Job 21:19

19 God ['elowahh] layeth up [tsaphan] his iniquity ['aven] for his children [ben]: he rewardeth [shalam] him, and he shall know [yada`] it. KJV-Interlinear

19 'You say, 'God stores away a man's iniquity for his sons.' Let God repay him so that he may know it. NASB

Jobs friends have made further suggestions that Jobs children were punished, because of Jobs sins. But here Job rejects this concept that God reserves punishment from wicked people in order to punish their descendants.

Here the argument of Jobs friends runs into trouble. If, in their opinion, God demonstrates punishment for the wealthy wicked by punishing him in his current life, then his descendants should have no punishment left over to apply to them.

And if the future descendants are removed, then they are not around to be punished anyway. This implies that the wicked might have only one generation to follow him, if even that.

But in Exodus, we know that the generations of the wicked can continue to even the fourth generation before they are finally cut off from the world.

Ex. 20:5-6

5 You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, NASB

It is natural to suppose that children brought up without the teaching of God will walk in the sight of their own eyes, and according to the imaginations of their own hearts.

But each of those generations are condemned by their own thoughts and actions in life, not because of the sins of their ancestors.

When a family line is cut off, it is because of one of two things. Either they have been continually wicked for an extended number of generations, or because it was simply in Gods plan to remove them, for whatever reasons, that we could not know.

The same applies to nations. When an entire nation is corrupt for a series of generations, it faces removal from the world. This will eventually occur in the Tribulation. Which implies that in the latter part of the Church Age, the positive spiritual status of the world will be at an all time low. This does not mean fewer Christians, only fewer spiritually positive people.

Since none of us can know the soul of a single individual, then we certainly cannot know the status of the collective souls of a nation.

But Job suggests that God does not ration out punishment. God is not arbitrary. God does not take discipline or punishment on the children for the crimes of the parent, or visa-versa.

Each person stands on his own two feet when dealing with God. And God weighs only the evidence which applies to you, against you, and not on someone else.

Likewise, in the spiritual life, we can apply this same principle. When you commit a sin, you are immediately out of fellowship. When you confess that sin, then it is forgiven and forgotten and you are immediately placed back into fellowship.

God deals with that sin once in confession, and then it is obliterated, forgotten, expunged forever. Your sins of the past are not remembered and then used against you when it is convenient for God to catch you off guard.

If however you live a pattern of life which is consistently out of fellowship, then you can expect some rough road ahead of you simply because of your chosen pattern of life.

But remember what we are studying. There is no established set of rules with which we can know who, what, when, where, or why God will deal with us. We each have a plan specifically designed for us. And that plan which God set out for us, takes into account our entire life, not just this week and next week, but this decade and next decade and the next and so forth.

You can be a jerk for decades and then finally get it together when you are sixty. But don' test God. You may die young and never see old age.

Job has rejected the arguments of his friends. Anyone can be naughty or nice and go to his grave in whatever spiritual state that his soul is in at the time. Anyone can be naughty or nice and experience suffering in life, and that suffering may or may not be related to your spiritual status.

Whether you have children or not, is irrelevant. Your sins are not transferred to them, and their sins are not transferred to you. Of course, you may be impacted by their lifestyle and the repercussions of their decisions, but that is a social relationship or association issue, not a sin issue. Society may hate you because your child robbed a bank, even though you did nothing.

Now is the time to post a prayer.