Episode 7: The Sins of the Father

Katie Laitkep: When you witness a lot of dysfunction in your life, it’s easy to lose hope. At one point in her life, Erin Davis assumed there was no such thing as a life-long marriage commitment.

Erin Davis: I married my husband because I loved him, and he asked, and I wanted to be with him. But on the day we got married, I just assumed it was short term. I thought, Well, I’ll ride this until he leaves me.

Katie: We will hear how Erin’s thinking changed here on The Deep Well. I’m Katie Laitkep.

Have you noticed how some sins get repeated in families from one generation to the next? You may be wondering if you’re doomed to repeat the sins of your parents. Erin’s about to take on those questions.

Erin: I live in the same little bitty town that I grew up in. And something funny happens in that context: people get frozen in time. I will always be a teenager to some of my neighbors, and some of my neighbors will always be teenagers to me. We are shocked to see each other with gray hair in the grocery store.

We don’t stay where we are. Time marches on, and God takes us with it.

Welcome back to The Deep Well. I’m calling this season, “Dysfunction.” We’re opening our Bibles together to see how God works in families, specifically dysfunctional families, as we are exploring the life of Joseph.

Joseph must have been frozen in time for his family. He was seventeen when his brothers threw him into a pit and then sold him to a band of traveling slave traders.

We left off at Genesis 37. Joseph’s brothers hated him because he was their father’s favorite son, and so they hatched a plot to kill him. Cooler heads prevailed, kind of. Instead of killing him, they sold him to slave traders who then trafficked him to Egypt.

When we pick up the story, Joseph is not a teenager anymore.

I’m going to skip Genesis 38 through most of Genesis 31. It’s not that those chapters in the Bible don’t matter. Of course they do. All Scripture is God-breathed, and all Scripture is useful. There are some fascinating twists and turns in those chapters, including the scandalous story of Judah and Tamar.

Judah, you might remember, was one of Joseph’s brothers. But let me bottom line those chapters for you: more sexual dysfunction.

Those chapters also describe Joseph in Potiphar’s house as a slave. Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce Joseph—more dysfunction, this time, more a reflection of Potiphar’s family than Joseph’s. But that incident got Joseph thrown into another pit. This time he was thrown into prison.

I don’t want to skip Genesis 39:21. You’ll see why. Let me read it to us.

But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison.

It doesn’t matter what pit you get thrown into. God’s steadfast love is not changed by our circumstances. And there’s that word “favor” again.

So no amount of dysfunction in Joseph’s family, no amount of dysfunction in the families that Joseph was around could change God’s deep affection for Joseph. That’s good news.

In chapter 40, Joseph was no longer the dreamer. (Remember, he had those two dreams that made his brothers hate him.) Instead, he becomes an interpreter of dreams to two of his fellow prisoners.

That brings us to chapter 41. After two whole years in prison for a crime Joseph did not commit, the Pharaoh, who was the highest ruler in all of Egypt, started having dreams himself, and those dreams disturbed him.

So once again Joseph was pulled from the pit, and he interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams to mean a famine was coming. That chapter ends with Joseph, the shepherd, turned slave, turned prisoner, turned dream interpreter, giving these instructions to Pharaoh. I’m reading Genesis 41:34–36.

“Let Pharaoh proceed to appoint overseers over the land and take one-fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt during the seven plentiful years. And let them gather all the food of these good years that are coming and store up grain under the authority of Pharaoh for food in the cities, and let them keep it. That food shall be a reserve for the land against the seven years of famine that are to occur in the land of Egypt so that the land may not perish through famine.”

Wow! Joseph’s done some growing up! And we can add something to the list of gifts that God has given Joseph. First we saw that God gave him prophetic dreams. And then we saw that God gave him the gift of interpreting those dreams.

That wasn’t something that Joseph earned by studying a lot of dream books. Here, Joseph has a profound gift of wisdom.

If you take the time to read Pharaoh’s dreams and then compare them with Joseph’s interpretation, I don’t know how he got there except for by the Spirit of God. That wisdom led the Pharaoh to appoint Joseph to a position of power.

Man, you can get a neck ache going back and forth in Joseph’s story:

He’s the favorite.
He’s in the pit.
He’s a slave.
He’s in Potiphar’s house.
He’s in prison.
Now he’s been appointed to a position of power.

Genesis 41:41 records that Pharaoh said, “I have set you over all the land of Egypt.”

Again, all means all, there.

As the chapter unfolds, Joseph turned thirty. He got married. He had some sons of his own. And he got busy preparing Egypt for the coming famine.

Just as Joseph predicted, Egypt experienced seven years of plenty. We read that in Genesis 41:53. Then the years of famine began.

There’s nothing quite like hard times to bring the family together. Right? Let’s watch the drama unfold. I’m going to read Genesis 41:56–57.

So, when the famine had spread over all the land, Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe in the land of Egypt. Moreover, all the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe in all the earth.

So, while Joseph was rising to power in Egypt, all was not well in Canaan—this land where Joseph’s family had settled because God promised it to them.

Just imagine what might have happened if Joseph’s brothers hadn’t sent him away to another land. Would he have used his gifts to protect them from the famine? We’ll never know.

Genesis 42:1–5 says, 

When Jacob learned that there was grain for sale in Egypt, [remember Jacob? Joseph’s dad] he said to his sons, “Why do you look at one another?” And he said, “Behold, I have heard that there is grain for sale in Egypt. Go down and buy grain for us there, that we may live and not die.”

When it comes to family life, hard times, it seems, are the norm, not the exception. Jacob didn’t just have to bury the wife he loved, he didn’t just have to grieve the death of the son he adored, now there was a famine, and he was worried that his whole family was going to die. He was desperate to save his family.

Let’s pick it up at verse 3: 

So ten [that’s interesting, pay attention there] of Joseph’s brothers went down to buy grain in Egypt. But Jacob did not send Benjamin, Joseph’s brother, with his brothers, for he feared that harm might happen to him. (vv. 3–4)

I have this conversation with the Lord a lot: “God, how come You gave in me these instincts so strong to protect my sons and also constantly call me, like Moses’ mom, to put that baby in the basket and trust You with him?”

I don’t know the answer, but let’s remember that Jacob thought Joseph was dead, and he was not going to risk sending his only other son with his beloved wife Rachel on this mission. Even though there was a risk that if they didn’t go, the whole family was going to die. So the other ten brothers went. Their mission was to buy grain to save their family from starvation, but Jacob was not going to let Benjamin out of his sight. Verse 5: 

Thus the sons of Israel came to buy, among the others who came, for the famine was in the land of Canaan.

Only God could orchestrate this. These brothers had sinned against their dad and against their brother, and, most importantly, they had sinned against God. But many years had passed. If we had jumped into this story at any point, it would have looked like those brothers got away with it. But the Bible shows us that nobody gets away with anything.

Joseph wasn’t a teenager anymore. He’d grown up. He’d gotten married. He had children of his own. But time doesn’t heal all wounds, especially those that are a by-product of sin. I’m sure each brother handled the guilt a little differently.

• Some of them probably just went into denial. They acted like it didn’t happen.
• Some of them might have developed a chronic case of anxiety because they were afraid they were going to be found out.
• Some of them probably got mad at the other brothers—and isn’t that a funny thing we do when we sin. We get mad at others sinners.
• Who knows how they all handled it. Maybe some of them thought of themselves as a victim—they weren’t the ones responsible. The other brothers made that decision.

But while they were all back home with a father who had been changed by his grief, God was taking care of the brother they cast aside. God was making a way for all of these things to be made right.

Here’s a question that I keep asking you. It’s a question that I hope you really wrestle to the ground as a result of this series: do you trust—I mean really trust—that God can, wants to, and is at work in the dysfunctional parts of your family?

I can see that He probably won’t do it on your schedule. And I admit that it probably won’t look like you think it should. I doubt Joseph’s brothers, in their wildest dreams, could imagine what was about to happen, but God was at work. God is at work.

Scripture tells us He is making all things new, even your family, and even mine. If there’s a part of your family where you’ve lost hope, Genesis 42 is for you. Genesis 42:6–11.

Now, Joseph was governor over the land. He was the one who sold to all the people of the land. And Joseph’s brothers came and bowed themselves before him with their faces to the ground. Joseph saw his brothers and recognized them, but he treated them like strangers and spoke roughly to them. “Where do you come from?” he said. They said, “From the land of Canaan to buy food.” And Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him. And Joseph remembered the dreams that he dreamed of them.

You remember the dreams, right? They’re back in Genesis 37. Joseph had two dreams. One involving sheaves of wheat. The second involving the sun, the moon and the stars. Both dreams seemed to indicate that the brothers were going to bow to Joseph, and that made them mad enough to murder him.

And he said to them, “You are spies. You have come to see the nakedness of the land.” They said to him, “No, my lord. Your servants have come to buy food. We are all sons of one man. We are honest men. Your servants have never been spies.”

Let’s just say it again, verse 11: “We are all sons of one man.” True. “We are honest men. Your servants have never been spies.” These brothers were playing the game: “Two Truths and a Lie.”

Two of the things they said were true. They were all Jacob’s sons, and they had never been spies. But were they honest men? They told the truth, but not the whole truth. Remember that they had let their father believe that Joseph had been shredded by wild animals; that despite their dad’s deep grief, they chose not to fess up to what they’d done.

Deception was a character flaw that these boys came by honestly. Remember Jacob’s name? It means, “He cheats.” Some scholars say his name means “Deceiver.” Jacob was known to do whatever it took to get what he wanted. We saw that in his relationship with his twin brother Esau. And so the old adage really is true: the apple very rarely falls very far from the tree.

So this little sentence where lying, deceitful, jealous men lied about whether or not they were liars reminds me about something that the Bible tells us is true about our families. We can’t talk about family dysfunction without talking about this.

Let’s jump ahead to the book of Exodus, chapter 20. It’s just a little bit to the right in your Bible. Every text is part of a context. And the context here is The Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are and were the rules, or the guard rails, that God gave His children to live by. I’m going to read you part of those Ten Commandments, and hopefully you now are starting to pick up on family language.

Exodus 20, verse 4: 

You shall not make for yourself a carved image or 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 or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, [listen for this] visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. (vv. 4–6)

It’s important to me that here on The Deep Well I’m always true to the text. And so the text here is idol worship, which is a sin that God takes deadly serious. He’s saying, “Don’t do it. Do not worship idols, for I will pass the iniquity of the fathers on to the children, three or four generations, and the blessings for many generations after that.”

Let’s hear verse 5 just one more time: “Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generations of those who hate me.”

My first reaction is: that’s not fair! I’ll tell you the same thing I tell my sons: when it comes to sin, we don’t want what’s fair.

For us, for the members of our family, passages like Ezekiel 18:20 offer a counter perspective. That passage says: 

The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.

Which is it?

Well, it’s essential to know the character of God, which we can only learn through the Word of God. This idea of the consequences of sin being passed through the generations is not punitive. God’s not saying, “I’m going to punish your great-great-great grandchildren for the fact that you slept with someone who wasn’t your wife or your husband.”

He was showing us something that we really know is true: our sin does impact our family. It impacts their family, and it impacts their family, and it impacts their family.

Here’s a new Scrabble word for you: epigenetics.

Here’s the fancy definition—straight from Google: “The study of heritable changes in gene function that do not involve changes in DNA sequence.”

Do I sound fancy there? I was trying to.

Let me give you the not-so-fancy definition: “Epigenetics is the study of how dysfunction in our families can change our genetic makeup.” How the things we experience and do can be inherited.

Now, this is a developing science. Don’t try to spell it, but here’s what they think: they think that trauma and dysfunction can be passed through our genes (do you get this? This is the science) through the third or fourth generation. They don’t think it can be passed beyond that based on what they can understand.

Did you hear what I said? What I’m telling you is that science is telling us that sometimes our brokenness can somehow be stamped onto our genes and be passed on through the third or fourth generation. To which I think God might rightly say, “Yeah. I’ve been telling you that for a long time.”

So here in Exodus 20 He’s giving us The Ten Commandments. He’s telling us that the consequences of your sin do not stay in your generation. That’s important for us to know.

We’re having an interesting cultural conversation at the moment, aren’t we? And here it is: are people born with a bent toward certain things—certain things that we know the Bible defines as sin?

Well, we all know the commonsense answer to this:

• Angry parents often raise angry children.
• The abused very often become abusers.
• And children from divorced homes, like myself, well, we’re 50% more likely to marry another child of divorce. (I didn’t.) But we’re 35% more likely to get divorced ourselves, which is a high percentage when the divorce rate is already so high.
• Addicts often raise addicts.
• And as we see in the story of Joseph’s family, sometimes liars raise liars.

I’ve been thinking about the couple of times in my life when I needed to clean out the house of a family member who died. I remember looking around at all their stuff—stuff that they treasured. I’m thinking, This is junk! I don’t want any of it!

And all of us, to one degree or another, can look around at our families—sometimes the things they treasure—and go, “This is junk! I don’t want this stuff in my life!”

And yet, sometimes, doesn’t it feel inescapable?

So, do we look at Joseph’s family and say, “They couldn’t help it! Their dad was a liar. They were liars. They’re probably going to raise children who are liars.”

I hope not! Pay attention to the second half of that passage in Exodus, Exodus 20:6:

But showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Other family members’ sin will have an impact on us. That’s a reality. God made that clear. That’s good. That should make us take sin seriously. And our sin will have an impact on our family members.

I’m very cognizant of the fact that my four sons will probably all marry somebody just like me. So I’m trying to live before them as a woman that will be a good wife to be married to. It’s just how it works. Right?

Part of the reason these verses are in Scripture is not to shame us for our mistakes. It’s not to make us feel helpless, like our families can never experience freedom.

These verses are here, in part, to help us think generationally, beyond our little moment in time and space. We’re born navel-gazers, always looking at ourselves. And Scripture is always lifting our eyes.

“Think beyond what you want, woman. Think beyond your desires. Look ahead. Imagine what you’re planting for the future. Is it crops? Or is it weeds?”

What we see in Scripture is that God thinks generationally. You don’t have to have any skills in hermeneutics to be able to look in your Bible and go, “Man, God talks a lot about family. And He says “generation” a lot. And He always seems to be doing things that are generationally long. What’s that about?”

So it’s true: our sins have cast a profound shadow on our families that might linger even after we’re gone. But, that’s not the last word. God gets the last word when it comes to our families. When we come to Jesus and we surrender our lives to Him, He’s promised He will make us a new creation.

And so, every story about how the effects of sin are passed through the generations can be punctuated by this really good news: but God!

It’s true. There could be a legacy of dysfunction, but also, there could be a legacy of redemption.

It reminds me of Isaiah 45:2. That’s where God promised that He is able to make the crooked path straight. It’s His intention to bless us from generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation, up to a thousand generations if that’s how long it takes for Him to come back.

While we’re still alive, while there’s breath in our lungs, until the day Jesus comes back, it’s true. God’s grace lasts a thousand times longer than His wrath.

God used Joseph’s life to interrupt the pattern. May He use your life to bless your family for generation after generation after generation after generation. Maybe in this episode you’ve rightly thought of some relative, some people in your family whose sin has impacted the generations of your family. But I bet you can also think of some people, probably some beloved women in your family, whose faithfulness has impacted generation after generation after generation after generation.

Psalm 145:4 is a good mission statement for our families. It says this:

One generation shall commend your works to another and declare your mighty acts.

Why did God give us families? Well, this is part of the why. It’s His intention that as our DNA is passed, as our traditions are passed, as Grandma’s recipe for chocolate pie is passed. That what God has done in our lives, what we see in His Word who He is, will be passed from generation to generation to generation to generation.

It’s not too late, you know for God to interrupt the cycles of sin in your family and in mine.

The Bible tells us these stories, too:

Shepherds of sheep turn to shepherds of men.
Prostitutes turn to proclaimers of truth.
Fishermen who became fishers of men.

God interrupted the pattern. He’s done it in their families. Let’s ask Him to do it in ours. Let’s pray.

Jesus, where there are roots and patterns of sin in our lives, in our families, would You interrupt? And would You build generations of faithfulness, starting today? It’s in Your name I pray, amen.

Katie: When the generation that came before you especially struggles with a certain sin, that can be like a warning light saying, “Watch out for this sin.” But you’re not doomed to repeat the sins of your family thanks to the power of the Holy Spirit. Erin Davis has been showing us that balance.

If you appreciate Erin’s teaching, I hope you’ll check out her other series. Here on The Deep Well, she’s explored the topics of fasting and feasting. She’s followed a trail of whispers through the Bible. She’s also explored the concept of eclipses.

I hope you’ll check out all the seasons of The Deep Well by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com.

Erin Unscripted

It’s time for Erin Unscripted. Now, we do this every season of The Deep Well, but this time is a little different.

Erin: That’s right. I have the joy of teaching in front of a live audience—not just home in my little studio by myself. They had some great insight. They asked some really solid questions.

Katie: They really did.

All right, Erin. Let’s turn things over to them.

Woman #1: I was abused by my father, and it was discovered when I was six years old. Efforts were made to prevent it from ever happening again, which it has not. But when I went to camp and I would hear speakers say that abused become abusers, I felt hopeless. So what hope do victims of generational sin have to break that pattern?

Erin: It’s not apples to apples. It’s apples to oranges. But I felt the same way about divorce. So, my parents divorced in the nineties during the divorce boom, at the height of divorce. (It’s gone down since then.) I started wearing that label: child of divorce. I heard the statistics all my life that children who experience divorce are way more likely to be divorced.

It’s interesting, because when you experience it, it’s the thing you most hate. You hate abuse. You’ve seen the consequences of it. I hate divorce. I’ve seen the consequences of it.

I felt like it becomes that self-fulfilling prophecy so much so that . . . I’ve said this to my husband. I married my husband because I loved him, and he asked, and I wanted to be with him. But on the day we got married, I just assumed it was short term. I thought, Well, I’ll ride this until he leaves me.

So I could relate. The only answer is going to feel small, but it isn’t, which is that God is a redeeming God. He’s not only a redeeming God, but He’s a God who turns things around.

In our flesh, apart from the redemptive work of Jesus and the Holy Spirit inside of us, we will all default to sin patterns. But we’re not women of our flesh. We walk in the Spirit. God has rescued us from the pit of hell. He has set His Spirit inside of us, and He’s given His Word to instruct us, and He’s given us the Church to walk alongside of us. Soit is hopeless apart from Jesus. It just is. 

But you’re not walking apart from Jesus, and I’m not walking apart from Jesus. You’re the hope. You’re not an abuser. I’m not divorced. So we are evidence that God can interrupt that pattern. But I think only God can.

Woman #2: I am a product of immorality, maybe adultery, rejected and abandoned at birth. I’ve struggled with addictions and adultery myself—spiritual adultery. I’m gathering from what you say that the Lord has the power to break the chains of bondage through me on down through the generations.

Erin: Absolutely. God is all about redemption. That’s His hope for each of us, His children. None of us want to see our children in sin and brokenness. God is a Father. That’s how the Bible describes Him. He absolutely would want to bring plenteous redemption, Scripture says, and He raises us up in different ways.

Redemptive work is rarely quick work. I’ve often wondered why He didn’t just give me a USB drive and plug it all in at once. But we do see a God, Scripture calls Him a long-suffering God. So we do see a God whose way of doing things doesn’t work like our way of doing things. It often seems like it will go on forever—we’re going to hear about that tomorrow. But “He who began a good work in you will carry it on into completion.” (Phil. 1:6)

Woman #3: Erin, you said in the teaching that we often see it’s true that angry parents raise angry children and lying parents raise lying children. But you’ve also said that we’re not destined to sin the same way our parents did, but we can see that maybe we would have an easier road toward that sin, or more of a temptation toward that sin.

Could you talk about how we can see our parents’ sin as a warning sign to us not to commit that same sin?

Erin: Man, isn’t it helpful to just see your parents as sinners, first of all? I mean, they are not perfect. They are conceived and born in sin just like you were. We often see ourselves by our intentions and other people by their actions. We’ll look at our own sin and go, “Well, I didn’t mean it that way.” But we look at the sins of our parents and other people and we can be more judgy.

But I do think that’s part of why these verses are in Scripture. God’s warning us, “Hey, the consequences don’t stop with the person that sinned. Absolutely be on guard.”

That’s another reason to have a culture of repentance and honesty and apologizing in our families.

I bet my oldest two, if you said, “Hey, guys, what’s your mom’s sin struggle?”

They’d be, like, “Here it is. This and this and this.”

Because they see it, and because I call it sin. I don’t say, “Well, nobody’s perfect,” or “I’m trying,” or “If you kids didn’t drive me so crazy . . .” That’s an interesting one. Moms will say, “I was never angry until I had these kids.” No, actually, you had murder in your heart, and your kids exposed it.

So, we call things what they really are. And then, absolutely, be students. Take what you’re seeing here, which is that sin has generational implications, and be a student of your family.Take the good, leave the bad, as you ask the Lord to do something new in your family line.

Katie: Erin, thanks for giving us hope today.

Erin: What an honor. I pray that a lot of generational sins are going to be broken in the lives of women who listen to this. We don’t have to repeat the mistakes we see in our families, and we can make new choices all by God’s grace.

Katie: That reminds me of the story of the Philippian jailer. Is that something you studied while you were preparing for this season?

Erin: Katie, I’m so glad you brought that up because it’s like a lot of my ideas—I thought of it afterwards.

So, if you’re familiar with the story, it’s a man who was keeping watch over the apostle Paul when he was in prison. He came to Christ through a series of supernatural events, but Scripture records that he and his entire family came to Christ.

Sometimes that’s what God does. One person surrenders his life to Jesus, or maybe a couple re-surrenders their lives to Jesus, and there’s always shock waves of that.

I think there’s so much hope in that. Jesus really can change your entire family, even as He’s just changing your heart and your life.

On the next episode, we’re going to continue to see what that process of change and repentance can look like.

Katie: That episode is available now at ReviveOurHearts.com or in your favorite podcast app. But before we go, we're going to leave you with one final thought.

Erin: We were at a break between episodes, and, Mary, you said something that was profound. I’ve heard a version of it, but you gave the hopeful side of it. I’ve heard it as “hurt people hurt people.” Tell us what you shared.

Mary: Well, the hope that I have heard is that “wounded people wound, but healed people heal.”

Erin: Amen. What hope.

Katie: The Deep Well is part of the Revive Our Hearts podcast family.

Erin: Calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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