Generational Legacy Part 3 Series

PRAYER

Father, open my eyes to see Your Word.

Open my ears to hear.

Open my mind to understand.

And open my heart so I may receive Your Word today.

AMEN

A legacy as defined by Webster’s dictionary is anything that has been handed down from an ancestor.

Last week I shared with you the story of two men. One of the men was Max Jukes who lived in the 1700’s.

Max was a known atheist and he lived a godless life. He married an ungodly woman and from their union over the years there came the following; 310 died as people deeply in debt, 150 were criminals, 7 were murders, 100 were drunks, and more than half of the females in the family became prostitutes.

From their union, the 540 descendents of Max Jukes cost the state over one and a quarter million dollars.

I also told you about another man that lived at the same time as Max. His name was Jonathan Edwards.

Jonathon was a man of God who married a Godly woman. Of the 1394 known descendants of Jonathon Edwards, 13 became college presidents, 65 professors, 3 US Senators, 30 judges, 100 lawyers, 60 doctors, 75 Army and Navy officers, 100 preachers, 60 authors, 1 vice president, and 295 other college graduates who went on to prominence. The descendants of Jonathon Edwards cost the state nothing.

Tonight, I want to share with you the ways that we pass the curses and blessings on to the generations that follow us.

Just as physical characteristics are passed on from generation to generation, your hair color, eye color, height, and just like other physical tendencies are passed on, like eye sight, health problems, and so on, in the same way, we can be handing spiritual and emotional curses and blessings to our children and grandchildren.

Last week we looked at the covenant blessing as it is stated in Genesis 12:1-3 and 17:4-8.

The promise that God gave to Abraham was an everlasting promise that was to be for all generations.

God made this covenant with Abraham because man needed a way to be redeemed from the sins they were committing. Because of man’s need for redemption, God provides mankind with this covenant of blessing.

Blessing that is, if we the people of God walk in accordance with God’s plan for us.

In order to walk in this covenant we must be obedient. If we are obedient we will be blessed and if we are disobedient we will be cursed.

This is all explained in Deuteronomy 28:1-68 when God re-establishes His covenant with Moses and the people of Israel as the exit Egypt and prepare to enter the Promised Land.

Allow me to summarize that chapter; If we live in obedience to God, He will, bless the fruit of your womb, bless the crops of your land, bless the calves of your heard, the lambs of your flock, He will keep you from disease, your enemies will be driven away from you, you will be blessed when you come in and you will be blessed when you go out, everything you put your hand to will be blessed, God will establish you as a holy people, He will open up the storehouses of heaven, He will send rain in season, and He will make you the head not the tail.

God will do all these things if we are careful and follow His commands.

It is a covenant of blessing for those who trust and obey but if you read on in Deuteronomy 28 you can see that for those who refuse to be obedient it is a covenant of curses.

If we live outside of God’s covenant we can be promised destruction.

The spiritual and emotional generational legacies of blessings and curses are passed on from generation to generation by the simple fact of whether or not we are obeying God or living in rebellion towards Him.

Obedience equals blessings and rebellion equals curses.

How does God feel about rebellion? In 1 Samuel 15:23 the man of God explains that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.

It is very clear in the Scriptures that God hates witchcraft so I guess we know how He feels about rebellion then.

The end result of a person who lives outside the blessings of God is that eventually the curses will catch up with them, maybe not in their lifetime but somewhere down the road of their family line, it will catch up.

Rebellion is sin and sin that is never dealt with can be passed from generation to generation and the only thing that can break that generational curse is the power of God through the blood of Jesus Christ.

If it is not broken then eventually the secret sins of one generation will become the open sins of the next generation.