F4F | The Myth That Christians Can Have Generational Curses
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- 00:15
- Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ.
- 00:21
- This is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God. No shortage of crazy things being said out there.
- 00:29
- All right, so have you ever been taught? Now those of you who've never been in the charismatic movement, who've never sat under a prophet or a prophetess or somebody claiming to be an apostle today.
- 00:41
- You may have never heard of this doctrine, but the doctrine is the doctrine of generational curses.
- 00:48
- If you've ever been told that you might be suffering from a generational curse and that you need to find the right demon or the right words or whatever, speak the thing in order to break the generational curse.
- 01:03
- Yeah, go ahead and hit the subscribe button down below. Don't forget to like the video and ring the bell.
- 01:09
- Generational curses technically is something taught in Scripture. It's not broken by the way that the charismatic wacker doodles and people say that it's broken will actually address the only thing that breaks it and how anybody who is already a
- 01:28
- Christian, all generational curses are broken. So all of that being said, let's go ahead and whirl up the desktop and I'm going to grab my browser real quick here.
- 01:42
- Voila. And, and what I did here, you know, to kind of start things off is
- 01:48
- I went ahead and went into YouTube and just typed in a search for generational curses and look at all these breaking bloodline curses, seven signs of a family curse by Jonas Clark Ministries.
- 02:04
- And this is a major doctrine within the word of faith, the NAR and many charismatic circles.
- 02:11
- And the thing is, is that, like I said, it's kind of based on a half truth. There are absolute curses mentioned in Scripture and God explicitly says that he will curse those who do not believe in him down to the third and fourth generation.
- 02:27
- Absolutely says that. But the thing is, is that getting it right on that, well, actually
- 02:36
- I say they get it like half right. You'll see when we explain it biblically, they get half right there.
- 02:43
- But then what ends up happening is, is that the practices that they come up with for breaking generational curses, you know, you need somebody who's trained in deliverance and inner healing, and then they'll speak to your demons, tell me your name, demon, you know, and so, you know, you gotta get the name of the demon and all that kind of stuff.
- 03:01
- It's just nonsense. I want you to recognize something here. And that is, is that when we look at the doctrine of generational curses, it comes up in the
- 03:12
- Charismatic Word of Faith heresy as one of the reasons given for why somebody didn't get their breakthrough or their healing after they decreed and they declared and after they sowed their thousand dollar seed offering into Copeland or Hinn's or Hagen's ministries.
- 03:32
- All right? So generational curses became like, oh, well, you know, the reason why you still have cancer and you still only have five weeks to live is because you have a generational curse.
- 03:44
- And you see, we weren't aware of that. And so if we had broken it sooner, then, you know, we could have helped.
- 03:50
- That's how that works out. I hate to say it, but that's how it gets used. But what we're going to do here, so that you can at least see the foundation of where does this come from, we're going to go back in history to the late
- 04:04
- Derek Prince, who was a, let's just say a royalty within the charismatic movement.
- 04:11
- He's going to talk about generational curses here. And there's two videos.
- 04:17
- One is an hour long and the other is seven minutes long.
- 04:25
- What do you think if we just did the seven minute one? And I'll point out like highlights in the hour long one.
- 04:32
- But you'll get the idea without even having to do the long one to see how this doctrine works.
- 04:40
- And so I'm going back in time because this gives you the ability, by the way, to kind of do kind of a more historic, objective look at this concept.
- 04:49
- And then just ask yourself the question, does the Scripture teach that people who are baptized, penitent, believers in Jesus Christ presently, do they still need to go and ascertain what sins their grandfather or great grandfather or great grandmother did and then do something in order to break off the generational curse that was brought on by great grandma?
- 05:24
- The answer already, when I put it that way, is like, no, there's no biblical precedent for that at all.
- 05:30
- But it's even better than that when you consider the implications of what Galatians 3 teaches in this regard.
- 05:36
- But let's let Derek Prince spin this out just a little bit, shall we? Here we go. I have seven things, seven factors in people's lives, which when
- 05:47
- I discover, lead me to conclude that they're probably under a curse. Oh, no.
- 05:54
- And notice he's preaching to Christians in a church. Seven things that when
- 06:00
- I discover them, lead me to believe they probably are under a curse, a generational curse.
- 06:08
- Let's see what he says. Number one, mental and emotional breakdown. Oh, no.
- 06:14
- Do you suffer from any kind of a mental issue? Do you have depression, PTSD, any kind of social anxieties or things?
- 06:23
- Oh, no, you might have a generational curse.
- 06:32
- Which biblical text says that? And especially emotional breakdown.
- 06:38
- Now if it just happens once in one life, there could be other causes. Yeah. But if it is a thing that recurs frequently in a family, you can be sure that family is under a curse.
- 06:57
- Okay, I can be sure that they're under a curse if it happens repeatedly.
- 07:06
- Okay. Number two, repeated or chronic sicknesses, especially without clear medical diagnosis.
- 07:15
- Oh, no. Do you have chronic illnesses, acid reflux, you know, any kind of, you know, whatever the disorder is, it's an ongoing issue.
- 07:25
- Oh, you might have a generational curse.
- 07:30
- When you go to the doctor and he says it's one thing, you go back six months later, he says it's another. You have a pain and nobody can find out why you have a pain, but you have a pain.
- 07:41
- And especially a gang of these things run in families. Note the vagaries here.
- 07:47
- And I would note that, you know, I don't know what year he put this teaching out, but, you know, since then,
- 07:54
- I would say in the last 20 years, for sure, we've learned about how particular medical problems do seem to follow in a family, not because of generational curse, but because of what?
- 08:10
- Genetics. Genetics. DNA, you know. So if you have in your family a history of mental illness, you may be at greater risk for developing a mental illness later in life or earlier in life.
- 08:25
- How about heart disease or diabetes? These are things that, this isn't a generational curse in the truest sense.
- 08:32
- It's more like kind of a, you know, it's a genetic inheritance that you've received and it's all, well, medically and scientifically understood.
- 08:43
- I would say almost certainly that family is under a curse. Third, repeated miscarriages and related female problems.
- 08:55
- Okay. I gotta firmly push back on this. You're gonna note the vagaries of what he's talking about.
- 09:03
- And in listing the numbers here, you know, the different symptoms, he's pretty much gonna be describing everybody or at least somebody in somebody's family.
- 09:13
- And you have got to be very pastoral and careful when you are addressing the topic, and it's a sensitive topic, one that is rightfully one that needs to be handled delicately when a woman has a miscarriage or has multiple miscarriages.
- 09:36
- To somehow then say, well, if you've had two or three miscarriages, well, that means you're probably under a generational curse, it ends up putting a lot of guilt and shame on somebody who would believe this, because then the issue is, well, why didn't
- 09:56
- I figure this out before I decided I wanted to have children?
- 10:02
- And so now you've got all kinds of compounding guilt and shame on an already difficult and almost unbearable emotional experience.
- 10:13
- So I think this is criminal, what he's doing here. And Ruth and I have come to the place, if women come for that kind of prayer, which we pray for very frequently, once we hear the diagnosis, we simply treat it as a curse.
- 10:26
- We don't even do any investigating. And we have seen scores of people.
- 10:33
- This sounds like quackery to me. Dramatically changed. Number four, the breakdown of marriage and family alienation.
- 10:44
- And let me just say one thing that I can't take time to explain, witchcraft is homebreaker number one.
- 10:52
- No, I would say homebreaker number one is not witchcraft. Homebreaker number one is called adultery.
- 10:59
- Ever that power comes to work in a family, it will ultimately break up the family.
- 11:09
- Number five, continuing financial insufficiency, especially where the income appears sufficient.
- 11:19
- You know, there are lots of people who always have enough money, but it's never enough. You know that? You might be one of them. Well, you begin to check.
- 11:29
- I got a letter from a lady in the United States a couple of years ago. She said, I think my husband's family is under a curse.
- 11:37
- She'd heard my teaching. So I wrote back and said, tell me why you think your husband's family is under a curse.
- 11:43
- And this was the answer I got. She said, well, my husband's estate runs into hundreds of millions of dollars and our annual income is a million dollars and we never have enough money.
- 11:54
- I said, I'm... Yeah, you just need a good accountant there and a solid budget and maybe just a little bit of financial restraint.
- 12:03
- ...convinced. That's so characteristic, see. Mmm, curse, yes.
- 12:11
- Money just evaporates. If there's a curse over your life... So it's not my fault. It's, yeah, you know, the reason
- 12:19
- I don't have enough money, I'm just a victim here. It's because great -granddad was a train robber and rode with Jesse James.
- 12:27
- Mm -hmm. Nothing ever really works. And you can be highly educated and qualified to succeed, but you never quite break through to success.
- 12:39
- Number six, accident prone. And when I meet that,
- 12:45
- I really don't look any further. You see, that is a statistically diagnosable condition.
- 12:51
- If you are accident prone, an insurance company will put up your insurance premium. It's simply on that basis.
- 12:59
- And number seven, a history of suicides or unnatural deaths. And I hope
- 13:05
- I can say this without being offensive, but if you... No, you can't, because you've already been extremely offensive and utterly insensitive.
- 13:15
- And not only that, you're now trying to get people to believe in mythology. Again, I'm going to just ask the question here.
- 13:22
- Where in the scripture is there any example of a
- 13:28
- Christian who, after having heard the gospel, having been baptized, and is showing that they have true regenerative faith, and they're a disciple of Jesus Christ, post all of that, after all of that, ran into, well, issues related to generational curses that then had to be broken by one of the apostles or one of their disciples.
- 13:54
- No text like that exists. This is pure mythology, and this is manipulating people.
- 14:01
- And like I said, this is a doctrine that came up in the Word of Faith and charismatic movements as one of the explanations as to why people didn't get their miracle or their breakthrough.
- 14:11
- They look at a very conspicuous family that bears all the marks of a family curse.
- 14:17
- It's the Kennedy family in America. Now, we come to the punchline, the practical, how to pass from curse to blessing.
- 14:29
- Okay, now, let me just put it this way. Every prognosticator, everybody who traffics in this doctrine, they have their own unique spin on how one breaks generational curses.
- 14:47
- They do. And so I'm not really all that interested in Derek Prince's particular approach because it's going to be different than the next guy's.
- 14:56
- In fact, as you go through this, you'll see commonality in how you go about breaking generational curses.
- 15:03
- There's commonality, but there's no unified method for doing this.
- 15:09
- And the reason is simple, is that Scripture doesn't teach what they're teaching.
- 15:15
- Now, what I'm going to do here is I'm going to go back to the hour -long version of Derek Prince's teaching on generational curses because he will try to give the biblical basis for this understanding of generational curses.
- 15:33
- And I'll throw in an extra passage just for good measure. So I'm going to drop the play head, you know, partway through here where he's, you know, spinning out yarns and things like this so that we can see as he steers into trying to show how the
- 15:48
- Bible teaches this concept of generational curses and of curses in general.
- 15:53
- So here we go. So he describes generational curses as an invisible barrier.
- 16:24
- which deals exclusively with blessings and curses. How many of you know which it is? Deuteronomy chapter 28.
- 16:32
- All right. It's got 14 verses of blessings and 54 verses of curses.
- 16:39
- Yeah, you can tell the technology used in this video was during the days when Howard Cosell was still alive.
- 16:45
- Now, we can't go into that because of time, but I suggest if you're concerned that at your own convenience you study that chapter carefully.
- 16:54
- I've studied it many times and I'm going to offer you my summation.
- 17:01
- But please exercise your own judgment as to whether you think this is accurate or not.
- 17:07
- Here is my summation of the main blessings and the main curses.
- 17:15
- As a matter of fact, really they're exactly opposite to one another. What he said there is true.
- 17:21
- Regarding the blessings, they're the opposite of the curses. There are seven blessings. Number one, exaltation.
- 17:30
- It means being lifted up. You're no longer living under things. Number two, a word
- 17:37
- I had to coin, reproductiveness. I couldn't find one normal English word.
- 17:42
- But a person who's in the blessing of God is fruitful in every area of his life or her life.
- 17:51
- Positive fertility. Number three, health. Number four, prosperity or success.
- 18:01
- Number five, victory. Number six, Moses said you'll be the head and not the tail.
- 18:09
- And number seven, you'll be above and not beneath. Now, when
- 18:15
- I was studying that some years ago, I asked the Lord, what's the difference between the head and the tail? And I feel
- 18:20
- He gave me a simple answer. So he has direct communication with God. The head makes the decisions.
- 18:27
- The tail just gets dragged around. So that's a direct revelation, extra biblical, that God gave to Derek Prince.
- 18:35
- So which way are you living? Are you making the decisions? Are you in charge of the situation?
- 18:42
- Or are you simply being dragged around like a tail by circumstances and forces that you don't understand?
- 18:48
- It's the invisible barrier. It's the generational curse. You can't control. If you're a tail, it's very possible you're under a curse.
- 18:58
- Dun, dun, dun. Oh, no. I can't. I'm under a curse.
- 19:05
- Ahem. Notice the fear and anxiety that this will create in the person who just on its face believes that this is absolutely a biblical doctrine.
- 19:15
- I mean, he just referenced what? Deuteronomy 28. That's in the Bible. Oh, I could be under a curse.
- 19:24
- Now, I'm not saying every one of those blessings is due to this cause.
- 19:29
- But that's for you to discern. There's only one expert in this field and his name is not
- 19:35
- Derek Prince. It's the Holy Spirit. He's the one who has to show you personally.
- 19:42
- I can preach the general truth, but you have to get the specific application from the
- 19:48
- Holy Spirit. Then let's look at the curses and they're just exactly the opposite. Humiliation, failure to reproduce or barrenness.
- 19:59
- And I would say basically barrenness is nearly always in some way associated with a curse.
- 20:10
- I want you to just think about the damage that this man is doing by saying that.
- 20:16
- There are women who deal with fertility issues, couples who have tried to have children who faithfully attend church, gladly support financially the congregation that they're a part of, and God in His sovereignty has not chosen or allowed them to have children.
- 20:39
- So now we hear from Derek Prince that, oh, well, this could be a generational curse.
- 20:46
- And so what I know for a fact is that there are plenty of people who experience infertility, couples that haven't had fertility issues, that this becomes a point of very, very bitter suffering for them.
- 21:02
- And in their anxiety and in their yearning to have children, they are susceptible to people who would manipulate them and use them because of just how emotionally distraught they are about this.
- 21:18
- They are willing to do many things, almost anything in some cases, to get past that and actually get to the point where they can have children.
- 21:29
- And so he's just come up with, well, it's a generational curse. I mean, after all, isn't barrenness described as a curse in Deuteronomy 28?
- 21:37
- Number three, sickness of every kind. And if you read Deuteronomy 28, I mean there is no sickness that is left out by the time you've come to that list.
- 21:47
- Number four, poverty or failure. Number five, defeat.
- 21:55
- And number six, you're the tail and not the head. And number seven, you're beneath, not above.
- 22:01
- You've probably heard about the two Christians you met. One of them said, Well, how are you doing, brother? And he replied,
- 22:07
- Well, under the circumstances I'm not doing badly. And the first Christian said, Well, what are you doing under the circumstances? You should be above and not beneath.
- 22:17
- Now, over the years, independently of this list, I made a little list of indications that, to me, alerted me that I was probably dealing with a curse.
- 22:29
- I only say probably. We're not sure. I mean, you can never be 100 % sure.
- 22:35
- I made this independently of Deuteronomy 28, but it's amazing, really, how close it is.
- 22:44
- See, that's proof that, oh, he's on the mark, man. All right, now we've already heard the seven because that was part of a standard stick that he gave.
- 22:59
- So what I'm going to do is I'm going to fast forward a little bit. And so here he's going to talk about sources of, what are the different sources for curses?
- 23:10
- And so he's taking a whole bunch of verses out of context. And here are sources for potential curses.
- 23:18
- But these are generational curses. This isn't even something that necessarily you've done, but maybe your grandfather, your father, your mother, your grandmother, your great -grandmother, all the way back, all the way down the line, could have done something like this.
- 23:33
- I want you to consider that as we listen to this next part. And there was a curse on each side of the scroll.
- 23:39
- One was on a curse on anyone who steals and the other was on anyone who commits perjury.
- 23:46
- In the vision this scroll would go into a person's house, take up lodging there, and the whole house would disintegrate.
- 23:53
- See, that's the nature of a curse. It doesn't just affect the particular area but it has a kind of corrosive effect all around it.
- 24:03
- And then in Malachi 3, I think we have to look at this. Malachi 3, verses 8 through 10.
- 24:13
- Will a man rob God? Oh yeah, so one of the curse... You might have a curse if you're not tithing.
- 24:22
- You've robbed me, but you say, in what way have we robbed you? In tithes and offerings?
- 24:28
- See, even if your parents... I mean, if they went to church and they didn't tithe, you could be under a generational curse.
- 24:34
- I think you kind of get the point. But the question then comes in, how are we to understand these things?
- 24:41
- Because Deuteronomy 28 explicitly teaches God curses those who do not obey, and listen to my words, the
- 24:52
- Mosaic Covenant. Who did God make the Mosaic Covenant with? Did he make it with you?
- 24:59
- Did he make it with me? No, he made it with the children of Israel. So we're not under the
- 25:06
- Mosaic Covenant. So when you come to Deuteronomy 28, Deuteronomy, second law, that's kind of how that works out.
- 25:15
- What Deuteronomy is, the book itself, is a walking back through and a summarizing, and in some ways adding more detail to, the
- 25:24
- Mosaic Covenant, which was being revealed in the earlier books of the Torah. So we get the beginnings of it in Exodus, so Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers.
- 25:37
- So Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, you're getting all kinds of bits and pieces and all of the big revealing of the details in the
- 25:45
- Mosaic Covenant. And then in the book of Deuteronomy, before Moses is going to die, he re -summarizes, he restates, this is what
- 25:55
- Deuteronomy is, what the Mosaic Covenant is, and the people of Israel are the ones who joined with God in this covenant, and it's a different covenant than the
- 26:08
- Abrahamic Covenant, you need to understand that, and it's even different than the New Covenant. Christ fulfilled the
- 26:15
- Mosaic Covenant to a T, and he absolutely kept every one of its commands perfectly, both actively and passively.
- 26:26
- Jesus is the only one who obeyed the Mosaic Covenant, period.
- 26:33
- That's just how this worked. Everybody else, they always fell short in one degree or another, and some spectacularly so.
- 26:42
- But here at the end, after all of the details are read out or listed out in the book of Deuteronomy, then you get to the blessings and curses portion of the
- 26:53
- Mosaic Covenant. And so, listen to how this works out. If you faithfully obey the voice of Yahweh your
- 27:01
- God, and what do we know from the history of Israel, did they faithfully obey the voice of Yahweh their
- 27:08
- God? No. Being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today,
- 27:16
- Yahweh your God will set you on high above all nations of the earth.
- 27:21
- So note that in the Mosaic Covenant, this is purely a covenant based upon works.
- 27:28
- You do this, God blesses you. You don't do it, God curses you with increasing magnitudes of punishment.
- 27:38
- That's how that works in this Mosaic Covenant. So, all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you if you obey, if, if you obey the voice of Yahweh your
- 27:50
- God, blessed shall you be in the city, blessed shall you be in the field, blessed shall you be, shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock, blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl, blessed shall be, shall you be when you come in and blessed shall you be when you go out.
- 28:12
- Yahweh will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way, flee before you seven ways.
- 28:22
- Yahweh will command the blessing on you and on your barns and in all that you undertake and he will bless you in the land that the
- 28:30
- Lord your God has given you. Yahweh will establish you as the people, as a people holy to himself as he has sworn to you if you keep the commandments of Yahweh your
- 28:44
- God and walk in his ways. If this is a covenant of works and all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of Yahweh and they shall be afraid of you and Yahweh will make you abound in prosperity in the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your livestock and the fruit of your ground within the land that Yahweh swore to your fathers to give you.
- 29:07
- Yahweh will open to you his good treasury, the heavens to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands and you shall lend to many nations but you shall not borrow.
- 29:21
- Yahweh will make you the head and not the tail. Who's the you there by the way? You is not a single person.
- 29:28
- The you is a plural you. It's the y 'all. The y 'all of the children of Israel.
- 29:35
- It's not you single, not you as an individual. Y 'all as a people. If you obey the commandments of Yahweh your
- 29:43
- God which I command you today being careful to do them and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today to the right hand or to the left to go after other gods to serve them but now here comes the big curse section.
- 29:58
- If you will not obey the voice of Yahweh your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today then all these curses shall come upon you and they will overtake you.
- 30:09
- Curse shall you be in the city. Curse shall you be in the field. Curse shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.
- 30:15
- Curse shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds, the young of your flock.
- 30:22
- Curse shall you be when you go when you come in and curse shall you be when you go out.
- 30:27
- Yahweh will send on you curses, confusions, and frustration and all that you undertake to do until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds because you have forsaken me.
- 30:39
- Yahweh will make the pestilence stick to you until it has consumed you off the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
- 30:47
- Yahweh will strike you with wasting disease and with fever and inflammation and fiery heat and with drought and with blight and with mildew.
- 30:55
- They shall pursue you until you perish and the heavens over you, over your head shall be bronze and the earth underneath you shall be iron.
- 31:04
- Yahweh will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed.
- 31:13
- Yahweh will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them and you shall be a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth and your dead shall be food for all birds of the air, for the beasts of the earth and there shall be no one to frighten them away.
- 31:33
- Yahweh will strike you with boils of Egypt and with tumors and scabs and itch of which you cannot be healed and Yahweh will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind and you shall grope at noonday as the blind gropes in the darkness and you shall not prosper in your ways and you shall be only oppressed and robbed continually and there shall be no one to help you.
- 31:56
- You shall betroth a wife but another man will ravish her. You shall build a house but you shall not dwell in it.
- 32:03
- You shall plant a vineyard but you shall not enjoy its fruits. You get the idea. And this goes on for quite a bit more here, listing out the curses of not obeying
- 32:15
- God's law, the Torah, the Mosaic Covenant.
- 32:21
- So you'll note here, if you obey, blessings, if you do not obey, curses.
- 32:29
- So let me ask you, if we were just to look at, you know, the moral law portion of the Mosaic Covenant, which has been brought into the
- 32:37
- New Covenant, by the way, the Ten Commandments, how you doing on your obedience?
- 32:44
- And don't sit there and go, well, I'm better today at my obedience than I was yesterday. James makes it clear that if you break one of God's commandments, you're guilty of breaking every single one of them.
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- Are you expecting to get God's favor by your obedience to the law?
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- Are we as Christians under the Mosaic Covenant? So you'll note here that this is all quite a heavy burden and that the children of Israel in their entire history, from the time they went into this covenant with God until God finally said enough is enough and scraped them out of Israel permanently, you know, at least for two millennia.
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- I mean, they never obeyed God's covenant, not perfectly as it requires.
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- So all that being said, how are we to understand this? Well, thankfully, in the New Testament, in Galatians, the
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- Apostle Paul is discussing the heresy of the
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- Judaizers and soundly defeating it and rebuking it and calling it for what it is, the heresy that it is, and he gives us the sound biblical understanding of our relationship as Christians to the
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- Mosaic Covenant. And I understand this in the sense that we're not talking about the moral law.
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- We're talking about all the other parts of the Mosaic Covenant. But you're going to note here there's something very important here, and that is that even the moral law portion of it,
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- Christ has done something for us so that we can be saved rather than condemned, so that we can be blessed rather than cursed.
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- So listen to what Paul says to the Judaizers who would say that in order to be saved, you have to follow the
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- Mosaic Covenant. You have to obey the Passover. You have to obey the Sabbath. You have to circumcise your boys and all that kind of stuff.
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- Here's what Paul says. So let me ask you this.
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- Did you receive the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, by works of the law or by hearing with faith?
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- How is a Christian saved again? By grace through faith, apart from works.
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- Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish, having begun by the
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- Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain?
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- Does He who supplies the Spirit to you and work miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?
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- Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted or credited to him as righteousness, know then it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.
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- That's an important distinction. It's the true sons of Abraham are not those who are genetically descended but from Abraham.
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- The true sons of Abraham are those who have faith. Abraham was the man of faith.
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- Those who believe have the same faith as Abraham. So know then it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.
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- And the scriptures foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying,
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- In you shall all nations be blessed. So then those who are of faith are blessed, along with Abraham, the man of faith.
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- So do you have faith in Christ? You sit there and go, Well, yeah, I believe and trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of my sins.
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- And I've even been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. Right! Well, Scripture just says you're what?
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- Blessed. You is already blessed. And, yeah, bad grammar on purpose.
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- Now watch this. Paul then goes on to say, All who rely on works of the law, and to rely on them is to rely on them for earning
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- God's favor or meriting God's grace. That's the idea. See, I absolutely believe that God's law, at least in the moral aspect of it, the
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- Ten Commandments, is binding on me in my conscience. I cannot have any other gods. I cannot take
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- God's name in vain. I cannot murder. I cannot steal. I cannot commit adultery.
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- I cannot covet. I cannot lie, you know, and bear false witness against my neighbor. These are all sins.
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- But the thing is, is that my standing before God is not based upon how obedient I am in keeping those commandments.
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- I strive to keep those commandments because I am saved, not because I am striving to be saved.
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- You see, if I were keeping the commandments in order to be saved, I would be relying on the works of the law in order to save me.
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- And Paul says, all who rely on works of the law, they are under a curse.
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- Ah, you see it now? Okay, so everybody who is a believer in Christ and trusts that they have been granted, given forgiveness of sins and salvation as a gift by grace through faith, they are what?
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- Blessed. They're blessed. Everybody who is relying on works of the law for their salvation, scripture says they are what?
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- Cursed. Well, how can this be? Well, watch where it goes. So all who rely on works of the law, they are under a curse.
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- For it is written, curse be everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law and do them.
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- Keep on doing them, right? And Paul then says this. Now it's evident. No one is justified.
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- Justified means to be declared righteous. No one is justified before God by the law.
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- For the righteous shall live by faith. And here he is quoting, what's the passage that he's quoting here?
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- Habakkuk, or yeah, Habakkuk chapter two. All right, so. Christ redeemed us from, okay, so let's see.
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- So it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law. The righteous shall live by faith.
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- And then you watch this. But the law is not of faith. Rather, the one who does them, does the commandments, shall live by them.
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- They will live by them if they keep them. But watch this. And this is the most important part. And you'll note that many people who teach on generational curses, they will mention this verse, but they don't keep it in context at all.
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- And so they don't see this as an already fulfilled thing. They see this as something that you have to then use in some kind of a prayer or a declaration or an incantation to break a curse that you're still under as a
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- Christian. But that's not how this verse works. So here's what it says.
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- Verse 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. Now, real quick question.
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- What is the curse of the law? Answer. See Deuteronomy 28.
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- That whole cursing section, every curse listed there. All right? That's the curse of the law, the condemnation of the law, the just consequences of not obeying the voice of God.
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- This text says, Christ redeemed us from what? From the curse of the law.
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- How? By becoming a curse for us. For it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.
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- Yeah, that's what it says in the Mosaic Covenant. Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. Christ himself by being hung on a tree.
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- That's the cross. That shows that he became a curse for us. So that what? So that we might be blessed, right?
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- And that's what it says. So that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit.
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- How? Through faith. So here's kind of the cash value of all of this.
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- All of the curses listed in Deuteronomy 28, every single one of them. And I'll throw in an extra verse here too because this one comes up sometimes in the teaching.
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- It's Exodus 34, verse 7. And I'll just read it out of context because most prognosticators and people who are out there trafficking in this doctrine bring this verse up out of context.
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- So it says that in Exodus 34, verse 7, it says that, God keeps steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but all who by me, he will know by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.
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- I would note then that where you see passages like this that talk about generational consequences of sin, it is always generational consequences of sin for those who hate, despise
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- God. Right? And when you are a Christian, when you are brought to faith in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, then you already have all the curses of the
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- Mosaic Covenant canceled and broken by what Christ did for you because he became a curse for us so that we might have blessing.
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- So if you are a Christian, you already have this blessing, period. All curses have been broken, period.
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- How? By promise through faith. Christ has done this all for you.
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- In other words, there is nobody who is a Christian today who needs to sit there and go, Oh no,
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- I've run up against the invisible barrier of the generational curse. I need to go and do research in the newspaper to find out what granddad did in order that I can finally speak and declare and command and control and finally, once and for all, break and obliterate that curse so that I can get past this invisible barrier.
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- That's mythology. Everybody who is a
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- Christian has had the curse of the law they've been redeemed from it because Christ became a curse for us so that we would be blessed.
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- And you'll note then that in this section in Galatians 3, we, everybody who believes and trusts in Christ by grace, through faith, for the forgiveness of their sins, they already are blessed and already have the blessings of Abraham and the whole curse of the law, they've been redeemed from it.
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- It doesn't apply to them anymore. That's just how it works.
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- So, one of the great ramifications, if you would, of the cross and what
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- Christ has done for us, we learn that one of the aspects, one of the facets of Christ's suffering, bleeding and dying, taking your sin, my sin upon himself and bearing our sin and iniquity so that we can be forgiven is that all the curses that God has threatened for those who disobey
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- His voice and His word, all of those curses have been answered by Christ and He became a curse and we, everybody who is in Him, is gone from the category of cursed to blessed.
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- The end. You are blessed. You who trust in Christ.
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- There is nothing you need to do. There is no generational curse tracking you down. Now, you may have in your
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- DNA line a proclivity towards heart disease or diabetes or arthritis.
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- I'll just say it like that. It's osteoarthritis. You might have a tendency towards those things, but you don't need to go and pay money to somebody who does deliverance ministry.
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- They don't need to speak to any demons. What you need to do is go see a good doctor and get the best available treatment for dealing with those types of potential genetic disorders that run in your family.
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- That's not a generational curse. That's the consequences of sin that come down to all of us.
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- You get the idea. And so note that Christ doesn't save us ultimately from one of the things that God said.
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- And God said that the wages of sin is death and we're all going to die. So you will die someday.
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- You've tested positive for sin and the consequences of sin is death. But don't worry because Christ has already saved you.
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- You are already, you've got a foot in the new kingdom. And as a result of that, what
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- Christ says, everybody who believes in me, even though he dies, yet shall he live.
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- And even if he dies, he will not even taste death. That's what Christ says about all who believe in him.
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- So the idea then is this, is we are already made alive in Christ. We have been set free, redeemed from the curse of the
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- Mosaic Covenant, which is found in Deuteronomy 28. All the curses of the Mosaic Covenant. We are completely redeemed by what
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- Christ has done. So you don't have to sit there and worry about and have anxiety about, did
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- I properly figure out what granddad did so that I can be... Nah, Christ has broken all of it.
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- All of it. All of it. You are totally free. Live free. And don't live in fear of this mythological generational curse as if it's somehow hanging over you.
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- There isn't. If you are in Christ, you are blessed like Abraham, the man of faith.
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- Hopefully you found this helpful. If so, all the information on how you can share the video is down below in the description.
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- And until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.