Oh, remind me, there's a 26 at 7 p.m. today.
Today's December 7th.
Our service time's right there, Sunday morning, 10.30 a.m., Sunday evening, 4.30, and Wednesday
service, 5.30 p.m.
Our Sunday morning time is 2 p.m., and then the verse of the week is Philippians 1.13,
so that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace and in all other places.
And then, baptisms for the year, we have one.
And then, souls one year to date are 264, so we're doing great on that.
And then, we have the birthdays coming up.
If Brother Mike comes in, we're going to get them, even though it's two weeks early, because
they usually go on a two-week vacation at the end of the year to see their family for
the holidays.
And we always miss them, so this year we're just going to get them.
So upcoming activities, we have the Christmas Fellowship December 21st, Sunday after the
morning service.
I will be sending out a link that allows you to sign up for the dish that you want to bring.
My wife is handling that, so we'll get that taken care of.
And then we have the prayer request back there.
I know, Sister Karen, you told me you had a prayer update, Blake Hill?
Not Blake Owens, right?
Okay.
I just want to make sure.
Okay.
Did you get my request back?
Yes, ma'am.
I already put it on the bulletin.
And then a couple of housekeeping items.
I will, but I'm also going to go around and probably any, for the kids, any food or drinks,
actually even crayons or markers or paper inside of the sanctuary.
So last week we had a couple of kids right on the pews.
And then about two weeks ago, we had, I guess some kids left.
You know, remember when we had those people that came to visit, faithful word of stuff,
one of the moms accidentally knocked over a coke that somebody else had left in one
of the pews and obviously got onto the pew.
So we're just removing all of that.
And then the one thing we need to be really strict on, and I'm going to be stricter and
please help me out with this, is the only people allowed in the fridge are the parents.
Is that understood kids?
My kids as well.
The only people allowed in the fridge are the parents.
If the kids need something, the parents need to get it because it's just getting out of
hand the amount of juices and the amount of waters that are left behind.
And then also if your kids are being, if there's a ruckus, please take them to the mother/baby
room.
But in addition to that, just because they're in the mother/baby room does not mean that
we're still not having church.
So I know you're trying to quiet them down, but let's keep them quiet over there.
This is an older building, so it does not have like the old school, the new school foundation.
We're on CRM beam.
So when your kids are running around, it sounds like an earthquake.
So during the service, if we could just not have that happen, I would appreciate it.
I actually hate these kinds of announcements, but it seems like I need to make them more
and more in order to address that.
I mean, I know kids will be kids.
I'm actually probably one of the most patient guys around kids.
So for me to be saying that is I know it's getting a little bit ruckus.
Sorry.
Oh, I thought you were telling me.
And then if you have any questions about what I just said, or you want me, you want to address
anything, just let me know, but I mean, there's really, I think it's pretty clear cut.
Let's go ahead and turn our hymnals over to page 78, and then we're going to be in Ezekiel,
what was it?
Ezekiel 18.
We're going to be in Ezekiel 18 today.
Let's turn our hymnals over to page 78.
Turn our hymnals over to page 89, 89, and then turn your Bibles over to Ezekiel 18.
And then Brother Todd, do you mind taking up the tithes and the offerings while Brother
Matt's reading?
Thank you.
89, tell me the story of Jesus.
Ezekiel 18.
Brother Todd, take up the tithes and the offerings.
Ezekiel 18.
Ezekiel chapter 18.
Ezekiel chapter 18, verse 1, the Bible reads, "The word of the Lord came unto me again,
saying, 'What mean ye that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, "The
fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on etch."
As I live, saith the Lord God."
Ezekiel 18.
Ezekiel chapter 18.
Ezekiel chapter 18, verse 1, the Bible reads, "The word of the Lord came unto me again,
saying, 'What mean ye that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, 'The
fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on etch. As I live, saith the
Lord God, ye shall not have occasion anymore to use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all
souls are as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine. The soul that
sinneth, it shall die. But if a man be just and do that which is lawful and right, not
eaten upon the mountains, there half lifted up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel,
filed his neighbor's wife, come near to a menstruous woman, pressed any, restored to
the debtor his pledge, spoiled none by violence, given his bread to the hungry, covered the
naked with a garment. He that hath not given forth upon usury neither hath taken increase,
withdrawn his hand from iniquity, executed true judgment between man and man, hath walked
in my statutes, and hath kept my judgments to deal truly. He is just. He shall surely
live, saith the Lord God. If ye beget a son that is a robber, a shedder of blood, and that doeth
the like to any one of these things, and that doeth not any of those duties, but even hath eaten
upon the mountains and defiled his neighbor's wife, hath oppressed the poor and needy, hath spoiled
by violence, hath not restored the pledge, and hath lifted up his eyes to the idols,
hath committed abomination, given forth upon usury, and hath taken increase. Shall he then live?
He shall not live. He hath done all these abominations. He shall surely die. His blood
shall be upon him. Now, lo, if ye beget a son, that seeth all his father's sins, which he hath
done, and considereth, and doeth not such like, that hath not eaten upon the mountains, neither
hath lifted up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, hath not defiled his neighbor's wife,
neither hath oppressed any, hath not withholding the pledge, neither hath spoiled by violence,
but hath given his bread to the hungry, and hath covered the naked with the garment,
taken off his hand from the poor, not received usury nor increase, executed my judgments,
walked in my statutes. He shall not die for the iniquity of his father. He shall surely live.
As for his father, because he cruelly oppressed, spoiled his brother by violence,
did that which is not good among his people, lo, even he shall die in his iniquity. Yet say he,
why doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is
lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live.
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,
neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall
be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. But if the wicked will turn
from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, do that which is lawful and
right, he shall surely live. He shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed,
they shall not be mentioned unto him. In his righteousness that he hath done, he shall live.
Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die, saith the Lord God, and not that he should
return from his ways and live? But when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness
and committeth iniquity, and doeth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doeth,
shall he live? All his righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned. In his trespass that
he hath trespassed, and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die? Yet ye say,
the way of the Lord is not equal. Here now, O house of Israel, is not my way equal? Are not
your ways unequal? When a righteous man turneth away from his righteousness and committeth iniquity
and dieth in them, for his iniquity that he hath done shall he die? Again, when the wicked man
turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed and doeth that which is lawful and right,
he shall save his soul alive. Because he considereth and turneth away from all his transgressions that
he hath committed, he shall surely live. He shall not die. Yet, sayeth the house of Israel, the way
of the Lord is not equal. O house of Israel, are not my ways equal? Are not your ways unequal?
Therefore, I will judge you, O house of Israel. Everyone according to his ways, sayeth the Lord
God, repent and turn yourselves from all your transgressions, so iniquity shall not be your
ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions whereby ye have transgressed and make you a new
heart and a new spirit. For why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the
death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God. Wherefore, turn yourself and live ye. Let's bow our
heads and go to the Lord in prayer. Lord God, thank you for gathering us here this morning.
Thank you for your word, Lord. Thank you for all that you've done for us. Lord, please soften our
hearts and give us ears to hear so that we can become more effective servants for you. Lord,
please fill Pastor Reyes with your Holy Spirit and allow him to preach boldly from the pulpit.
We ask this in Jesus name, Amen. Amen. Thank you, Brother Matt.
All right, we're there in Ezekiel 18. Ezekiel 18, let me just get this thing set up right here.
Give me just one quick second. Ezekiel 18 and the title of my sermon this morning
is "The Generational Curse Lie." The generational curse lie, you are still accountable. And it's
funny, I had a conversation with someone about a week or two ago about just this very topic over
the holidays with some of their family members. And they actually brought this up and mentioned
these verses of how they were trying to address this. And then I just kind of was like, okay,
that's a good topic. Maybe I'll preach on it. We were just talking about it. And then I started
looking it up and it's worse than I thought. I mean, it's just amazing. As of even just last
month, there's Pentecostal churches and charismatic churches and podcasts. And as of even yesterday,
I think I was looking up online this morning and there was clips of like a podcast, even
as near as yesterday talking about how we need to overcome these generational curses and we need to
overcome this stuff. And really all it is, is if you've ever heard this term, I didn't know that
there were so many. There's the ancestral curse, the generational curse, the liberals call it
break eating, they're called cycle breakers. There's an entire genre like on Facebook and TikTok
and Instagram of these individuals who are like, hey, we are the cycle breakers. You know, we are
the ones that recognize the pattern and break the pattern. And basically they're like, we're not,
you know, we're not going to give into, we're not going to be ashamed anymore or we're not going to
look into authority and we're not going to, you know, have codependency, which is actually like
the Bible, right? We depend on the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our authority. He says, hey,
there's certain things that you should be ashamed of, right? That we shouldn't do. And they're like,
we're the generation that has, you know, mental health issues and therapy bills and, you know,
trauma from childhood. Everybody has trauma from childhood. Some worse, some better. But I mean,
it's just life, right? If you just grew up in life, some stuff's going to happen. I mean,
sometimes it's not even something mean. Sometimes you could just be walking and witness a murder
or a violent car crash. That's a traumatic event. I mean, I've never technically ever
witnessed it directly, but if you just see stuff like that, it messes you up, right?
And so let's go there because I've got a lot to cover and I want to cover quickly, but
I'm going to put this thing to bed. And it's just interesting how much is out there of this.
And I mean, we're going to touch on it here. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but in Ezekiel
18, I mean, there's a ton of scripture for this. I mean, honestly, the Bible from beginning to end
is all about personal accountability and being responsible for your own actions. I mean,
salvation itself is an individual act. You either reject or believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's nobody else's fault if you're going to hell except yours. And it's nobody else's
fault if you're going to heaven except yours. You know, and I'm not saying it like that,
but it just resonates and stays in your mind. But right there in verse one, the Bible says,
"The word of the Lord came unto me again saying, 'What mean ye that ye use this proverb concerning
the land of Israel? The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.'"
Now what this proverb means, just if you've ever, who's ever like drank vinegar or anything that's
kind of acidy, you know, it makes your teeth feel weird, right? But he's saying, hey, because the
fathers drank the sour grapes, the children's are the ones who are suffering in their teeth, right?
But I like what verse three says, it says, "As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion
anymore to use this proverb in Israel." I mean, literally, I could just end with that,
we can just close the sermon out. But I'm going to give you clear scripture of why this is a bad
doctrine. Number one, it's a false doctrine. And it's something that gives people a cop out.
The reason we're so strict on some of the maybe secondary doctrines is because you don't want to
get off on these weird tangents that excuse you from being a better Christian or from serving the
Lord, right? Why do we preach against the pre-trib, like the pre-tribbers, the ones that believe that
the Lord, you know, is going to come and we're all going to be raptured and, you know, secretly and
all that stuff is because what it is is, and I've heard this all my life, oh, we're not going to be
here for that. So it's not my problem. I'm not going to work. Look, it's our problem. If we're
alive right now, God wants us to go do the work and go fight the battles and go preach the word,
period. But what this does is it removes that accountability. Oh, well, I'm just not as
successful as I could be because my dad was a loser, or I'm not as good as I could have been
because my mom was a drunk, or I have this depraved mindset because, well, if you look
back at my history, there was witches 1,000 years ago. I mean, that has no bearing on anything. I
mean, if anything, then everybody in this country should be messed up because we had the Salem witch
trials, right? Our country, that's like really old. That's towards the beginning of our country,
right? Towards the founding of our nation. But let's go there in verse 10. We're not going to
read all of these. I'm just going to point out a couple of things. I like the way it starts in
verse 10. He says, "If he beget a son," and then he goes into all these negative things. It's a
robber and all these things. If you get down to verse 13, he says, at the end of verse 13, he says,
"He hath given forth an abusory and hath taken increase, then shall he live." The Lord asked
this question and then he answers us. He said, "He shall not live. He hath done all these abominations.
He shall surely die. His blood shall be upon him." Verse 14 says, "Now lo, if he beget a son,
that seeth his father since which he hath done, and considered, and doeth not such like." And then
he goes on and then basically saying, "Hey, the father is the one who's going to die for that
iniquity." Right? And then the verse we really want to focus on, it's a famous verse in the Bible,
it says, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,
neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous
shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." I mean, I'm seriously
like that's basically pretty easy, but we will address even the way that the false doctors come.
Right? But in verse 25 says, "Yet ye say the way of the Lord is not equal. Here now, O house of
Israel is not my way equal, or not your ways unequal." And it's basically dealing with like
a rebellious son, right? I mean, isn't that the way children when they start becoming teenagers
rebel against their parents? What's one of the most common objections to anything that you tell
them they can't do when you've got children that are 15, 16, 17, 18? My kids are not teenagers yet,
but I was one, right? And I use this all the time. Well, it's not fair. You just don't understand
when the reality was like, no, actually, is it the fact that you don't understand and you don't even
know what fairness is or judgment or equity or balance in life, right? You're like full of
hormones to like the nth degree. You actually have no balance in your life. Your body is just like one
walking hormone, you know, just calm down. And then we see here verse 26, he said, towards the end,
it says, "For his iniquity that he hath done, shall he die." Right? He's talking about somebody.
And then in verse 27, it says, "And if they're doing good," he says, "he shall save his soul alive."
And then I love the way it just ends, it says, "Cast away from you all your transgressions,
whereby ye have transgressed and make you a new heart and a new spirit. For why will ye die,
O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord.
Wherefore turn yourselves and live." So look, God's even saying, "Hey, I don't even want you to die."
So stop using the excuse that your daddy drank some sour grapes and that's why your teeth are
numb, right? Stop using the excuse that your daddy did this and so that's why you can't be better.
And I mean, I'm telling you, there's an entire generation of 40, you know, late 30s to early 50
year olds who still talk about the trauma that happened to them when they were like babies,
you know, or toddlers. I mean, I literally know grown men in my life and my family
that will tell me a story about, you know, I have this one family member who's like,
you know, when I was little, we had a really mean aunt. And in front of the entire ranch,
she took my cousin or somebody else, I don't know if it was a cousin or sister,
another family member that was a kid. And they took that kid and they made him eat poop,
dog poop in front of everybody. And to this day, that still messes me up.
I'm not saying that's not a bad thing. Like that's horrible. And you know, sometimes that
happens in life, but that happened. This person's almost 76 years old. This happened to them over
50 years ago. Like at some point, you just got to get over stuff, right? You can barely,
I can barely like even remember, even when I do remember stuff, sometimes, you know, have you,
do you ever do that when you're trying to remember stuff from your youth? You're kind of like, maybe
have a small doubt. Did it really occur the way that I'm thinking? Because you just can't remember
everything perfectly. As a matter of fact, my mom and I have this ongoing joking fight right now,
because I keep telling her that when we were little in the mall, she would hit us up the head
with her knuckle. Because we were, you know, yay high and she would knock us up on the head.
And I say, I remember perfectly that she would lick her knuckle and then she would smack us.
Now my mom swears up and down one side of the other that that's not the case. And I know it
was the case. And so we're just going to go to the grave knowing that I was right and she was wrong.
Probably, more than likely, she's right. But in my mind, I just remember her going
and then just smacking us. But that's, I don't know. I really don't know if that's the case,
right? And so I want to expose these cycle breakers, these fake deliverance gospel preachers.
It's interesting, right? I'm just going to give you a little bit of, because you look this up,
it's everywhere, right? It says, I have just some stats here, many Pentecostal charismatics
and some evangelical churches teach about generational curses, viewing them as negative
patterns, addiction, abuse, poverty, illness, passed down through sin or trauma, often addressed
through prayer, renunciation, deliverance ministries, and choosing Christ over family
patterns, drawing from the scripture in Exodus 20, verse 5 and 6. Though some denominations
emphasize individual responsibility, seeing God's grace is breaking these cycles rather
than inherited punishment. Here's the things that they focus on. The scriptural basis is like
Proverbs 25 or Exodus 25 or visiting the iniquity of the fathers, but you got to read that in its
context. It's often cited, though it's interpreted differently. And then they say, "Oh, these are
signs, repeated family patterns of addiction." Man, everybody has a predisposition to be addicted,
some more, some worse. That's just life. That's why they call it programming.
I mean, as a matter of fact, probably you could even make the case that when television was the
main form of medium, they programmed you to be addicted to television. How many of you remember
going to visit your grandparents, your grandma or your grandpa, and what was on the TV? The
six o'clock news, right? And you just had to sit there and watch the six o'clock news. Don't tell
me that just because of that, I don't watch the six o'clock news. So apparently I don't have a
generational curse, right? And I'm being facetious, of course. Mental illness. So now they're blaming
these mental illnesses, which some of them aren't even that real on this stuff, or financial
hardship, or divorce, or abuse, or early death. Now let me say this. There is truth to the fact
that the way you're raised could carry over, but it's still your responsibility, right? You know,
my dad grew up in an abusive environment, not necessarily from my parents, from my grandparents,
but from the people that surrounded him. And he didn't carry that over to us. It didn't, you know,
he obviously whooped on us, but it was never, in my opinion, abusive, right? And it was never just
harsh. It was just part of life. And I discipline my kids based on what the Bible says, period.
You know, it doesn't really matter or anything. So you can break this. And then the other things
they say is, you know, how to break them. Then they're like, you need to have repentance for
ancestral sins. It's weird. Sounds very Mormon, which by the way, I've been dealing with the
Mormons lately. It's been fun, but that's a whole other conversation for another day. It says,
renouncing evil covenants. I literally watched this guy. I was watching this morning. I got up
early and I wanted to finish the sermon. I just wanted, there was this guy on one of the, I don't
know if it was Facebook or YouTube or whatever, and he was doing a short and he's like, we need
to break the generational curse. And he's on a whiteboard. He's like, cause God gave us the
covenant. By the way, the word covenant, if you get rid of the, if you get the first part, it's a
coven. That's why it's witchcraft. We had to jump into the covenant to break the coven. And I'm like,
bro, you're like, you're drawing way too many conclusions. Like you need to calm down.
Like this is weird. Then we had another guy. It was an Australian. It was a woman preacher,
of course, a charismatic and some Asian guy with an Australian accent got up there and he's like,
I just want to come up here and break my generational curse. My son has autism,
his brain, he has no brain. And then she starts to pray, of course,
you know, I'm going to, we're going to break the generational curse in the name of Jesus.
And he starts like gyrating and frighting and, you know, convulsing on the ground.
And then she's on the count of three, they're all going to be gone. And she's like, one,
two, three. And then as soon as she says three, like, I mean, just ridiculous.
But the worst part is you would think, oh, it's only Pentecostals, it's only
Charismatics. No, it's Baptist too. You get it in the Baptist circles. You get it everywhere.
Let me just give you a couple of names. I'm not going to go through this. This is very quick.
I've got four points for you, but I do want to set this up. I don't know who these guys are.
I do know one of them, but I don't know everybody else. But there's a guy by the name of Mike
Signorelli of the V1 church in New York. He's a Charismatic Pentecostal. And it's of June,
2025. And he had a podcast called The Deliverance Culture. Then there's a guy, C.T. Townsend. Now
this guy is famous in the independent Baptist circles. And he's gotten a lot of flak for some
of the weird stuff he preaches. And he's literally the type, he does the 10 preaching, you know,
where they're real loud and they do like the, you know, that inhaling. I can't even mimic it,
you know, like, "Hail the Lord!" You know, and then they do this and they get like really agitated.
That's the kind of guy. I mean, sorry if it butchered it. That's just not my style, right?
He's an independent Baptist with charismatic leanings. And on June 20, 2025, he did a Father's Day
sermon on breaking, and the title of the sermon was "Breaking Generational Curses Using Scripture
to Show How Parents' Parental Sins Create Cycles, But Faith Leads to Generational Blessings." Instead,
he shares eyewitness accounts of freedom through prayer. Then you have Pastor Shannon Williams,
who has a charismatic TV ministry. And in November of 2025, he had an episode called "Signs" and had
to do with that. Then Pastor Jergen Mathias of City Harvest Church, a charismatic church, in June
2025, "How to Lead Your Family and Break Generational Curses." David Oyadopo, I don't know if I got it
right, Winners Chapel International, Word of Faith Pentecostal, March 2024, "Breaking Generational
Curses" service. Ryan Visconti, charismatic with Prosperity Critiques, February of 2025,
he preached a sermon called Charismania, which apparently had to do with generational curses.
Pastor Jeffrey Daniel of White Hill Missionary Baptist Church. Now, those guys have an
interesting leaning, but anyways, let's not get into that. Baptist with Charismatic Elements,
October 2025, and he had a live service called "Permanently Breaking Generational Curses."
Reverend Julius Sewell of the Influencers Church. Pentecostal, May 2024, Breaking the Chains
of Generational Curses. Literally, I found some guy online. The only reason I didn't put him in
here is because they had a four-part series just in November on generational curses. I was like,
how do you preach four sermons on generational curses? And then there was, and then even in the
super independent moral majority movement of like the late 80s, early 90s. My wife grew up in the
Bill Gothard movement. I don't know if you knew that, but in Bill Gothard, through his organization,
the Institute of Basic Life Principles, this is weird, heavily promoted the teaching of
generational sins or generational curses. This doctrine suggests the sins of the ancestors
can pass down and negatively affect the lives of their descendants. Gothard's teaching on
generational curses, this is the weird part, says the core of Gothard's teaching was the ongoing
struggle with sin, financial hardship, chronic illness, or relational dysfunction could be the
result of unresolved curse or sin from a previous generation. And so he would say, "Hey, you need to
investigate your genealogy." And participants were encouraged to deeply research their family history
to find past sins such as idolatry, involvement in secret societies like the Masons or other
generational iniquities. Then you would acknowledge and repent. Once an ancestral sin was identified,
the individual was expected to publicly acknowledge and repent on behalf of their forefathers to break
the curse. Hey, I'm publicly acknowledging that as by sin, by one man's sin came into the world,
we're all sinners. Bible says, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God."
Period. It's not anybody else's fault. That's just the nature of what we are.
It says, he also said, "Hey, you want to seek personal responsibility while acknowledging
ancestral sin. The teaching also emphasized personal responsibility to stop continuing
the sins of one's own free will." But, you know, it's kind of hard to be responsible
if you're not responsible, right? How is it your fault if it's not literally your fault? I mean,
how do you get that? Then, like I said, I'm going through this real quickly because I just want to,
like it gets a lot out there. I'm not going to, I just want to put this to bed and move on.
But ancestral sin, generational sin or ancestral fault is the doctrine that teaches individuals.
We've already covered that, but here's the classic scholar, like I guess religious or faith that
teaches. They lump in Christianity, but it's just those sects of Christianity that I brought up.
But then you have Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Judaism. I mean, talk about,
let's just pick on the Jews a little bit. Those guys, everything is everybody else's fault. It's
never their fault. We didn't kill Jesus. We didn't bomb. The only reason that we cost genocide in
Palestine is because on October 7th, we got bombed too, right? Everything is never their fault.
Everything is always somebody else's fault, which is a bunch of BS. Hinduism, Japanese Shinto,
Greek mythology, witchcraft, all of these teach this generational curse crap. And then if we just
go to the liberal side, and I'll just close this point out with this, is right here there's an
article. I just got the first part because that wasn't going to go deep into the world side. But
what is the cycle breaker and how to engage in this powerful process? Well, the term cycle breaker
refers to a person intentionally changing multi-generational family patterns. So from
the world's perspective, without the religious leaning, there's an entire group of people.
As a matter of fact, I didn't know. I'm glad that my wife gets a whole different social media
algorithm feed or she gets fed differently from the social media algorithm. So when I'm telling
her, "Hey, I'm going to preach on this," she's like, "Oh, have you ever heard of cycle breakers?"
I was like, "I don't know, like someone who breaks their motorcycle?" She's like, "No,
cycle breakers, like a cycle breaker must dive into the origins of their behaviors and root out
unhealthy patterns. Cycle breaking involves both deep introspective work and intentional behavior
change. There's a term going around on Instagram and TikTok that you won't find in any psychological
textbook, but has nonetheless become pervasive. The term is cycle breaker. Cycle breaker is somebody
who sees an unhealthy cycle of behavior in their family of origin, meaning the family they grew up
in and intentionally worked to break that cycle. While the word may be new, the concept is not.
It is rooted in systematic thinking, championed by psychological professionals, particularly
marriage and family therapists, and is a nod to the idea that our traits, behaviors, and beliefs
are influenced by generations of family members before us who have reinforced a certain way of
being. Instead of seeing our growth as highly individual process, then cycle breaking acknowledges
the role of context, culture, history, trauma, and resilience in families. You know what this reminds me of? Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud was a little bit nuts, right? He was actually a depraved individual. And he had this, you know, you've heard, and I might mispronounce this, but is it Epidus? Or the? Huh? Oedipus. Oedipus complex. Thank you, brother Matt. The Oedipus complex, right? Where if you have like some depraved lenist or something, it's because
you were in love with your mom, and you wanted to be with her.
It's what? That didn't even jive, you know what I'm saying?
This is just the weird stuff that's out there.
So what is a curse?
And then just turn your Bibles over to Jeremiah 29.
What is a curse?
Well, according to the dictionary, let's just keep it really simple.
Dictionary.com, it's just the expression of a wish
that misfortune, evil, doom, befall a person or a group, right?
Malediction, fulmination, execration, imprecation,
a formula of charm intended to cause such misfortune,
the act of reciting such a formula, right?
A profane oath, an evil way that has been invoked upon one,
the cause of evil misfortune or trouble, something accursed,
usually an ecclesiastical censure or anathema.
The problem with this is we can't have a generational curse
because the Bible says greater is he that is in you
than he that is in the world, right?
The Bible says no weapon formed against thee shall prosper.
There is no way to be cursed because a curse is something
that you wish bad upon somebody
and then the Lord will either grant you or not
because he's not going to grant it to the world
except that we are the only ones that could maybe curse the world, right?
But nobody can curse us because even if somebody would say go to hell, good luck.
I mean you can't, I can't go to hell, you know what I'm saying?
Or, you know, I hope this and this and this happens to your family.
It doesn't matter if it happened, I'm going to heaven.
The Lord's already taken care of me.
There's nothing that's going to affect me in this world
that is from like a curse or some kind of generational environment
or something that came because of whatever my grandpa's grandpa's grandpa,
you know, smoked some weed before it was popular or something like that.
I don't, you know, just weird stuff, right?
When it's used as a verb, it's to wish or invoke evil or calamity or anger,
to swear at, to blaspheme, to excommunicate.
So, you know, like sometimes people come and they're like,
"Oh, I'm going to cast a curse on you."
I'll be like, "Okay."
I don't know what that means, but good luck, right?
We have a hedge of protection about us.
You're there in Jeremiah 29, just as the last two points.
The first one is as a way of introduction, like I'm telling you,
my points are just a lot of Bible, just to put this thing to bed.
This is the crux of what I want to address.
There's literally what's called Cycle Breaker Conferences.
And here's the root of the problem.
Why do they do this?
Because it keeps you engaged.
And what does it do is it keeps you given the money.
If you go, I went to the website, if you buy the lowest ticket, it's not even free.
Hey, you want to break a curse at Spring Crest?
Hey, just show up.
Wednesday morning, Wednesday afternoon, Sunday morning, Sunday evening.
Let's go soul winning at two o'clock, man, we'll go and break all the generational curses.
We'll just leave people out of hell every day, day and night.
Let's go do it for free.
As a matter of fact, not even that.
If you go soul winning with us, more than likely, if it's a big event, we'll feed you.
We'll take money out of the church's pocket and make sure that you get a benefit.
But here, the lowest ticket to one of these events is $75.
The highest ticket is $150.
But it doesn't just end there, they have sponsors.
You can sponsor this event.
The lowest sponsor level is $1,500 and the highest sponsor level is $5,000.
Man, you guys want to do some generational cursing?
Hey, how about you donate so we can go out and send everybody to a mistress trip?
You want to invest in breaking generational curses?
How about you just donate and I'll just send everybody out soul winning
for a whole weekend somewhere in Texas and we'll just get people out of hell?
And then stop whining about what your daddy and your mommy did or didn't do for you, right?
Here's a quote from a sermon.
I watched the beginning of it.
I couldn't watch more than that.
My wife was with me.
The four part series.
The first part was like a guest speaker at this charismatic church
and he was one of those, you know.
First of all, it was weird because he's a white guy
but he was trying to act like the black preachers, you know.
The black preachers, they always have the, you know, the like the handkerchief
because they're going to sweat a lot.
He was holding the handkerchief and he had the mic, you know.
And he's like, you know, doing the whole, you know, I'm excited.
You know, I'm like, well, calm down, brother.
Like, I can, and this is just the one quote that got me.
He's like, this morning we worked on receiving authority.
Of course, you can imagine the way he's delivering it.
And then, you know, they have the music playing, you know, as he's saying this.
And he's like, this morning we worked on receiving the authority
to take possession of the promise of God.
I'm telling you, this is the church's season to possess it.
He says, I've heard it.
I've heard about it long enough.
I've prayed enough prayers.
I've fasted and I've sold.
I'm ready to step into what I've been promised.
But before you can break into promise, you've got to break out of the cycle.
And of course, everyone's like, hey, man, and, you know, the drums are playing
and the organ's going.
And this is a whole hour.
You know, I just kind of skipped through the whole thing.
The guy's like dripping in sweat, you know, the whole thing.
And people fall for this crap.
But let me ask you, if you were to watch it,
because I watched maybe five minutes of it skipping through,
how many Scriptures were given?
One.
One out of context with no context, with no foundation, nothing.
So let's start giving you some context.
In Jeremiah 29, right there in verse 4, the Bible says,
"Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel,
unto all that are carried away captives,
whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem unto Babylon."
"Build ye houses, and dwell in them, and plant gardens, and eat fruit of them."
"Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons,
and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters,
that they may be increased there, and not diminished."
"And seek the peace of the city, whether I have caused you to be carried away captives."
"And pray unto the Lord for it, for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace."
"For thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, let not your prophets
and your diviners that be in the midst of you deceive you."
"Neither hearken to your dreams which ye cause to be dreamed."
"For they prophesy falsely unto you in my name."
"I have not sent them, saith the Lord."
You say, "What does this have to do with anything?"
Well, because there's a difference between a judgment
because of the previous generation and generational curses.
And God doesn't want you to have a victim mentality.
In the book of Jeremiah, the Lord's literally preparing Jeremiah
and Ezekiel, both of them were in the same time.
And he says, "Hey, your people, your kings, your cities,
everything is going to be going into captivity
because you guys basically screwed up.
You couldn't keep it together.
You couldn't follow my commandments.
You wouldn't listen.
You were stiff-necked.
You were hard-hearted.
You were just a rebellious, you know, people."
He says, "But what I need you to do is when you go into the land,
you submit to the captivity.
Not only that, go have children, go get a job,
go enjoy your life, go seek peace, go just live your life."
Notice he didn't say, "Oh, you know, go in there and be like,
'Oh, well, woe is me because we're just prisoners.
God caused this judgment.'"
He's like, "Get over it. Move on.
Stop being a pansy."
You notice God's not saying, "Hey, I don't want, you know..."
He's not like, "Hey, let's have a kumbaya session.
Everybody can come to the mount and we can talk our issues out,
and you can tell me why you feel the way you feel.
Johnny, tell me what it is that you're feeling.
What are the feelings that you have right now?"
That's not God.
What did he say to Samuel?
"How long, Samuel, will thou mourn for Saul?"
Get over it, Samuel.
It's time to move on.
We've got work to do, right?
But people don't want to do any work because they're just like,
"Well, I just, I can't do this, or I can't be a better dad,
or a better mom, or a better son, or whatever."
Because, "Well, my dad sucked."
And you don't understand.
He beat me up.
You see all these scars?
These are cigarette butts.
Life happens, man.
I mean, I don't know what to tell you.
This just sucks sometimes.
But with Christ, everything's possible.
The problem is most people want to go somewhere
and hear the excuse of why they're failures
instead of listening to the truth of why they can succeed, right?
Success in the Christian walk requires you to show up to church.
It requires you to, you know, read your Bible.
It requires you to say, "No, I'm not going to
let this thing bring me down.
And you know what? I have a besetting sin, Lord,
but I'm just going to bring it to you every time.
I'm going to ask for forgiveness and then I'm going to move on."
We all have them. We're all failures in something.
I mean, that's just life.
But you can't just sit around crying over spilled milk and woe is me.
I mean, we are where we are in life because of the choices that we've made.
Good or bad, that's what it is.
Owe enough to it.
What you don't understand, I don't need to understand.
You know why? Because God doesn't want to like hear it.
If God doesn't want to hear it, you know what?
I especially don't want to hear it.
Sometimes people will come to me and they're like,
"Hey, I'm really struggling with this."
And I'll tell them, "You know, that's fine.
I'll pray for you or let's talk about it."
I don't want to know like the details.
I don't need to gossip about your weird crap
that you're dealing with in your life.
I got enough problems of my own.
Like I don't need anything.
So let's go to the first point I have for you today.
Like I said, I have four quick points is that
this is a false doctrine, these generational curses,
but it's invading the modern churches.
It's a false doctrine.
That's the first point, right?
And the passages that they'll use is they'll go to Exodus,
turn over to Exodus 20, but in Exodus 20 verse 5,
when it's given us the 10 commandments, it says,
"Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them,
for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God."
Visiting, and this is where they'll come, right?
Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
unto the third and fourth generation.
I guess they forgot to read the rest of that verse
because it says, "Of them that hate me."
In other words, if your daddy hated God,
and then, I mean, or your grandpa hated God,
and your daddy hated God, and you still hate God,
well, of course he's going to visit that.
You know what?
If your daddy hated God and your grandpa hated God,
but you love God, well, they got it.
He visited their iniquity, but not yours.
Then they go to Deuteronomy 5, right?
And they only read you verse 9.
In Deuteronomy 5 verse 9, it says,
"Thou shall now bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them.
For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
unto the third and fourth generation, again, of them that hate me."
But then he says in verse 10,
"And showing mercy unto the thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments."
So look, if you're saved and you feel like you're maybe getting judged,
are you keeping his commandments?
Look, God's going to whoop on you.
The Bible tells us clearly in Hebrews 12,
that if he doesn't chastise you, then you're a bastard and not a son.
So if life's a little rough after you got saved,
then maybe you just need to clean up whatever God's telling you to clean up.
Numbers 14 verse 18, this is another one that they use.
It says, "The Lord is long-suffering and of great mercy for giving iniquity and transgression,
and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers
upon the children unto the third and fourth generation."
But notice how it said, "And by no means clearing," what?
The guilty.
You're not just going to beat you up because your dad messed up.
Hey, if you're guilty, then you're going to get chastised
or you're going to get punished.
But if you're not, I mean, we read that in Ezekiel.
I mean, I think Ezekiel is pretty clear.
It's a whole, what is it, 30 plus verses, and it's pretty clear.
And by the way, it's the same book that tells you,
hey, if you are on the watchtower and you don't warn the people,
that blood that they died is on them, but it's also on you.
But if you warn them and they die in their sin and they go to hell,
well, that blood is on them, but not on you.
So, you know, there's responsibility that comes with that.
I'm not going to read it all for the sake of time,
but in Exodus 20, when we're going through the Ten Commandments,
I just want to point out, and God spake all these words in verse 1 saying,
"I am the Lord thy God, which hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage."
And then notice, that's why I love the King James.
It uses the word "thou."
"Thou" signifies singularity.
It's not plural.
it means, "Hey, you as an individual shall not have other gods before me.
You, thou, shall not make thee unto the graven images.
Thou shall now bow thyself unto them."
And showing mercy, and he's going on and he says,
"Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain."
And then he goes down, if you go down to verse 13, he says,
"Thou shall not kill, thou shall not commit adultery,
thou shall not steal, thou shall not bear false witness,
thou shall not covet thy neighbor's house."
All of these are what?
Thou, thou, thou.
In other words, you as the individual should not do these things.
And if you do them, it's your fault.
Not your daddy's fault, not your mama's fault,
not your great-great-grandpa in some foreign land.
You know, I can't even trace my genealogy past like I think my great-grandparents.
And that's because whatever my parents told me,
and I have to trust that they actually know what they're talking about.
I mean, it's just, it is what it is.
So I'm going to spend all this time trying to figure this out
so I can figure out why I have the issues that I have.
You know, it's called falling nature.
It's called being a sinner.
It's called being a human.
I mean, I really do try to live like a good perfect day a lot.
But I mean, it's just, it's not going to happen.
So I just, I accept the reality of life and I move on.
And when I make a mistake, you fix it and you move on, right?
I mean, we've already exposed it,
but here's the other thing about these Psycho Conferences,
Psycho Breaker Conferences.
They tell you that you're inheriting demons.
Look, if you're saved, you cannot be possessed.
The Bible is very clear on that.
You can't inherit a curse.
The minute someone gets saved, when we're out door knocking,
all of that's just been shattered.
Literally, you're indwelled with the Holy Spirit.
God comes in.
He's conquered death.
He's like, "Oh, death, where is thy victory?
Where is thy sting?"
It's over.
Like, it's just not going to happen.
You know, go to 2 Kings,
but in Deuteronomy 24 verse 16 that says,
"The father shall not be put to the death of the children,
neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers.
Every man shall be put to death for his own sin."
Hey, remember the controversy about a year ago
with Pastor Anderson,
and that's how a lot of you guys showed up here from Pure Words?
What was one of the challenges that you guys had at Pure Words
before it was shut down,
and obviously the building, the name, not the church itself,
but Pastor Who, right?
One of the things that he got up is he sent money
to the rebellious children.
And I remember specifically that I told my wife,
that's such a weird statement.
He did a video and in that video he said,
"Oh, I sent this money from the church
to atone for the sins of the father."
I was like, "Man, that sounds like Catholic crap."
Right? Isn't that?
But don't we have a generation
that's just constantly doing all that?
Like this, look, even the U.S. has a major problem.
We're going around trying to be like the world's moral compass
because of the stuff that's happened in the past.
And who are we trying to appease the most?
The generational curse of the Jews, right?
Oh, the poor Jews from eternity past have always been, you know,
basically persecuted and we need to be, we need to take care of them.
They're never accountable to any of the genocide, any of the slaughter,
any of the murder, and by the way,
I'm not for the murder of anybody who's part of the Judaism or the Jews religion.
Anybody who practices Judaism, it goes both ways.
I'm not one-sided. Hey, if you murder a Jew,
if you murder a Muslim, or if you murder a Christian,
guess what? It's still murder.
You are still responsible for that murder.
And it goes the other way around too.
If they murder somebody else, it's still murder, period.
It doesn't matter who you are, what you do.
You're there in 2 Kings, in verse 14, I mean, 2 Kings 14, in verse 1,
we see this, it says, "In the second year of Joaz, the son of Jehoahaz,
king of Israel reigned Amaziah, the son of Joaz, king of Judah.
He was 20 and 5 years old when he began to reign,
and reigned 20 and 9 years in Jerusalem.
And his mother's name was Jehoahdan of Jerusalem.
And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord,
yet not like David his father.
He did according to all the things as Joaz his father did.
Howbeit the high priests were not taken away,
as yet the people did sacrifice and burnt incense on the high places.
And it came to pass as soon as the kingdom was confirmed in his hand,
that he slew his servants, which had slain the king his father.
Pay attention here, the verse says it says,
but the children of the murderers he slew not.
According unto that which is written in the book of the law of Moses,
wherein the Lord commanded saying,
the fathers shall not be put to death for the children,
nor the children be put to death for the fathers,
but every man shall be put to death for his own sin.
It's about time that this country gets back to personal responsibility.
It just owns up to the mistakes of their life.
Stop blaming everybody else for your problems.
Even if they're not your problems, stop blaming everybody.
I mean, just at the end of the...
Sometimes you cause them and sometimes things happen
and you just got to move on, right?
Look at all the road rage.
Everybody's always blaming somebody else
for the stupid stuff that they do, right?
Usually the guy who made the mistake is the guy who's getting mad.
You know what I try?
I mean, I'm being serious and this is not like some pat on the back,
because like I'm telling you, I'm the center.
But when it comes to driving, I don't want to get shot at.
So I'd really do try to be careful.
I'm not perfect because yesterday some guy cut me off and I did honk at him.
So I told my wife, you know, I need to keep that in check.
But on occasion, whenever I'm as up, you know what I try to do?
I try to swallow my pride.
I try to think things through and I try to apologize.
Because at the end of the day,
I can't do anything about the fact that there's other people on the road.
You know, my three-year-old daughter, I have to teach her.
She came to me yesterday and she was distraught with her older brother.
She mentioned it like four times.
She said, "Bubby walked away from me."
And it was like she kept trying to blame Bubby for it.
I said, "Hey, he's not your son and you're not his boss.
Move on.
Sorry, baby."
I love you.
She's three years old.
But that's how it starts, right?
We always want to...
You know, what did Adam say?
"That woman you gave me, that's why we're in the mess we're in."
No, you were the one responsible.
As a matter of fact, Adam, you're the one to send.
Eve was deceived, you send for dropping the ball.
Let's go to point number two.
Like I said, I've got a lot of notes,
but we're going to go through this really quick.
But, you know, stop blaming your parents.
I mean, just the fact that salvation is an...
It's so interesting how people will focus on the negative.
When I go so whiny, you know, I'll ask...
The first part is like, "Hey, do you believe in hell?"
And we'll take them to the verses about hell.
And I'm like, "Hey, if you ever end up in hell, can you ever get out?"
They're like, "Well, no, it's forever."
But then we get to the end of the conversation.
I'm like, "Hey, salvation is free.
If God gives you a gift that lasts forever, can He ever take it away?
It's eternal.
Can you ever lose your salvation?"
"I think so."
"Yeah, if I make a big sin."
And so then I'll bring them back.
I do that on purpose because I'm like,
"But didn't you say earlier that if you go to hell, it's forever?"
"Yeah."
"So why would God make it different for salvation?"
"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah."
We always want to focus on the negative, right?
Everything that's negative always makes sense.
Everything that's positive.
Because you know what?
It requires us to overcome our issues, right?
I mean, my dad and my mom, I love them.
I'm not picking on them.
But they convinced me because my dad, growing up,
he was prone to depression.
I'm not picking on my dad.
He'd tell you, to this day, he'll tell you that.
And so I just, when I got married with my wife,
I was like, "Hey, I'm predisposed to depression."
I'd have these little depression bouts.
You know what overcame it?
You read your Bible and you just got a man up.
She didn't marry some pansy,
and I didn't want her to think like, "Well, who did I marry?"
So you just got to get up and fight.
And then you have kids.
Forget it.
There's no time to be depressed with kids.
I mean, you can feel down for like two seconds
until one of them jumps in.
It's like, "Hey, can you get me some juice?
Can you get me this?"
And then it's over, right?
But you just got to own up to it.
This point number two is that the doctrine
that is actually correct is the biblical doctrine
of personal accountability, right?
We saw there in Ezekiel 18 verse 4 says,
"Behold, all souls are mine.
As the soul of the father,
so also the soul of the son is mine.
The soul that sinneth, it shall die."
Right?
If a righteous father has a wicked son,
the wicked son is who suffered, right?
If a wicked father has a righteous son,
the righteous son is spared.
The wicked father is punished.
Each one stands and falls on his own choices.
We're all of one blood, right?
I mean, but the problem with the newest generation
is that they just want to blame everybody, right?
They prefer therapy or just showing up to church.
And I'm not, I mean, I know that there's extreme,
but you know, when we grew up,
it was extreme situations that caused you to go seek help.
Now everybody can seek help.
I mean, last week I preached about emotional service animals.
All you got to go do, you got to go to just some psych
and tell them you feel a little bit nutty
and that Galinda, your chicken, makes you feel better
and you can walk around everywhere with your damn chicken
and just like, quack, quack, quack, it's gross, right?
Like that's literally all you have to do.
I mean, read it for yourself.
I know we're laughing, but it's horrible, right?
But they prefer like these trauma labels
over just the fact that we're sinners
and it's really just victimhood.
Everybody's a victim.
Everybody's just oppressed that, you know, it's weird, right?
My wife will talk to me just, you know,
about family members that are a little bit younger
and it happens even in my family
and they're constantly talking about all this trauma
and she's like, they didn't even have it as bad as like we had it.
I'm talking like just not, not just siblings but even cousins and stuff
like there's a, her side of the family is huge
and so there's huge gaps and so she has like a group of
of people that she grew up, her generation and then there's like the
younger generation. The younger generation seems to always be moaning
and complaining whereas the older generation is like,
you guys had it way better than we did, like you didn't even struggle.
I remember my dad would wake me up every Friday at seven o'clock in the morning.
I hated it to go take out the trash and my mom was always like, why don't you
have George wake up. And my dad was like, no, he's the oldest.
He's the one has to be responsible. So because I was the oldest, I just had to do it.
But you know, my brother, sister, something will complain more
about the stuff that my dad had them do. And I'm like, what?
You guys didn't even struggle like guys. I mean, they were the hardest on me.
I was the first, I was the trial and error, right?
The problem with being the oldest is your trial and error.
Lucy, sorry, honey. You just trial and error.
And we think the younger ones get it better because we dropped you on your head
because we didn't know any better, okay?
We didn't drop you on your head. You fell off the bed, but I love you.
But, you know, these are the things that happen, right?
And, like, my parents actually have called me,
and I put a stop to it even with my parents.
This is the only time that I'm tough on my parents.
My parents will call and be like, hey, you know,
your brothers and sisters talking to us and your brother and sister,
and they think this or that.
And we just wanted to call and apologize for the way we raised them.
Like, I was like, I don't even want to hear it.
I was like, I love you.
The way you raised me was perfect.
I literally say this to my parents.
I said, I'm so grateful that you whooped on me
and you beat me up and you took care of me
and that I'm the man that I am today because of the things that you did.
You don't need to apologize for anything.
Anything I need to apologize to you for being such a selfish jerk.
That's the attitude you need to have.
And I'm not even making this stuff up.
That's exactly how I deliver it, but in Spanish, right?
So I'm not going to switch it.
But my wife's hurting me.
Talk to them because this happens like every few years
where my parents have to call me and apologize for--
I don't know what.
I'm like, don't call me for stuff.
I'm a productive member of society.
I obey the laws.
I pay my taxes.
I take care of my wife.
I take care of my kids.
You know why?
Because you whooped on me and you didn't let me go out there
and be a delinquent and a derelict and consume drugs
and fornicate and do all those things.
My mom was like, you're not coming home with a baby.
You're not coming home with a baby.
You're not coming home with it.
And I was like, well, I didn't want to mess around
because I knew the wrath of my dad.
Like it was serious, right?
Like I don't, I didn't want that in my life.
So, you know, go over a 2nd Samuel, go over a 2nd Samuel
and let's just read this section real quick.
In 2nd Samuel, we have that, look, what was David?
David was a man after God's own heart, the Bible tells us.
Nobody else in the Bible has mentioned like David, like that, right?
The Bible says they're in 2nd Samuel in verse 1.
This is after, you know, the murder and Bathsheba
and the child and everything.
It says, "And the Lord sent Nathan unto David,
and he came unto him and said unto him,
'There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor.
The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds,
but the poor man had nothing save one little eulam,
which he had bought and nourished up,
and it grew up together with him and with his children.
It did eat of his own meat and drank of his own cup
and lay in his bosom and was unto him as a daughter.
And there came a traveler unto the rich man,
and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd
to dress for the wafering man that was come unto him,
but took the poor man's lamb and dressed it for the man that was to come.
And David's anger was kindled greatly,
I mean was greatly kindled against the man,
and he said unto Nathan, "As the Lord liveth,
that man that hath done this thing shall surely die,
and he shall restore the Lamb fourfold, because he did this thing,
and because he had no pity."
Nathan said unto David, "Thou art the man.
Thus saith the Lord God of Israel,
I anointed thee king over Israel,
and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul."
And if you skip down to verse 13,
I love David's response.
It said, "And David said unto Nathan,
They have sinned against the Lord.
Nathan said unto David,
The Lord hath also put away thy sin.
Thou shalt not die."
And I really believe the reason that he was spared
and in his mercies because he admitted it.
Just throwing up.
You know what I hate in business?
When I'm telling someone something
that they messed up on
and they won't admit it.
I literally got in a shouting match
with the virtual assistant group
that I have out of Pakistan
because they've been dropping the ball
and dropping the ball
and I've been complaining about some things.
And then they came, I got on a call with them
and I mean, I said some choice words.
I was pretty mad.
And all of a sudden,
that's when he finally short-fired.
He's like, "Hey, you can't talk to me like that."
And I was like, "I can talk to you however I want.
I am not getting the result that I need.
You know, you guys are not."
He's like, "Well, the problem is
you're always blaming us on everything."
No, I'm just calling you out.
I have literal documented facts
of the things that you're dropping the ball on.
But you know what the problem is?
That this is a pandemic around the world.
These false religions,
everything's always somebody else's fault.
Why do the Muslims want to attack the world?
Because that's, you know,
the mainly Pakistan's and Muslim country.
Because it's everybody else's fault.
They're the ones that have been oppressed.
You know, why do we keep pushing racism?
Because then it's easy to be a victim, right?
My entire one side of the family
that grew up here in the States,
they're all Mexicans,
they're all born in Mexico just like me.
Apparently you would know about them
because they're always,
somebody's always got some racist remark against them
or treats them bad because they're Mexican.
It's funny because I live in the same America as you do
and nobody ever tells me anything.
I've literally had one person call me a spick my entire life
and it was in Waco, Texas in 1998.
And the only reason I remember was because I was like,
that was weird.
I've never experienced this in my life.
And you know what I did?
I moved on.
I just remembered it's something comical.
I was actually out.
This is, you know, I don't like to talk about my previous life
but I was in college.
I was young and we were at a honky tonk
and I was more concerned about going out
and dancing with a young lady.
So the guy called me a spick and I was like,
I didn't even see who it was because he moved.
He was such a coward.
He moved quickly.
And then you know what I did next?
I was just like, hey, you want to go dance?
You want to go dance?
I didn't care, right?
Like it's just about your mentality, right?
I don't have a Chicano mentality.
Go to Psalm 51.
Go to Psalm 51 and in Psalm 51 verse 1,
we have the beautiful Psalm, right?
It says, "Have mercy upon me, O God,
according to thy loving kindness,
according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies,
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
For, acknowledge my transgressions
and my sin is ever before me,
and I love this,
against thee only have I sinned
and done this evil in thy sight,
that thou mightest be justified
when thou speakest and be clear when thou judges.
And if we were to go there,
I don't know if this Bible has it,
some Bibles have it.
Let me see if most King James Bibles will have this.
But if we were to go there to Psalm 51,
and if you have your Bible,
because I have the notes here,
but it says,
"To the chief musician upon Mahalath Masquill,
a psalm of David,"
and there's other ones that,
you know, I have another Bible that says,
"a psalm of David when Nathan called him out," basically.
This is the psalm.
The psalm he made is like,
"Only against you, Lord, have I sinned."
That's why David's awesome, right?
That's why he had mighty men,
because only great men will follow a great man.
You know what?
Nobody will follow someone who's always like,
"Just blaming everybody else."
And they're always like,
"You know what also comes with blaming other people?
Cowardice and weakness and just like this weak mentality.
Just get over it."
And I know it's tough, but that's life.
You know, we went to the viewing for brother James Bostic.
And you know why I love brother James to this day?
When I showed up, from the first day that we ever showed up
to the day that he couldn't come to church anymore.
And for those of you who remember,
you never saw that guy say a bad word about anything in life.
And he couldn't barely drag himself.
He was in a walker.
He grew up with polio.
No excuses, man.
That guy was like a stalwart of the faith.
The guy was so positive.
I'd be like, "Hey, brother James, how's it going?"
"Ah, it's going pretty good.
Everything's great."
You know, just in a little pain.
Just in a little pain.
Getting hard to walk around, but we'll make it.
It'll be all right.
And his wife would bring him up.
This door used to work.
It doesn't work anymore right now.
She'd drag him in here.
Faithful to the end.
I mean, he was here before everybody else
for Sunday school.
He'd stay through church.
Some of you can't even wake up early enough
to show up to church on a Sunday morning,
let alone every service.
And they were here Wednesday.
If there was a service, they were here.
And that was hard.
He was not a light man.
He was heavyset.
And his wife had to get him into the car
and then drag him to church.
And he'd have to get himself there.
And it was hard for him to get up.
But he didn't have a loser mentality.
That's what this generational curse does.
It's a loser mentality.
Let's go to the third point.
I'm going to give you the two points real quick
and we'll close it out.
Point number three is that
modern cycle breaker movement
is a generation that just rejects repentance.
See, we're not against repentance,
which is not repent of your sins to get saved.
But hey, you better repent of your sins
after you're saved.
You better come to the Lord.
The Bible says He is just and faithful
to forgive your sins.
But you got to own up to Him.
You know, the hardest thing to do is say,
"I'm sorry."
Hey, honey, I'm sorry.
Instead of going, you know,
you ever heard those like,
like the victim mentality apologies?
Hey, I'm sorry that I screamed at you
because you're such a loser
that you bring out the worst in me.
But I'm so sorry that I treated you like that.
That's not an apology.
That's like a veiled accusation.
The reality is, hey,
I'm sorry that I lost my temper
and that I'm such a selfish jerk sometimes.
You know what?
I'm going to work on it and I love you.
I don't want to take care of you.
And no matter what you do,
it's an unconditional love.
Because aren't we selfish jerks
to the Lord Jesus Christ?
I mean, God doesn't do anything to us.
We're the ones that do everything to him, right?
Like, we're the ones that mess up.
So we just need to get over this thing.
Like, it's not my fault.
I didn't inherit.
I mean, I inherited trauma.
There's quotes out there.
My therapist says I'm actually the victim.
I don't care what your therapist says.
What does the Bible say, right?
We need personal responsibility.
We need old-fashioned Bible preaching.
Not this dancing around with your rag,
cleaning yourself and your band in the back.
2 Timothy 3 verse 1, the Bible says,
"This know also that in the last days
perilous times shall come.
For men shall be lovers of themselves,
covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers,
disobedient to parents, unthankful,
unholy, without natural affection,
truth-breakers, false accusers, incontinent,
fears, despisers of those that are good,
traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of
pleasure more than lovers of God,
having a form of godliness but denying
the power thereof
from such turn away. Galatians 6 verse 4
Bible says, "But let every man
prove his own work, then he shall have
rejoicing in himself alone
and not in another, for every man shall
bear his own burden."
Hey, I love the congregation. I know you
guys have challenges and I pray I have a
lot of empathy
and sympathy for the people that I deal
with. But I'm also not going to just
hold your hand through the process of
dealing with crap
because I don't have time because I also
have crap to deal with.
And you know if you catch me like
venting my woes, call me out.
You know, I don't know if I do it or not
but we should iron sharp as
iron sharp as iron, right? James 1
verse 13 the Bible says, "Let no man say
when he is tempted,
I'm tempted of God, for God cannot be
tempted with evil, neither tempted he any
man.
But in every man, but every man is
tempted when he is drawn away
of his own lusts and enticed. Then when
lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth
sin, and sin when it is finished bringeth
forth
death." Hey, it's your fault, not God's
fault. And the last point I have for you
when we'll close out with this
is that Christ alone is the cursebreaker,
right? That's it. I mean and literally
this is the proverbial mic drop.
Just turn to Galatians 3. We'll close out
in this verse.
And in Galatians 3, the Bible says,
the Bible says in verse 1, it says, "O
foolish Galatians,
who hath bewitched you that ye should
not obey the truth
before whose eyes Christ hath been
evidently set forth crucified among you?
This only would I learn of you received
ye the Spirit by the works of the law or
by the hearing of faith." Are you so
foolish? "Having begun in the Spirit, are
ye now made perfect by the flesh?
Have ye suffered so many things in vain,
if it be yet in vain?
He therefore that ministereth
to your, to the Spirit, to you the Spirit,
and worketh miracles among you,
doeth he it by the works of the law or
by the hearing of faith?"
Even as Abraham believed God and it was
accounted
to him for righteousness. Now skip down to
verse 10. It says, "For as many
are, for as many as are the works of the
law, are under the curse, for it is written,
'Cursed is everyone that continueth not
in all things,
which are written in the book of the law
to do them,
but that no man is justified by the law
of the sight of God, it is evident.
For the just shall live by faith, and the
law is not of faith,
but the man that doeth them shall live
in them." And then verse 13, this is, this
is the mic drop right here,
"Christ hath redeemed us from the curse
of the law."
"Being made a curse for us, for it is
written,
'Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a
tree.'
That the blessing of Abraham might come
on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ,
that we might receive the promise of the
Spirit through faith. Brethren, I speak
after the manner of man,
though it be but a man's covenant, yet if
it be
confirmed, no man disannuleth or
addeth thereto.
Now to Abraham and his seed were the
promise made. He said, 'Not
as and to the seeds, as of many, but as
of one, and to thy seeds, which is
Christ.'" You know, and I don't normally
do this, but I mean,
you know, they're so charismatic and
they're so everything. I mean isn't verse
13 just like a proverbial mic drop?
Like it's over. He became a curse for us.
He paid it all, so stop trying to take
credit
for something that's not yours. Stop
trying
to be, you know, the hero in the story.
The hero in the story is Jesus Christ. The
hero that saved the world
is Jesus Christ. It's not Superman,
and it's not Spider-Man, and it's not
your
warped idea of heroism. It's Jesus
Christ. So if you're feeling sorry for
yourself today,
then don't come to this church because
nobody's gonna feel sorry for you.
Get off your high horse, get, you know,
lift yourself up,
have someone pray for you, pray for
yourself, read your Bible, show up to
church,
and then go, you know, kick some
spiritual butt. I mean, I don't know how to say it.
Let's close in a word of prayer. Heavenly
Father, Lord, thank you so much for today.
Thank you for your blessings.
Thank you for your scripture, Lord, from
beginning to end that teaches us that, hey,
we got to own up to this thing
of life. That the choices we make have
consequences
and that we execute those consequences.
So, Lord, if we've sinned today, help us
to come
humbly to your throne and ask for
forgiveness
and move on. And Lord, help us not to just
sit there and ruminate
and blame everybody else for our
problems, Lord.
But instead, trust and have faith and
walk
blindly in your word knowing that you
will provide for us.
That you'll never leave us or forsake us.
Thank you for your word, Lord. Thank you
for today. In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen. And let's turn our hymnals over to
page 74.
74. We'll close out in a Christmas hymn.
The First Noel. Hopefully I don't
butcher this one. You know, it's my dad's
fault I can't sing. Nah, I'm just kidding.
I'm just kidding. My dad actually sings
really well. Like, he's actually a great
singer. So if anything, it's my fault
because my wife's heard him. He has a
great voice. 74. The First Noel.