Walls of Jericho

- Well, good morning, Springhouse.

Are you glad to be here this morning?

Has God been good to you this week?

Amen.

Well, be sure to tell somebody about that today.

We always want to be in a position to share

about God's goodness and glory in our lives,

so be sure to share with somebody what God has done.

If you're joining us on live stream,

thank you for joining us this morning.

Just a few things for this morning.

I know you're coming and bringing your dollar

for those who are in need.

I have a couple of announcements for us.

First of all, on Tuesday morning,

we will be doing something called

the Business Collective here at Springhouse.

Josh McLeod and Justin Beshears lead that,

and if you are a business owner, entrepreneur,

aspiring manager, anything of that sort

and in those positions, I encourage you to come

and be a part of this fellowship

and this teaching opportunities, Time of Connection.

Nine o'clock here at Springhouse,

we'll feed you breakfast,

be a great teaching time for connection.

That's on Tuesday morning.

And then Easter Sunday is right there, it's coming,

and we've got a change here at Springhouse,

and it is that our time of service for this gathering

is going to change and it will be starting at 11 a.m.

beginning on Easter Sunday.

And that will carry forward on into the future.

So if you come at 1030 on Easter Sunday or afterward,

you will know what it is to be on time to church.

And so we encourage you to fellowship

and share the blessings of God in that.

And we'll welcome you, but we do have a time change,

so be aware of that.

The service will end at 1230 beginning on Easter Sunday

as well.

And then lastly, we have some newcomers.

And Shari and I were talking, actually last night,

she was saying, somebody in the church was saying,

what is this deal with this app thing

and how do you sign up for it?

And you may have some similar questions

if you're new or new word to the church,

and we just wanna meet you, we wanna love on you,

we wanna invite you to be a part of our family.

And so if you've never attended

one of our newcomer luncheons, I invite you to come.

There's a QR code there,

and the reason we want you to do that,

it's actually gonna show you how to sign up

for the app I was just talking about.

But if you scan that,

we'll be able to get you registered for lunch

so that we have enough food for you.

We wanna make sure we have enough food

for everybody who comes.

And the pastoral team will be there,

some of our ministry leaders will be there.

And we wanna share with you our heart

about the ministry here at Springhouse.

We wanna invite you to be a part of an imperfect family.

Is that true, Springhouse family?

Imperfect family who serves a perfect God,

who serves a perfect sovereign God.

And so we want to invite you to be a part of that.

We'll be on May 4th, okay, so it'll be May 4th.

So anybody you're bringing,

maybe visitors in the next few weeks,

I wanna give them opportunity to come as well.

Are you guys ready to get into the Word today?

I've heard this, and I'm so thrilled

to hear it a second time.

It's a good word.

Would you guys welcome Pastor Ronnie

as he continues the greatest stories ever told?

(congregation applauding)

(gentle music)

- Yeah, May the 4th be with you.

You already knew that, right?

Okay, I just gotta say this

because I just have to say it doesn't mean anything

or have anything to do with anything.

But yeah, I'm aware that my t-shirt's a little long

and all that stuff and it maybe not look cool.

I have given up.

(congregation laughing and applauding)

And some of you need to give up.

Just saying, yeah, you know who you are.

Okay, we're gonna talk about Jericho this morning,

but we're not gonna talk about the battle.

We're not gonna talk about the walls and all that stuff.

You probably already know about the battle.

You know about the walls.

If you don't, I can encapsulate it for you in 15 seconds.

♪ Joshua fed the battle of Jericho ♪

♪ Jericho, Jericho ♪

♪ And the walls coming tumbling down ♪

That's it.

So you know that now, but we're gonna talk about three.

We're gonna talk about three incidents

connected to the battle.

Two of them happened before.

One of them happened after.

And we're gonna start with an encounter between two spies.

Joshua sent two spies into Jericho and a woman.

And we're gonna read a passage of scripture

about what the woman said to the spies.

So would you stand with me?

And don't complain or I'll make you stand more.

Before the spies lay down for the night,

she went up on the roof and said to them,

"I know that the Lord has given you this land

"and that a great fear of you has fallen on us

"so that all who live in this country

"are melting in fear because of you.

"We have heard how the Lord dried up the water

"of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt

"and what you did to Shihon and Og,

"the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan,

"whom you completely destroyed.

"When we heard of it, our hearts melted in fear

"and everyone's courage failed because of you.

"For the Lord your God is God in heaven above

"and on the earth below."

Father, I thank you for your word.

I thank you for the life that is in your word.

And I pray for the presence of the Holy Spirit to be here

so that that life may be ministered to us in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

Joshua sent two spies into Jericho,

but their cover was blown.

And the officials of Jericho came to understand,

"Hey, these guys are spies.

"We need to go get them.

"We need to do something about that."

And they knew that they had been staying

with this woman, Rahab.

And so they go to Rahab and they say,

"You know those two guys who have been staying with you?

"They're spies and we need to get them.

"They're from the Israelites."

And Rahab goes, boom.

She didn't have a microphone on.

Rahab goes, "Oh no, I had no idea that they were spies.

"Oh my goodness."

She had hid them up on the roof

and she covered them over with some flax, flax.

And she said, "Now you just missed them.

"They're headed for the Jordan.

"I bet if you leave right now, you can go and get them."

And so they hurried off, they scurried off.

And Rahab protected the spies and she made a deal with them.

She said, "I'm gonna cover for you guys

"and I'm gonna help you get away.

"But when you come and you take this city,

"I want you to save my family.

"I want you to spare my family and me."

So they said, "Deal, we're in on that."

Rahab was a prostitute

and there's just no way of getting around it.

She was, the New Testament tells us that twice.

The Old Testament tells us that.

She was a prostitute.

And what she did was betray her country.

What she did was she committed treason.

We're gonna learn two things from this,

this encounter that she had.

Back in 1976, there was a book came out

called "Daughter of Destiny."

It was about a woman named Catherine Kuhlman.

And Catherine Kuhlman was a faith healer,

a very prominent faith healer in the mid 20th century.

And boy, does it sound weird to say that.

But in the mid 20th century.

And when that book came out,

I had just come back to the Lord the year before

and I was interested in getting a copy of it.

And so I went down to Conneal Bookstore in Nashville

and a guy who was running it was a guy named Bob Huey.

And Huey was a character himself.

But Huey saw that I had that book and he came up to me

and he said, "Do you know what I learned from that book?"

And I said, "No, Bob, what did you learn?"

She said, "I learned that God uses cracked pots."

(congregation laughing)

And that stuck with me.

I mean, it stuck with me.

I thought, that's pretty.

And you know, and I read the book

and Catherine Kuhlman was a cracked pot.

(congregation laughing)

For sure.

But God used her.

I'm a cracked pot.

I come from a long line of cracked pots.

And so do you.

And some of those cracked pots have been very prominent

and very famous.

Simon Peter, Jonah, King David, Moses, Abraham.

In fact, you can't name a person who isn't a cracked pot.

And God uses them.

And Rahab was a prostitute.

Now, I'm not saying it's okay to be a prostitute

and it doesn't matter what you do.

What I am saying is that regardless of your past

and even in spite of your present, God can use you.

He absolutely can.

When I first came to the church back in '88,

there was a, I was gonna say an elderly couple.

They probably were younger than I am now.

But there was an older couple in the church,

real sweet couple, faithful in attendance

and faithful in giving.

His name was Carl.

And we had a situation where we were kind of short on ushers.

We needed some help with that.

We needed some help.

Well, back actually in those days,

all the ushers, they'd just take up the offering.

Nobody needed help finding a seat or anything

'cause there were plenty of them.

But I went to Carl one day and I said,

"Carl, would you be willing to help us

take up the offering?"

Oh no, brother Ronnie, I can't do that.

See, I've been divorced.

(congregation laughing)

And that ticked me off.

But not at Carl, not at Carl at all.

I'm totally good with Carl at the devil.

Because one of the enemy's greatest lies

is that you can't do anything because you're unclean,

you're unworthy.

And you know, the most potent lies are the ones

that are seasoned with a little bit of truth.

And the truth is you are unclean.

You are unworthy.

The lie is God can't use you because of that.

That's the lie.

And so God uses this prostitute to take care

of these Jewish spies who've come to Jericho

before they enter the Promised Land.

Now, why did she do this?

Why did she betray her nation?

Why was she treasonous?

Benedict Arnold, if you will.

Does anybody know who Benedict Arnold is anymore?

You know, actually, well, I'm not gonna get into that.

(congregation laughing)

No, no.

The reason why she did it can be summed up in one word,

faith.

Faith.

Twice in the New Testament, Rahab is noted as an example,

along with Abraham, a pretty heavy hitter there.

Abraham, Rahab, twice they're noted

as being a person of real faith.

One of the places is over in James 2, verse 25.

James 2:25

"In the same way was not even Rahab the prostitute

considered righteous for what she did

when she gave lodging to the spies

and sent them off in a different direction."

Yeah.

Well, let's read the next one first.

Hebrews 11, 31.

"By faith, the prostitute Rahab,

because she welcomed the spies,

was not killed with those who were disobedient."

Now, how do we know it was by faith?

How do we know that's why she did that?

I mean, for most of us,

see if you track with this, see if this makes sense.

For most of us, hey, I know you guys are gonna win.

I know you guys are gonna come

and you're gonna take over the city

and you're gonna destroy everything.

So I wanna be on your side.

That's probably how most of us would think,

but that's not how she thought.

Remember what we read and how she stated

what they all knew, what everybody in the city knew,

but apparently not everyone drew the same conclusion

that she drew.

You see, they say knowledge is power and knowledge is power,

but if you don't have wisdom, knowledge, dynamite's power,

but it can kill you.

It can blow your fingers off.

They all knew something,

but she drew a different conclusion

than everyone else was drawing.

What the conclusion she drew was,

the Lord your God is God in heaven above

and on the earth below.

And so I wanna be with Him.

I believe, and that's why she was doing this.

Everyone in Jericho had the same information

and they were scared.

They were afraid, but when Rahab heard it,

she believed and by believing she knew

the Lord your God is God,

heaven above and on the earth below.

And because of her faith, she didn't just wear the t-shirt,

she didn't just have the bumper sticker,

she didn't just learn the language, talk the lingo.

She put her faith into action.

And James describes it as the kind of action

that proves your faith.

He says, faith without that kind of action is dead.

Faith without that kind of action is just words.

It was about faith then, as it is always about faith now

and always will be about faith until faith becomes sight.

So two things that we learned.

God uses cracked pots and it's about faith.

Next incident that happened and y'all been so good,

I'm not gonna make you stand up,

but I'm thinking about it.

But you can sit there and let's read it anyway.

And then this, while Joshua was there near Jericho,

he looked up and saw right in front of him,

a man standing, holding his drawn sword.

Joshua stepped up to him and said,

"Whose side are you on?

"Ours are our enemies."

He said, "Neither, I'm commander of God's army.

"I've just arrived."

Joshua fell face down to the ground and worshiped.

He asked, "What orders does my master have for his servant?

"God's army commander ordered Joshua,

"take your sandals off your feet.

"The place you are standing is holy."

Joshua did it.

I chose the message intentionally for this

because it's clearer actually, I think,

than the other translations.

Because all the other translations

basically have Joshua coming up and going,

"Are you for us or are you for our enemies?"

Now, if he had just stopped with the first question,

that'd been okay.

But when he added the second question,

what he's really saying is, "Whose side are you on?

"You on our side, you on their side."

"Neither, I've come to take charge."

We have, and I would say especially in this country,

but I think a lot of people have,

maybe in all large countries in particular,

we have a whose side are you on mentality.

And we're especially, at this point in our nation's history,

we're swimming in a whose side are you on culture.

That's what we're doing.

And it is about as far off the mark as you could possibly be.

I know no one remembers this 'cause I didn't remember it

until I looked back at the last time that I taught.

And at that time I said,

"The wrong question can be worse than the wrong answer."

Because the wrong answer could be fixed

with the right answer.

But the wrong question just keeps festering,

just keeps going and going and going.

And let me tell you whose side are you on

is the wrong question.

I'm gonna put something up here.

And some of you are already there and that's great.

And some of you got there before I got there

and that's terrific.

But some of you are hopefully gonna be offended by it

or at least taken aback and if so, good.

God is not on your side.

He's not, no, no, no, he's not.

He's not on your side.

You see, because if he were on your side,

then there'd be times that he could not be on my side

and I wouldn't like that.

And if he's always on my side,

there're gonna be times that he's not gonna be on your side.

And you probably aren't gonna like that either.

Well, why can't he be on everyone's side?

Have you ever seen "Bruce Almighty"?

(congregation laughing)

Well, if you hadn't, you should.

'Cause it's a good movie and I love the scene

where he decides that he's finally just gonna say yes

to everybody.

I'm gonna say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

And you're gonna say everybody gets a yes.

And then they have this lottery

and there's over $6 million to be won,

but 400,000 people win it and they get $17 each.

And they don't like the lottery anymore.

I don't know what does a lottery ticket cost.

It's gotta cost more than they're giving away.

But anyway, yeah.

He is not on your side, but he is for you.

And the difference is vast.

They couldn't be, he couldn't be any vaster.

You may go, well, he's gotta be on our side.

Maybe not my side, but he's on our side.

Look at how successful we are.

Look at how powerful.

Look at how wealthy we are.

So we got a lot of stuff, huh?

Have you never read Psalm 73 where the Psalmist says,

"When I saw the prosperity of the wicked,

"I almost stumbled."

We're not wicked.

That's another sermon.

We're not going there today.

But when I saw prosperity on the people

that I didn't think should have it,

I almost stumbled until I went to the house of the Lord.

I got to the house of the Lord

and I considered what their end would be.

Have you never read where Jesus said,

time is coming, a day is coming

when the first shall be last.

The last shall be first.

And he seemed pretty happy about it,

the fact that that time was coming.

So you can't look at the stuff,

you can't look at the influence,

you can't look at the prosperity and go,

well, he's on our side.

Well, he must be on our side because we're for Israel.

Now, some of you are gonna be real upset with me about this,

but I just need to say,

there have been many who were on Israel's side,

but not on God's side and didn't find the favor of God.

So well, for example, well, the kings of Israel.

The Northern Kingdom had 19 kings.

One of them could possibly be have been considered

a godly king.

The Southern Kingdom, Judah, the house of David,

they had 23 kings.

10 of them, you know, would be in the God column.

Now they kind of jumped back and forth,

but they'd be in the God columns.

So that's 42 kings and 11 of them.

I don't know, you do the math.

So just because I'm on Israel's side

doesn't necessarily mean I'm in favor of God.

It's not that simple.

Well, he must be on our side because scripture says,

if God is on our side, then who can be against us?

Y'all gonna let me get away with that.

Come on.

No, no, no, no, no.

It does not say that.

It says, if God is for us, who can be against us?

And I know that he is for us.

I know that he's for you because Romans 8, 28 says,

and we know that in all things, God works for the good

of those who love him, who've been called

according to his purpose.

Oh, pastor, I don't know if I'm called or not.

You know, you're called.

You're staying, I mean, you're retired, but you're up there.

You had a calling.

Pastor Kevin's called.

My kid's Sunday school teacher, they're called.

I don't know if I'm called.

Are you saved?

Because if you belong to Jesus,

if you have become a follower of Christ, you've been called.

You have been called to be conformed

to the image of his son, which is, that's a calling now.

That is a heavy duty calling.

He cannot work for our good and always be on our side.

He just simply can't.

Have you ever wanted something and you got it,

and then you go, uh-oh.

Okay, yeah, I mean, I'm asking,

I'm gonna pretend that y'all are,

that you're sitting there considering every word

that is being said.

Have you ever wanted something and then you got it

and you had to go, uh-oh.

This wasn't what I was bargaining for.

When I was in the fourth grade,

my teacher was this woman.

Her name is Margaret Meek.

She was my mother.

And some of you might think, oh, cool, man.

Yeah, your mom was your teacher.

That ain't cool.

No, not at all.

She was an excellent teacher.

Now don't get me wrong,

and a lot of people who had her in school,

a lot of people who had her in Bible classes

will tell you she was an excellent teacher.

But I wasn't too keen on it because for all the world,

it seemed that she was not on my side.

In fact, she often would bend over backwards

to make it clear that she was not on my side.

And the reason why she would do that was because in fact,

she was not on my side.

But she was for me.

She was for me more than she could possibly

have been for anyone.

'Cause I was her one and only.

I didn't have to compete with, nevermind.

She was totally for me.

And another reason why God can't always be on our side

is because we're ignorant.

We just don't know much.

A lot of people at the end of their emails,

they have a quote, they have a tag there,

mine, 2 Timothy 2 23,

"Don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments

"which only produce quarrels."

After close to 40 years in the ministry,

I decided that's what I want people to know.

Don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments

'cause they do, they produce quarrels

and just all kinds of mischief.

This last week, I got an email that Michael Fraser sent out

and I saw his quotes on the end of them.

And one of them was a C.S. Lewis quote, it was good.

I don't remember what it was, but it was good.

But one was a Timothy Keller quote.

And he said this,

"God will only give you what you would have asked for,

"what you would have asked for,

"if you knew everything He knows."

I'm gonna pause for consideration there

'cause that's something to consider.

Why did Joshua send the spies into Jericho?

You know, I've known this story

for probably at least 70 years.

I'm sure by the time I was five,

I knew that Joshua sent the spies in

and Rahab took them in and she helped them escape

and put the scarlet cord down out of the window.

And I've known that.

Never occurred to me till this last week

or maybe the week before.

I mean, talk about an old dog and new tricks.

You just keep reading the Bible

and God will mess with you,

no matter how old you are or how many times you've read it.

And I thought,

oh, I know why he sent the spies.

I had always kind of wondered about it a little bit

because I thought, well, Moses sent spies

and that didn't work out very well.

So, why did he send spies?

And in the natural,

I think we could all come up with the same conclusion

or all come up with the same idea.

He sent the spies in so they could scout out the enemy

and scout out the weaknesses

and formulate a plan of attack.

Sounds right.

That wasn't why he sent the spies in.

That's why he thought he sent the spies in.

The plan of attack had already been put together.

The plan of attack, in fact, Joshua,

yeah, I missed this.

I need to go back and pick it up.

When Joshua met that guy with a drawn sword,

the commander of the Lord's army,

and said, "What instructions do you have for me?"

I'm sure that's when he got the instruction.

You're gonna march around the city each day

and you're gonna do it in silence.

And on the seventh day, you'll march around seven times

and then you'll shout and that is your battle plan.

That's what you're gonna do.

But that's not the first thing he told him.

What instructions does my Lord have for me?

Take your shoes off.

This is holy ground.

And when we come to God, because when we come to God,

He hasn't come to be on your side.

He has come to take over and be in charge.

And so the first thing that He wants us to do

is not find out what the battle plan is.

The first thing He wants us to do is get our shoes off

and acknowledge where we are and who we're dealing with,

who we're really talking to.

And so, yeah, He wasn't sent.

Those spies didn't go in

so they could formulate a battle plan.

Battle plan was already done.

The spies went in so they could meet a woman

that Joshua had never, didn't know existed

on the face of the earth, had never thought about.

The spies went in so that they could meet Rahab

so that her family could be saved

and they could become a part of the lineage of the Messiah.

Who knew?

We don't know what's going on, people.

We don't know when we pull this string,

what's gonna happen in eternity.

(congregation murmuring)

If there was ever anyone whose side God was on,

it would have been His Son.

And yet it appeared for all the world that His Son had lost,

had been defeated by those who opposed Him.

But that was only because He was for you.

He's for me.

He's for Rahab.

Oh, and He was for His Son too,

because He's exalted Him to the highest place,

giving Him a name that's above every other name,

that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow

and every tongue will confess all hail King Jesus.

It's the second encounter.

Third encounter, third incident, happened after the battle.

It's a man named Achan.

And I'm just gonna scoot these shoes over here.

I might be tempted to slip back into them.

I'm gonna keep my socks on though, you're welcome.

(congregation laughing)

Sometimes victory is not good for us.

Sometimes it's not good for us.

My two grandsons who go to church here, Jack and Bo,

we're on a basketball team this year.

And City League, nine and 10 year old.

And they won every game they played,

most of them by double digits,

until they came to the championship.

And when they came to the championship,

their grandfather has some issues with the officiating.

(congregation laughing)

But that's not why they lost.

They lost because their shots just weren't falling.

And the other team was hot as a pistol.

I mean, they were really on fire.

It was still pretty close.

It was 26, 22, I think something like that.

I gotta believe they were the better team,

but you know, it just wasn't their night.

After the game, when their daddy Jeremy,

who was also the coach, got the players together,

I thought he said the most wonderful thing,

the most profound thing.

He said, "Guys, you learn a lot more from a loss

"than you'll ever learn from a victory."

Wow, that's, you wanna preach?

Because Israel defeated Jericho,

and God had given them this instruction.

He said, "When you go in, it's gonna be the first battle

"you're gonna face in the promised land,

"and you're gonna do it, you're gonna take it,

"destroy everything.

"Nothing belongs to you.

"It all belongs to me.

"Dedicate it to me."

That was the instruction.

But they won, and they got there,

and this man named Achan was tempted by material gain

to ignore the word of the Lord that he had heard.

And so I don't know if anybody can relate

to being tempted by material gain

to ignore the word of the Lord.

Don't know if anybody can relate to that,

but Achan took some things dedicated to the Lord.

He took a beautiful robe,

and who doesn't need a beautiful robe?

And he took $2,600 of silver in today's value.

That's not a whole lot.

$60,000 worth of gold, though.

You know, so I mean, we're talking what, $62,600

and a beautiful robe?

Was it worth it?

If you don't know the story,

the result was the next battle,

the Israelites were defeated

because they had the things that belonged to the Lord.

Among, they had stolen, had them.

And 36 of his fellow Israelites lost their lives.

That's not a whole lot of people.

36 families were grieving the loss of a loved one

because of what this man did.

And it wasn't just those people.

When things came out and they did come out,

Achan and his family were stoned to death and burned.

His wife, maybe wives, I don't know, children,

all that he had.

What you do does not just impact you.

I've been greatly blessed.

I mean, I've had a life that,

you know, if you knew,

from looking at me now, you might go,

"Yeah, I ain't trading with you."

But if you knew my whole life,

a lot of, almost all of you go, "I'll take that.

I'll take that."

I've had a greatly blessed life.

Never been in the hospital,

never missed a meal.

Obviously.

It's just been,

my first marriage was a wonderful marriage.

My wife passed.

My second marriage, that was a wonderful marriage too.

I'm two for two, people.

You know, it's been good.

I don't deserve it.

But I believe that much of the blessing

has come from a fateful heritage

that was handed down to me.

My parents both just sacrificed

and really served the Lord all of their lives.

On my mother's side, her dad was a Pentecostal preacher

back when that was absolutely not a cool thing to be.

In fact, my understanding is,

I don't know a whole lot about this,

but my understanding is that his family

was kind of like what my dad would call muckety mucks.

They were big deals up in Benton County.

And when my grandfather decided

to become a Pentecostal preacher, answered that call,

they just owned him.

It wouldn't have anything to do with him

anymore after that.

On my dad's side, it's a little bit,

it's a little, yeah.

His dad wasn't a preacher.

He was a sharecropper and he kind of died young.

I know his mom though was a very fateful,

believing woman, raised six kids as a widow

through the depression and everything.

And I had a cousin who did some research on further back

and there are a number of preachers in my line.

Most of them couldn't stay places very long

'cause they got run out of town.

They might've been a little bit troublemakers or something.

I don't know.

But this heritage,

I did nothing to receive it.

I did have to receive it.

And you know, there is that part of the equation.

You do have to receive it, but I did not earn it.

Aiken's lack of faith and actions brought disaster

on his family, on his family line.

Rahab's faith and actions brought salvation for her family.

And not just the saving of their lives when Jericho fell,

but also, like I said, they entered into

the family line of Messiah.

We don't know anything about those who came before them.

We don't know.

But we know what their actions produced

for those who came after them.

All families have skeletons.

My family's got skeletons.

I know of a whole bunch of them

if you include my generation.

But all families have skeletons.

And generational curses can be very real things.

Whether it's addictions or fear or poor health

or poverty or there's all kinds of things

that can be passed down that's bad stuff.

But somewhere along the family line,

someone has to take the faith of Rahab

and stand up and go, "It ends here.

"It stops here.

"I'm gonna be faithful to the Lord.

"I'm gonna pass on a blessing."

Someone has to be the curse breaker.

I asked Wayne Barry to sing a song

that he had written at this point,

but unfortunately, he can't be here this week.

So I'm just gonna tell you about it.

The song was written over 30 years ago,

came from a visit that he had

with a couple of his great aunts.

And they filled him in on some family history

he didn't know about.

And the song says, "My great grandfather was an angry man.

"He abused his family.

"And he passed along that heritage

"through the roots of our family tree.

"But his sons rose up against him,

"drove him from his home,

"never knowing where he ended up

"or if he died alone.

"My grandfather was an honest man.

"He tried to do what's right.

"But somewhere in the darkness,

"he fell without a fight.

"So he took his sons and his dignity,

"climbed up in his truck,

"drove off in the shadows,

"trying to break his string of luck.

"But I will not run.

"I will not run.

"By God's grace, I'll stand and face

"each new day as it comes.

"My father was a godly man.

(gentle music)

"And of that, there is no doubt.

"But he told me once when he was young,

"he tried to find his way out.

"But his love for God and mom and me

"was greater than his fear.

"And Jesus Christ was glorified

"by the life dad lived down here.

"And now I will not run.

"I will not run.

"Family curse has been reversed.

"Now there's a blessing for my son.

"And I will not run."

Jesus was our curse breaker.

And you have been called to be conformed

to the image of Jesus Christ.

Some of you already are curse breakers.

Some of you have already put a stop

to things that were flowing, the bad stuff.

Some of you want to be curse breakers.

Some of you have never thought about it until today.

And it's why you're here.

'Cause the Holy Spirit brought you here.

(gentle music)

God is for you.

And if he is for you, there's nothing

that he can't do through you.

Things that will affect generations to come

and echo into eternity.

And if God could use the prostitute Rahab

to bring blessing to her family,

he can certainly use you regardless of any labels

that have been placed on you by others or by yourself.

Would you stand with me?

I'm gonna ask our elders, those who are gonna pray

with people to come down.

We're gonna be doing a worship song here.

If you came today and you need prayer,

it may be about being a curse breaker or the need for it.

It may be about something else, maybe about anything.

You're welcome to come.

And these brothers and sisters will pray for you.

[ Music ]