So we see here a couple of things then. Firstly, that the power behind a blessing is the Holy Spirit. And your life is blessed when you identify with Christ. Ephesians 1:6 says “We are blessed with every blessing in heavenly places in Christ”. I don’t have to work for blessing, I just need to receive blessing.
The power behind a curse is a demonic spirit. Curses are the result of the law of God being broken in some way. Jesus has redeemed us from all curses that come about as a result of breaking God’s law. To redeem means to pay the full ransom price - to pay the full price to set someone free. So if Jesus paid the full price, how much price do I have to pay? None! If Jesus has provided for me to be blessed, how much do I have to do to earn His blessing? Nothing - I need to just believe. So we’ll see as we get to how a person remains free, that the key for our victory is faith - not trying harder. The harder I try, the more I come under the curse of the law. I’m called to live differently. I’m called to live as a blessed person. So I am a blessed person, regardless of what is going on around me - I am blessed. I am blessed through faith in Christ. It’s not an external thing, it’s an internal thing. You are blessed. You are blessed in every way. You are blessed by God in every dimension of your life. You don’t have to earn the blessings; they’re something that comes when we identify with Christ. They are released through faith. We’ll talk a little bit about that later on. So we know what a blessing is and what a cursing is.
I’m going to go a little bit further now and look at Generational curses and Iniquity. I want to show you a couple of scriptures. We’ll look at the first few verses of Exodus 20, these are what we call the 10 commandments. We’ll read from verse 2 to verse 6:
2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 “You shall have no other gods before Me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
So you notice here, a very clear warning against idolatry. So as we look at this verse, we begin to see that God sees people as families, interconnected families. Notice that, when we look at people, we see them as individuals. When God sees people, He sees them as part of a family line. So God views people generationally, and His plan is for His blessing to be generational. God desires blessing to flow from one generation to another. So remember, blessing is God’s favour. Blessing is the flow of the life of the Spirit around us. God’s plan is that blessing flow from one generation to another. That as you walk with God, your children benefit from your godly life.
In other words, without doing anything, they can receive great favour from God, because they are the children of someone living rightly for God. God’s intention is that each generation should build on what the previous generation established, or accomplished. So in God’s original design, blessing would flow from one generation to another. Each generation would have the advantage of what their parents had done, and they could go further. In other words, God’s desire and plan is that parents would leave a Godly legacy. This isn’t always seen at the beginning of a person’s life but it does show up in the latter part of their life. We often don’t notice that the little choices that we make each day are leading us on a certain course.
I’ll just give you an example. My wife’s parents have both died now. But I remember very vividly going to her father’s 80th birthday. It was a family celebration, and present at the celebration were all the family, and also friends. There were five children who had all grown up and all got married, and all had grandchildren - there were many grandchildren there of different ages. At a certain point in the evening, we began to celebrate and honour Joy’s father. Each of the 20 grandchildren stood up and shared briefly why they loved their grandfather.
He had intentionally over the years, walked with God, sacrificially given to the work of the Lord, and had made a decision to invest in each of his grandchildren. So when they were from the age of about 5 through the age of 11, he would take them on holidays. Two, three, or five of them together, and they would have a grandfather holiday. He would take them, and they would have a morning devotional, and pray together, and read the Bible together. They would go out and have fun together. Everyone had an opportunity to choose an activity and plan the day. He did all kinds of things over many years. In other words, he believed in generational legacy. So rather than spending money wildly on all kinds of things, he invested in his family. So at the age of 80, all of the grandchildren were able to testify how they loved him, and what they learned from him.
His brother was also present at the celebration. His brother had taken a different course in his life. He had rejected Christ, and he was now on his second marriage. He had committed adultery and been unfaithful, and now he was with another person. He had two daughters, neither of whom was married, and they were unusual people - and he had no grandchildren. I looked, and of course when his brother was growing up, he’d laughed at his faith in Christ. But here at the age of 80, you could look and you could see the life’s course, and the result of the decisions.