at the same time, reading books by John MacArthur and other solid guys and listening to good sermons and studying Scripture. And it was about probably two, three years into that process before I started to realize these two things, these these can't go together.

These don't go together. And so that changed my mind, changed on that. When I first started pastoring, I would have rejected the idea of particular redemption, that Christ on the cross paid the price for his the sins of his people.

I would have argued for a universal atonement, saying that Christ paid the price that purchased the salvation potentially of all people who have ever lived, that every sin ever committed was laid upon Christ rather than just the sins of his people.

Going through the book of Ephesians chapter one changed my mind on that. Actually, going through the book of Ephesians one through five changed my mind on that. When I started Ephesians chapter one, I started I kind of got opened up to the idea of, OK, what does the word what does it mean that in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins?

What is redemption? So I just did a study of redemption. Redemption means that somebody is actually purchased from the marketplace of sin. So then I had to ask the question, if if if Christ has purchased all men from the marketplace of sin, all men without exception, then why are not all men delivered from sin?

Why do some of them perish if their sins have been finally paid for? So as part of that process, I was kind of struggling through that issue, trying to think it through. I would have argued for a universal atonement.

And then I was kind of confronted with that study. I don't know how to put all of this together. And then I actually had a chance to sit down and have a conversation with Dave Hunt. I don't know if you know who Dave Hunt is, a famous anti-Calvinist.

So I had sat down in a conversation with Dave Hunt, and he said, hey, a friend of mine tells me that you're kind of leaning this direction. You need to stay away from that. That's bad doctrine. That's bad theology.

And he was trying to push me a different direction. And it was to no avail. By the time I got to Ephesians chapter five, where Paul makes the argument that men are to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Who is the her? It's the church. Christ gave himself up for her, the church. He purchased his church with his own blood. If he purchased all men with his own blood, then there is no distinction between the church and all who perish.

In which case, then, Christ did not purchase all men who perish. If he had, all men would be saved. Otherwise, Christ has failed to do what the father sent him to do in purchasing his people. So that was another example of something that was my mind was changed.

Oh, thank you. My wife can shine me into all the ways that my mind has been changed over the years. Thank you. Yes. Biblical eldership. When I first started pastor in Kootenai Community Church, I thought that this had a the church had a biblical church structure of a rotating eldership and a pastor who was not an elder and people nominated by the congregation.

The congregation have the final say in all of that. And it was actually put together by the pastor. It was two pastors before me, and he was on the elder board when I kind of came to the conclusion that this is I don't think that what we're doing here is right.

And sort of with great fear and trepidation, I went to an elders meeting that had the previous pastor on the elder board, as well as his father. And this is John Kinney and Dave Kinney. They were both on the elder board.

And I said, hey, I've read this book. I think what we're doing here is not quite right. I mean, it's close, but it's not quite biblical. I want to give this book to you guys. You guys read through this.

And the book was Biblical Eldership by Alexander Strutt. And so I said, read this book and let's get back together and think it over. I got to teach on eldership in a few months. And I kind of want to get your guys's take on this.

And you read it over in the next month. We came right back in and I thought, no, this could be this could be just. Horrible, horrible conflict. And Dave, the one who was instrumental with a group of others, the two pastors, two previous to me at that elders meeting, he said, I think you're absolutely right.

What we're doing is wrong and we need to change it, which was just fantastic. And then we worked together. The two previous pastor, Dave and John and myself, we worked together to basically change to a biblical form of biblical eldership.

And the Lord has blessed it. And it was by God's grace that both those men were very gracious, very gracious in how they approached it. So that was another issue that got changed. Either is there another?

And then I'll probably say that. I don't know if my mind was changed so much as my my heart and my mind were brought to a better, a more clear understanding of exactly what heaven is by reading Randy Alcorn's book Heaven.

I think if I were to put on a list of the top ten most influential worldview, altering mind, altering books that I've ever read, heaven would be on the on that list in the top five. The greatness of the kingdom would be on that list in the top five as well.

Those two books probably did more not to change my mind so much as to just take me from a very foggy understanding of certain realities to a very clear understanding of certain realities. Yeah, good question, Thomas.

The Fate of Unreached Peoples, Infants, and the Doctrine of Election

Oh, it's a very good question. You shouldn't be embarrassed to ask that. That's a very good question. Yeah. So the question is, scripture says that if people have not heard of of the message of the gospel and have not repented and trusted in Yahweh, his provision of salvation.

So in the Old Testament, that would have been trusting in Yahweh's word and and coming to an understanding of who he is and believing him. And in the New Testament era, it's in Christ that faith is focused in the person of Christ, the person who has not done that perishes.

And so what about languages that have been lost? Sorry. And then scripture also says that. We will gather around the throne, every tongue, every tribe, every kindred, every language will be represented there.

So what about the languages that have been lost before the gospel came to them? And what about tribes and people, tribes that have perished and have never heard the message? How will they be represented in heaven?

Very good question. And. Sorry, I do have an answer. I'm trying to figure out how far back into the explanation I want to go. What do you think happens to the babies that die in human sacrifice, abortion and miscarriage?

Where do you think they go? I think they go to heaven. That's my conviction. No, I think they go to heaven. And if they go to heaven, then you have babies sacrificed, died, stillborn, aborted, etc. from every tribe.

And tongue on the face of the planet that will be represented in heaven. So what's that? Why do I believe that babies go to heaven? OK, so I give sorry, I'll give you two arguments why I believe that babies who die go to heaven.

Number one, because they have not committed any sin that is worthy of eternal damnation. So they either go to heaven or they go to hell. So a baby who dies in the womb wakes up in eternal conscious torment under the fires of hell.

For what reason? What justice is served for that baby? That baby is imputed the guilt of Adam's sin. But babies are not punished for the guilt of Adam's sin. Adam bears the punishment for his own sin.

So Ezekiel 18 lays this out, that the children are not punished for the sins of their parents or parents for the sins of their children. Everybody is punished for the sins that they have committed in the flesh.

So at the end, in the book of Revelation, when all the books were opened and people are judged according to the deeds that they have done in the book, their books, their misdeeds, their crimes against God are recorded.

What sins has a baby in the womb committed? The answer to that is nothing. Is it a fallen creature? It is. But it has done nothing to warrant eternal conscious torment because that baby has never committed any crime against God.

It's great, great, great grandfather Adam has. But we are not punished for Adam's sin. We are punished for the sins that we commit. It is unjust for God to punish Adam for his sin and then punish every baby who has ever been miscarried or died for the sin of Adam.

That is unjust. Second, I would say, then the question might be asked, what then merits a baby standing in the presence of God if it's imputed the guilt of Adam's sin? How can it stand in the presence of God?

Well, how do you and I stand in the presence of God? We have been imputed the guilt of Adam's sin as well, right? But we are imputed what else? We're imputed the righteousness of Christ. So. I would suggest that the righteousness of Christ is necessary to be credited to the account of the baby so that the baby stands in the presence of God, not just forgiven, but also righteous.

So it is imputation that saves every person who has ever lived. Abraham believed God and it was credited or imputed to him as righteousness. Imputation is what causes it is what brings salvation to every person who has ever lived.

So the baby, I believe, is imputed the righteousness of Christ, not on the basis of faith, but on the basis of God's grace. Since it's his righteousness, he can impute it on whatever terms he wants, he chooses to impute it to us.

It is imputed on the basis of faith. You need to see your sin, understand that you're a sinner, repent of that sin and believe upon the sun. And in that act of faith, we are imputed the righteousness of Christ and our sins are imputed or credited to him.

The baby cannot exercise faith. The baby cannot even understand what faith is or who God is or what it is or what sin is or none of that. So how does a baby stand? A baby is innocent in terms of its own sin.

So I believe that because it is innocent in the terms of its own sin, it cannot qualify for eternal judgment. And instead, the righteousness of Christ is credited to the account of that baby so that it is able to stand in the presence of God.

It's imputed righteousness. Wow, now the hands start going up. Here we go. OK, there's seven. What's that? Yeah, that's a good one. There's also, if you want a bunch of arguments for this from the text of scripture there, there's a blog.

I'm hoping that this blog is still up. Maybe somebody can check it real quick and let me know. But it's Cripplegate blog. I think Cripplegate is still up. There are two articles at Cripplegate, and these are good solid guys that write for Cripplegate.

One of them is called I think it's something like 25 arguments from the Old Testament that babies go to heaven. And the second part of that is 25 arguments from the New Testament that babies go to heaven.

One of the arguments from the Old Testament that stands out, and there are a lot of them, like, for instance, Job, when Job says it would have been better for me never to have been born. And to have endured this, what if Job had never been born, if he had died as a miscarriage in his mother's womb, like he said, Oh, you know, curse the day that my mother brought me forth.

Oh, that I had died and never seen the light of day died in my mother's womb. Would it have been better for Job to have died in his mother's womb and then gone to eternal conscious torment and never known the goodness and grace of God?

Or would it be better for Job to have been born to come to know Yahweh, be a worshiper of Yahweh, go through what he did and then spend eternity with Yahweh in glory? Obviously, it would have been better for Job to have in that scenario would have been better for Job to have lived his life and gone to heaven than to have been died in the womb and gone to hell.

The only way that Job's statement makes any sense is if in dying in the womb, he would have went straight to eternal glory and not to eternal conscious torment. Another example is the children in the Old Testament.

There are passages, I think it's in Ezekiel or Jeremiah, one of those places in the blog post to Cripplegate will will give you this passage. There's a passage in the prophets, I think it's Jeremiah, where God calls the children who are sacrificed to Moloch, my innocent ones.

He refers to them as innocent and he condemns the pagan nations for sacrificing their children to idols. And he calls those children who were sacrificed, my innocent ones. And he pronounces judgment upon them for what they were doing to his innocent ones.

So why if they belong to God and they were his and they were innocent? I fail to see how it is that they would go to hell. So there are there are a bunch of arguments like that in those two posts. So I would commend those to you.

Dave, I think I don't call it an age of accountability, I would say that it is an age of understanding. And this is going to be different, I think, with every kid. At some point for all of us, there comes a point where we understand the concept of of sin and what it is and our guilt before a holy God.

And I don't have to sort that out. I don't think any of us here have to sort that out. I don't put a number on that. It's 10, it's 12, it's 15. I think that different children will reach that age of understanding at a different age.

So I know it is comforting to say, oh, look, I don't have to worry about my children until they're, you know, 12 years old or whatever you put an arbitrary age at. I think that they're I think that what scripture says is that we are accountable to God for the knowledge that we reject.

Those who have received greater light receive greater condemnation. So let's apply that to a child. Is my two year old grandson rebellious when he hears the command of his parents and doesn't do? Yeah, he is expressing Adam's sinful nature.

He is expressing his sinfulness. He's expressing his rebellion. That is true. But is he morally accountable for an eternal punishment for that at two years old? I don't believe that that's the case. So he is expressing his fallenness.

Yes, but not every expression of fallenness is a guilt worthy act of rebellion against God and his truth. That is what holds us morally accountable for our sins. So what age is that? I would say as a parent, you communicate the gospel and share truth with your children at a young age, as early as you can.

You begin to you begin to just flood their mind and their heart with these biblical truths and evangelize your child from the first time that they can begin to understand these concepts. OK, what happens to infants who die?

The Old Testament answer. I'm assuming the part two of that was what happens to infants who die, the New Testament answer. You'll look it up. Now, you think that living in this age, we could get faster answers than this.

But all right.

So let me let me ask for any questions relating to this subject before we move on to another. OK, we still have a couple. OK, go ahead, Jake. You can solve it with infant baptism. No, I know. I know you're kidding.

I appreciate that. I appreciate the troll, though. OK. OK, good. So there's the principle that. OK, so there is the statement in Exodus chapter 20 where God says, I will visit the sins of the fathers and the children of the third of the fourth generation.

So I don't want to just sound smarmy and put this off on, you know, your responsibility to do this. But I have a whole chapter on that in the book, Truth or Territory. If you have that book, you can read about it there.

Basically, that is a that is a statement of comparison where the Lord is saying the sins of the children. I will visit the same punishment on the children as I do upon the parents if the children persist in the sins of their parents.

So that that's not a principle that says that a child can turn away from the sins of their parents, but God is still going to curse that generation with the sins of its forefathers. That is what Ezekiel 18 specifically addresses when when God says to the children of Israel, you say that the fathers eat the sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge.

In other words, my daddy did this, and now I have to feel the effects of it. The fathers eat the sour grapes. The children's teeth are set on edge at the sourness like vinegar. And and that was a proverb in their day saying we're being punished for the sins of our fathers.

And Ezekiel flips that all around and says, Nope, you're not being punished for the sins of your fathers. You're being punished for your own sins. It would be unjust. And this is what God says. Yahweh says it would be unjust for me to punish the children for the sins of their parents.

Everybody will bear the punishment for their own sins. And then Ezekiel 18 goes through this long explanation. He says, you know, a man, a man commits these sins. He does all of these iniquities. Will I not judge him?

Yeah, certainly will. But then he has a son who turns from all the sins of his father and doesn't follow after the sins of his father. Will I punish that son for the sins of his father? And Yahweh says, No, I will not punish that son for the sins of his father.

Everyone bears the responsibility for their own sin. And then he takes it to another step. And he says, Well, say that that man has a son who doesn't follow after the righteousness of his father, but does all of the iniquity that his grandfather did.