FBC Morning Light – September 17, 2022

Good Saturday morning, people of faith.

The Meaning of the Sour Grapes Proverb in Ezekiel and Jeremiah

Have you ever read a Bible passage and really just wondered what it said? Well that happened to me in our passage this morning from Ezekiel chapter 18. It says in verse 2, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge.

Now, we had read that a few months ago in Jeremiah as well, and I'm going to reference that in just a moment, but I really struggled with what in the world does this actually.

Mean?

And so I looked up in a commentary from some people at Dallas Theological Seminary, and as I read it, I read what they were explaining, it started to make perfect sense. The idea of the fathers eating sour grapes, when you eat something sour, you think of like eating a pickle or something, and you take a bite of it and your eyes squint and your teeth kind of go, ah, and that's kind of your teeth being set on edge.

And so the idea there, though, is that this proverb was saying, hey, it's the fathers doing the wrong and the children having to pay the consequences for it. Now, it says in Jeremiah chapter 31, it says in verse 29, in those days they shall say no more, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge.

So this is, it was a saying amongst the people. This is not something the Lord had pronounced as true. This was a saying that everybody was kind of agreeing was true. The problems we're having in Jeremiah's time and Ezekiel's time, they were contemporaries of each other, they were saying, our problems that we're having with the Babylonians taking us to Babylon and then finally ransacking Jerusalem, that's all our father's problem.

But in Jeremiah, it continues to say in verse 30, but everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. And so, rather than being able to blame previous generations for your problems, the problems are our own.

The Decalogue and the Consequences of Sin Across Generations

Now, if you think back to the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments given in Exodus chapter 20, you might see where this slightly false idea came from. It says in verse five, talking about the carved images, and it says, you shall not bow down to them or 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.

So the idea of there being consequences for actions of your parents is certainly a true idea, and it's just that you are not free from your own guilt. So this may come as a shock to you, but my children did not have perfect parents.

And I didn't have perfect parents, and you didn't have perfect parents. Let me put it this way, there's only two people who ever had perfect parents, and let's just say they ate the fruit anyway. And so we all have imperfect parents, but yet at the same time, we all bear the burden of having our own iniquity.

It's not your parents' fault that you turned out the way that you did, although that they may have an influence on it.

Right?

Letting Go of Bitterness and Bearing Our Own Iniquity

And so if you think of your situation, if you are holding any form of bitterness or anger towards the way you were raised, you need to let that go. Understand that your upbringing made you who you are, yes, but the Lord wants to use that for His glory, not for your bitterness.

So let's keep these things in mind as we go throughout our Saturday today, and let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank You so much for Your Word. Thank You that while we are influenced and You do visit the iniquity on the third and fourth generation of those who hate You, yet we also are responsible for our own iniquity.

And yet we know that You laid that iniquity on Your Son, that He might pay the penalty for us, that we might walk with You. It's in Your Son's name, Jesus, we pray, amen. Have an excellent day, people of faith.