Do Not Curse
Curses are real. A curse is the desire, or expression of a wish that misfortune, evil, doom, etc., befall someone. For example: “I hope he falls down the steps and breaks his neck.” That’s a curse.
By extension, to curse someone is to do or say something to, or about them that would in effect cause evil or destructive things to happen to them. For example: Unforgiveness amounts to a curse that may bind and impede someone else’s spiritual growth or financial success. A curse is the antithesis of a prayer. It may possibly create a “cloud” over a person, group or nation.
In Haiti I saw the devastating results of being a cursed nation: About 200 years ago Voodoo shaman [priests], to gain favor with demon spirits and assuage the capricious temperaments of countless evil spirits, made a solemn pact with the devil.
They swore allegiance to Satan and handed him their souls, along with their land, their children and all future generations of Haitians. (Pat Robertson mentioned this fact on air after the latest earthquake to rock Haiti; saying it may have exacerbated Haiti’s poverty and misfortune. The press excoriated him, calling him heartless and senseless. But Pat Robertson is extremely compassionate.) Unfortunately, immigrant Haitians may still be bound by that curse.
Jesus, by example and in word, taught us not to pronounce a curse upon anyone. That would be the exact opposite of how we’re supposed to act.
But God may curse anything that stands or acts in opposition to his will: He cursed the earth to cause it to rebel against Adam, because Adam had acted in defiance of his direct order. (But he never cursed Adam – or any other person that I can recall.)
Genesis 3: 17-19 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
This Scripture is an allegorical presentation of truth. It’s revealed to us in a rural setting, but applies to all of mankind everywhere. Most of us are not farmers, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have our share of “thorns” and “thistles” in life to contend with.
God pronounced the first universal, generational curse, because everyone has had to live under it, even Jesus. (Later we’ll find that Christians are partially exempt from the curse.)
It is God’s ultimate desire to bless his whole creation, every one of us. But our transgressions have kept him from doing it.
To limit or cancel the curse so he could bless his creation, God made a covenant with Abraham that would overrule the curse and allow him to bless Abraham, his offspring, and through them all peoples on earth.
The covenant was an amazing all-encompassing document with countless intrinsic blessings. And all Abraham had to do was to keep from violating their contract. Spiritually speaking, he was not to “eat the apple” of disobedience, as Adam had.
Their simple contract amounted to this: “If you will believe in me and follow me, I will be your God!” (There were no complex rules or difficult laws to complicate it.)
When the prophet Moses came into the picture, he attached a system of laws and sacrifices to the Abrahamic covenant to give it further definition. The law was to define sin, disparage it, and through sacrifices, to expunge it when one inadvertently fell into it.
The Mosaic laws were expressly designed to keep worshipers from breaking covenant with God and thereby losing their right to his blessing and favor.
A defiant self-will has always been the major disqualifier that keeps people from receiving the full package of benefits and blessings inherent in God’s covenants. As a fact of biblical history, God’s dealings with the house of Israel, was always complicated by their stubbornness and rebellion.
The law’s original purpose was to provide guardrails to keep God’s people aligned with his will. The covenants were pathways to success and victory.
God’s solemn covenants, so rich in blessings, and protected by his moral laws, also contain multiple warnings of dire consequences for anyone who would break covenant with God.
Deuteronomy 28: 15-21 If you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:
You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.
The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.
The Lordwill send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him. The Lord will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess.
* Note: The person was not cursed, but his efforts, labor and surroundings were.
To some degree, the U.S. is under a curse. God has been thrown out of our country on his ears. He’s no longer needed or welcome. We have chosen to go our own way and do our own thing as a nation! (The recent “Occupy Wall Street” mobs that plagued some of our cities, actually “looks like” the America that God sees when he looks upon our confusion, chaos, greed, anger and so on.)
Many times in scripture the Lord had to reissue his warnings to those who had broken covenant with him. He sent prophets like Malachi to chastise them.
Malachi 2: 2 “If you do not listen, and if you do not set your heart to honor my name,” says the LORD Almighty, “I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not set your heart to honor me.”
Surely God is just kidding! He’s not that easily offended! I’m sure he understands our national desire for sexual diversity and equality, sex before marriage, equality of all religions, success above ethics and expediency over character! (Sarcastically speaking)
On the front page of one section of our city’s newspaper, a recent picture of Ellen Degeneres and her “wife” was brazenly displayed. “Well what’s wrong with that?” some of you may ask. If you don’t know, you don’t know scripture.
Malachi brought an additional charge against the people: They had refused, or neglected, to bring their tithe in to God’s storehouse.
Malachi 3: 9 “You are under a curse – the whole nation of you – because you are robbing me.”
I didn’t think God was that picky, that interested in whether we tithe or not. (Sarcastically speaking)
After receiving a double portion of Elijah’s anointing, his disciple Elisha the prophet, once called down a curse on some disrespectful youth:
II Kings 2: 23, 24 As (Elisha) was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. “Go on up, you baldhead!” He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. (They then rushed off to the nearest Convenient Care!)
Elisha was within his rights to do what he did; yet it showed a lack of self-control on his part. God desires a more Christ-like response from us.
Jesus taught his followers not to call a curse down on anyone:
Luke 9: 52-55 He sent messengers ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” But Jesus turned and rebuked them.
Paul in his Roman Letter, taught his readers to treat even their enemies in a merciful way:
Romans 12: 14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.
His Jewish enemies had dragged Jesus before Pilate; but Pilate found no reason to imprison or crucify him. Yet the Jewish leaders kept yelling: “Crucify him!” Pilate was reluctant to condemn him.
Eager to excuse Pilate from guilt, the Jewish leaders invoked a curse upon themselves and their offspring:
Matthew 27: 25 All the people answered, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!”
Now, Jesus would likely be condemned and executed: and as he predicted, all his disciples and friends deserted him.
Peter denied ever knowing him. And desperate to emphasize his innocence, Peter called down curses on himself. (Something like: “May God strike me dead if I’m not telling the truth.”)
Matthew 26: 74 (Peter) began to call down curses on himself and he swore to them, “I don’t know the man!”
We started today remembering the curse that God pronounced upon the earth because of Adam’s sin.
Now great news! God has abolished the curse for those of us who are in Christ Jesus, we who walk in faith and righteousness. We’re not under the earth’s automatic curse. We are saved and free from the Adamic curse!
In Christ the power of every curse has been potentially broken, including all generational curses, even curses related to our own sin and disobedience.
The earth itself is destined to be curse free, and therefore free from every residual effect of every former curse.
As soon as Jesus gets back everything will be instantly and permanently perfected! Oh happy day!
Revelation 22: 3, 5C “No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. And they will reign forever and ever.”
This should inspire us to bless others in our hearts and minds, and also verbally, because we are blessed! We’re taught to bless and to be a blessing! Therefore we must never curse anyone.
Curses like boomerangs, tend to come back at us. On the other hand, blessings usually return bringing us additional blessing.
We may bring a curse on ourselves and our posterity by soaking our brain in pornography, drugs, alcohol, adultery, the occult and eastern religions, etc.
It’s possible that some of us may have been guilty of cursing others: We may have cursed our children or grandchildren by what we’ve said to them, the names we’ve called them, or because of how we’ve labeled them. (Bad, mean, ugly, stupid, idiot…)
We may have cursed our children by raising them without a clear knowledge of God and proper biblical training. Or, by being emotionally instable, angry, jealous, etc.
We may have cursed our children by spoiling them, by verbal disparagement, or by allowing them to grow up without having to be responsible or accountable to us.
It’s a curse to give kids everything they want, to do everything for them and to bail them out of every problem and difficulty.
We curse others by falsely accusing them. When we “damn” someone, that’s a curse of damnation, and God will hold us accountable.
We curse others by disparaging them when they’re trying hard and doing their best to succeed or prosper.
We curse others by gossip, by soiling their name and character.
We curse others by withholding our love and appreciation, and by not trying to understand them.
Curses are especially prolific in some cultures and traditions. Some try casting spells and pronouncing curses to control, punish or impede others.
From ancient times people have believed in curses and cursing. In Jesus’ time they were still believing; in fact, he once cursed a fruitless fig tree and it withered and died.
Some of us may be living under a curse without knowing it. Curses may include…
Generational curses. (Being susceptible to certain genetic diseases, mental illness, allergies, depression, social disorders, etc.)
The curse of poverty and chronic expected failure.
The curse of sexual perversion or perverted thinking.
The curse of timidity, backwardness, inferiority complex, self-contempt.
The curse of addiction, or other personality disorders.
The curse of spiritual insensitivity.
The curse of broken relationships: divorce, sexual or physical abuse, loneliness, rejection and lack of love.
Regardless of whatever curses we may think ourselves living under, Christ has broken their spells and their power.
Galatians 3: 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”
* Christ repaired what Adam broke.
What Christ did, he did completely, perfectly and permanently – we are free! If we are living under a curse it is entirely unnecessary! Thank God!