You Have It In You!

I like it for Oh, thank you. Thank you, man. I got to I got to ask a question. This isn't for you.

This is for me. I just want to ask a question. Hey, Genesis, at your last church, were you guys on the worship team? You go.

Okay. Okay. You were on a worship team in I was just looking up here and I was thinking, these people are so young and the vast majority of them have never led worship before. Where you at, Brecklin?

Brecklin, good job today. I just want I just want to tell you, good job today, Brecklin. She moved out here two years ago and had never sang publicly. So, that was just cool to see what God will do.

He'll reverse trends. He'll change patterns. He'll do uh abundantly, exceedingly beyond what you could ask, think, or imagine. It's got to start with Christ Jesus.

But he can do impossible things when you put your faith and trust in him. I'm not saying it was impossible, Brecklin. You did great. Um it's with God.

It's it's just possible. Um we're in a series. We're calling it pass theaton pass the baton. This is a family series.

Uh I'm excited about it, but I I I wanted to offer that caveat about the foundation of Christ Jesus because I feel icky when I'm standing up here giving pragmatic or practical advice to people on how to raise their families, biblical advice. But but sometimes I can be giving that practical advice and someone might miss the foundational principles that I'm talking from. In other words, I'm coming from the perspective of revolving everything around Jesus. That's where it starts.

If you don't start there, no matter what practical advice you get from this room today is not going to it'll help. It'll help, but it's not going to get you where ultimately God wants you to be. We're going to be in Genesis today, chapter nine. Last week we were in the actual story of the flood.

This week we're in um post flood story. Um Noah has a bit of PTSD. I don't know if you know this story. I don't know for sure that it's PTSD, but that's how I think of it.

Otherwise, he's just acting a fool. Um but what I want to do is I want to break down uh Genesis chapter 9 uh starting in verse 20. It's an interesting story. uh something that really happened in the ancient world.

And there are some things if you read it, you know, at the beginning of the year when you start your Bible reading plan, you're going to miss the some of the things in it. And and I I want to talk to you about some of those things. But more than anything, what I want you to leave here with is what my sermon title is today. And I want to leave you with this this principle that um like you have it in you.

You have it in you. Look at your neighbor. Say, "You have it in you. " Look at your other neighbor.

Try a little harder. You have it in you. You have it in you to talk louder. That's You definitely have that in you.

This is This is a sermon about your innate capacity to do things that you're not familiar with. You have it in you. Now most of our starting point is a default position where we have these generational curses or patterns that have been passed down to us whether it's through nature or nurture. We all have sin in us, negative patterns in us as we're building our family.

We we have those negative patterns and you have that in you. I want you to know at the beginning of this message, you also have the capacity, especially as you trust and follow Jesus, to do more than you currently think. I have seen people not only like learn to sing or lead worship. I've seen people radically shift patterns in their family.

And you might think I'm talking about over 10 years, 15 years in ministry. Yes, I've seen it. Um, but we've been in we've been a church since February of 2024. Amen.

We've been at church since February 2024, and I've seen radical pattern shifts. I baptized someone in the first service. A radical pattern shift. And it's only been a matter of months.

And I want you to know that what I'm talking about today is possible with God. And if you leave here and you start implementing some of these patterns and reducing some of the negative patterns, you really can start to see like magnificent things occur, miraculous things occur in your family. Cuz it would be my goal that as you leave here, you become a better husband for your wife. You become a better wife for your husband.

You become better parents. And don't forget this, you become better kids. That's what I want us to do today. you have it in you to do it.

I'm going start in the first two verses and uh well, I'll just read the whole story for you because I want you to have the full context. Verse 20 says this, "Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, because that's what vineyards produce, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. " That means he's naked, just FYI.

Sprawled out, uncovered. Okay. Verse 22. Ham, the father of Canaan saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside.

But Shim and Japheth, took a garment and laid it across their shoulders, and they walked in backward and covered their father's naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked. When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said, "Cursed be Canaan. The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.

" Just to remind you, Ham was the kid. Canaan was the grandkid. Okay. Cursed be Canaan, the lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.

He also said, "Praise be to the Lord, the God of Shem. May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend Jeff's territory. May Japth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be a slave to Jeffth.

" After the flood, Noah lived 350 years. Noah lived a total of 950 years, and then he died. Isn't that an interesting story? When I read that story, I don't look at that story as prescriptive.

Now, prescriptive would be like what a doctor does when you need medicine. He prescribes it. He says, "This is the medicine you need to feel better. Go to the pharmacy and grab it.

It's going to cost $2,000. " I'm just kidding. But like that's what that's prescription. And a lot of times we read scripture as if it's always prescriptive.

There's another way to read scripture, especially when it comes to some of these narratives, is descriptive. Sometimes the Bible is simply describing real history as it unfolded, not explicitly telling you to live your life the same way. This is an easy example for some of you in here. Surely you know that it's not a good thing for you to go home and start cursing your grandkids because your kid did something to you.

You know, just I maybe some of you would do that. Cursed be your entire lineage. I hate you terribly. But but that's not how God operates.

God's not a fan of violence. That's why he flooded the earth in the first place. In fact, it's his loving kindness that leads us to repentance. That is not of the character of God.

Praise God for progressive revelation that the New Testament gives us more of the character of God than we find in Noah cursing his grandkid. I I mean, Noah is still righteous in the eyes of God, but this scene is an interesting narrative when we look at it. And it reminds me of how often because of our own experiences, we we teach, we train, we interact or engage with our kids and our family in a particular way. So, I'm not mad at Noah.

I I think he probably shouldn't have gotten drunk. The scriptures tell us all the time, not that you shouldn't drink at all, but that, you know, you shouldn't get drunk. That is very clear in scripture. So, when Noah gets drunk and lays sprawled out in his tent completely naked, this is probably not the place you want to end up.

Noah's in a pretty bad position. And I'm not mad at Noah about it. Like, stuff happens sometimes. I'm not just trying to cast shame or blame onto Noah.

There could be a valid reason that Noah fell into this situation. Any of y'all been through what Noah's been through before. Bro just went through the destruction of the entire world. He's probably got a little PTSD.

You know, all of us, we're depressed because our day went badly. if he's drinking and getting drunk, he might be depressed cuz the world went badly. You know, like he's struggling. So regardless of whether you intended to treat your kids in a particular way, intended to build your family in a particular way, that's against God, or whether you didn't intend to.

In fact, you're trying to do what you should do. But just like Paul says, it's a very difficult thing because we all have sin on us. And it is difficult for us to break patterns, break generational curses, and move the way that God called us to do without help. Whatever your scenario, many of us respond similarly to Noah.

We allow our patterns or our emotions to develop in us habits that create patterns that pass beyond us. And at Orbit Church, I want us to revolve everything around Jesus so that we start reversing patterns and we create new ones where Jesus is at the center. Faithfulness is one of the goals and our kids grow up to stand on our shoulders. And in order to get there, all of us need to elevate our game.

Again, you don't do this on your own by pulling up your bootstraps. Who do we do it with? Somebody Jesus. The foundation.

I started with that. Come on, guys. But I wanted to give you a couple common patterns that I see. I think this will be helpful for different people.

How many of you, for example, when you grew up, uh, and I know people are getting baptized and their whole families here, so you know, be bold or don't be bold. Be respectful of your parents here in this place, but how many of you in your family have a history of some sort of substance abuse, be it drugs or alcohol, just be honest, even if they're sitting next to you, I mean, you know, could be awkward for a second, but many of us have grown up with that in our household. That is a pattern that tends to pass down from generation to generation. In fact, studies show that 25% of households deal in some form or fashion with substance abuse.

I'm not going to ask for this one, but domestic violence is another common pattern that is passed down into another generation that is created at some point. It could have been your great great great grandparents, but it's passed down. It might be a a an anger response that comes out in all the wrong ways that is simply passed down because nobody has either trusted in Jesus or decided one day to choose honor over shame, to choose obedience over the normal default pattern. Domestic violence is prevalent in 20% of households.

Now, I don't know what that means. If it means like pushing a dog when he pees in your house and that counts and there's a lot of people in I didn't push my dog. My dog died last year's and the other one doesn't pee in the house. So anyways, uh how about this one?

In the household, I did not know this. This was interesting. Crimes and violence. You might be petty crimes or just a a household that has crime in it of some sort.

60% of households deal with some form of crime. 40% of those 60 well 40% of the hundred um were victims of more than two violent acts within their household. 20% were simply exposed to that type of behavior. Mental illness that's become increasingly common not just because we become aware of different mental illnesses.

Uh but but it's actually increased over and above that as well. But that's that accounts for 20% of our household. Someone in the family has mental illness. Now Hannah, I think we have it in our household because I think they count ADHD in that and I think I got a little bit of that.

Just a little bit. But we're dealing with it. It's generational. We're going to break that curse.

It might be too late for Lucas, but we going to work on it. We we going to work on it. Hey, don't tell him I He's not in here, is he? It's not baptisms yet.

We're good. We're good. Um and then let's get into Noah's category. He cursed his kids.

Many of us just are verbally abusive to our kids. Uh or we accidentally curse them um in in various ways through just some sort of aggression in our household. It says 25. 9% had been verbally abused in households.

66% they suffer some sort of verbal aggression from their parents. And I was really convicted when I read that. I don't know if I fit within that 66%, but this week and I just want I want to be vulnerable with you guys so that you guys know that I know where you live, too. This week, I've been pl I've been painting my my house.

I love you, sweetie, but I wanted to hire someone to do it, but then you told me, "No, we can't afford it. " And I was like, "Ah, I got to paint it myself. " So, I paint our living room. It was this nice Sherwin Williams urbane bronze.

I don't even know what that means, but it sounds cool. And I painted it. It took two or three coats because I wasn't good on the first coat. I get to my third coat and it's still wet.

My kids get home and I ask my son, "Hey, can you vacuum? " He grabs the vacuum and my 5-year-old daughter, Micah, decides she wants to play with Lucas cuz vacuums are fun. So, she starts pulling the vacuum and I say, "Stop it. Stop it.

Stop it. " And I'm calm at this moment, but then she lets go of the vacuum. And then Lucas falls back onto my accent wall. And in that moment, I didn't I didn't curse my grandkids like Noah did.

I just said, "Lucas, I told you to pay attention. " And I grabbed him and I pulled him off the What? Don't Don't hear the wrong thing. I practiced the way I said that.

I don't want you to hear the wrong thing. I just grabbed him and pulled him gently off the wall and told him, "Go take a shower. " He had paint all over his shirt and arm and now I got to buy him a new polo shirt for his uniform at school. I don't know if it's that shirt.

I don't know. But the point is I was stressed. I wasn't emotionally regulated. And I responded to him.

Even that guys, it has a huge um generational impact on our kids. Yeah. And so we need to develop patterns of e emotional regulation. And when I look at Noah in this moment, what happened is he allowed his emotions to get the best of him allowed.

And this is what's so interesting about this passage. It says he was a man of the soil. Yet the thing that came as produce from the soil ended up having control over him. Right?

And I can I can preach a whole message to you on that. I get really excited to think about it because in Romans chapter 1, he says that's ultimately what we did. We exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God and served images and creatures rather than the creator. Ultimately, that's what happened in Genesis chapter 1.

He called us to rule over creation. Yet, in Genesis chapter 3, a created being ended up having at least verbal or emotional authority over Adam and Eve. One of the biggest problems that we encounter is that we worship and serve the wrong things. We allow our emotions, we allow our situations, we allow our patterns, we allow the soil to have control over us rather than what it says about us.

He was a man of the soil. Not then, man. The produce from the soil got him good. And he ended up naked in his bedroom.

And many of us, we allow. It could be emotions. That was me this week. It could be a substance.

It could be something in your household. It could be culture. Many of us, we we fill our schedule to the brim because we think that's what we're supposed to do. And then we add more to it when someone invites us to do something and we've told them no three times and so we want to tell them yes this time.

So we keep adding and adding and adding. We jump onto the club sports. We jump into this at school. We jump into these meetings.

We jump into these projects at work. We keep adding adding adding. I'm not saying it's bad to do things that challenge you. But what I am saying is sometimes you're allowing the culture to rule over you rather than ruling over it.

God has called us to be authoritative beings. You can look at Jesus and recognize that he was a man of the soil. I'm not there yet. I'll get there in a second.

But many of us have these poor generational patterns in our families because we are allowing the soil to rule over us, but you have it in you to rule over it. Obviously with Jesus, but you have the ability to rule. I'm going to add a couple to my list because it's not just generational patterns of, you know, substance abuse and domestic violence that happen in our household. There are church patterns that pass down, too.

Haven't you noticed that? Uh I I I saw a statistic recently about attending church that kids are four times more likely to attend church in their adulthood if their parents attend church. I bet you can do some quick math on that to imagine what happens if you don't frequently attend church. If you read your Bible, your kids are more likely to do it.

If you don't read your Bible, your kids are less likely to do it. Our kids tend to mirror the behavior that we model. And if you do something really well, they mirror that more so in a lot of cases. And if you do something poor, they mirror that more so in many cases.

The same happens when you flip it. The same happens you you attend church, they're likely to attend church more. you read your Bible, they're likely to attend church more. When you do things like build biblical community or attend a small group or man, just start praying out loud.

When you develop a stable household, they tend to mirror what you model. But if we're going to be I put it here, I said you can be a man of the soil or a soiled man. And I don't know that Noah was soiled, but I've met plenty of people who in their drunken state soiled themselves. And so I'll just say this.

You can be a soiled man or you can be a man of the soil. We're called to be a man of the soil. And you might think, okay, I got all these issues in my family. It's soiled generation after generation and I'm struggling and I want to reverse it.

I want to make things better. Matt, how do I do it? Well, the way that you become a man of the soil is you understand a little bit more about what God's trying to intend. When he created humanity, he created each one of us to not only rule over creation, but to glorify and honor him with every aspect of our lives.

All through scripture, you see that the people who ruled over what God called them to rule over were faithful followers of Jesus or of God. You know, in the Old Testament, it was God. New Testament, it was Jesus. I keep thinking of Paul in Romans chapter 1 where ultimately he says that your goal in life is to I'm I'm going to quote it in the way the orbit church will quote it is to revolve everything around Jesus.

He says in Acts in him we live and move and have our being. He has got to be your foundation. And you have that capacity to discipline yourself and rule over in you. And so what you got to do is with Jesus's help, with the Holy Spirit's help, it takes help.

Look at your neighbor. Say you can't do it by yourself. We're practicing. We're practicing.

We're going to re reverse some trends today. Look at your other neighbor and reverse it and go louder and say, "You can't do it by yourself. " But here's some practical help on the foundation of Christ Jesus that you can do. First, it starts out with modeling what you want them to become.

I already mentioned that. Secondly, build a safe and stable home. Keep in mind there are a lot of safe and stable homes filled with anxiety and depression. And it's because they're not rooted uh their lives are not rooted in the person and work of Jesus.

And so, they have no faith. They have no future. They have no abundance right now. And they're anxious and depressed because they built a stable house, but it's not on the right foundation.

But you still need to build a safe and stable home. I'm learning that. I'm probably learning that better than a more than a lot of you. Not better than a lot of you.

You learned it a long time ago cuz you had a stable household and you're raising your family and your kids are perfect and they're figuring stuff out and my kids taking an extra second. But what I'm learning as I'm breaking generational curses is this. I am learning that I have to build a safe and stable household. a safe household where my kids can talk to me about anything.

So, if I got to get on my knees, if I've got to soften my approach in order to hear from them, then I need to be willing to do it. That doesn't make me a soft parent. It makes me an empathetic and smart stable parent. Uh but but you know, it it's it's hard to build a safe and stable home.

To build a stable home, it's like, you know, you got to get your stuff together to build a stable home. It is hard to have a dinner time. Anyone struggle with dinner time sometimes when this No one? Just me?

God, we got to work on this stuff. Someone else needs to come up here and preach next week and I'll go work on my stuff and then I'll come back when I'm done and I I have dinner time every single day at 5:00 p. m. But you're still in clients at 5:00 p.

m. Then they got sports at 5:30 p. m. starting next month.

Then we got to figure that stuff out. And then I've got this ministry event on Thursday nights and Wednesday nights and Tuesday nights. It's very difficult to create a stable household, which means even more intentionality needs to be put into the conversation. So we got to build a safe and stable household.

Sometimes you need some professional help. Um, sometimes when it's a crazy season, I just I want to find a cheap person or a person who cleans very cheaply and I'm like, "Please come clean my house. " Sometimes I need professional support, but beyond that, sometimes you need real professional support. Um, there are some seasons in in people's lives where they need more um than than just prayer.

Now, hear me properly. Prayer uh man, prayer gets you in a connection with God. Prayer aligns your thoughts to God's thoughts. Prayer can perform miraculous things.

In fact, when you call up to God in prayer, sometimes that means you're calling down miraculous things on earth. It is crazy what prayer can do. I need you to understand that. But sometimes the answer to your prayers is professional help.

And and so sometimes I've gone to a therapist. It's helpful. When I got to figure out this EQ thing that I didn't learn about until I was 30, I've got to work on it. So I went to a therapist to help me with it.

Some of you have gone to therapist and it can be really helpful. Sometimes you need to call your pediatrician because you're freaking out in anxiety and you're praying about it, but the pediatrician can tell you it's just a cold. Chill out a little bit. And and and some of you, you've been going to your pediatrician, but don't ever forget about the faith portion.

Some of you need to go to the great physician and he can really really help you. You open up your word and you understand more and more about him. I've been trying to figure out a way to say the pediatrician great physician thing because I think some people listen to their pediatrician about how they should parent their kids more than they listen to what the Bible says. I think the Bible is better when it comes to things that truly matter.

Talk to them about your health, but talk to God about your spiritual health. Anyways, I'm going to move on from that one before I get in trouble. Here's another one. Sleep.

This is for for reversing the trend. Sleep, exercise, nutrition. Removing some tech devices from your household that oh my gosh, that would change your life. That change your life.

Just get the kids to bed in a proper time. They going to wake up. They're not going to scream at you because they got a full night's sleep. You put them in an activity rather than sitting in front of a screen, it'll change everything.

Again, foundation of Christ. I need you to understand this, but when you do some of these practical things, it radically shifts your entire household and enables you to start coaching in the direction that you want your children to go. But it's hard to hear when all of these things are unstable. You got to build the right community, whether it's sports, clubs, coaches, mentors, church, small group.

Starting September 7th, we're doing small groups. Amen, somebody. Woo! I'm excited about it.

Is that clock right? I feel like I've been going too long. I don't know. Who cares?

We're going to keep going. Ultimately, if you want to reverse the trends and patterns that have been created before you and through you in your household, you need to seek Jesus. And when you look at Jesus, you see the model of how you're called to operate. And he's also your savior.

So, he puts you into an ontological position to be able to receive what he gives. It is him that covers you from your sin and enables you to walk in an abundant livelihood. That's what we look to. If you want to lead rightly, you must look to Jesus, your savior and your example.

And like I said earlier, he was a man of the soil. If anyone was, he had authority over the soil. And I've been thinking of a couple different examples of where he just messed with soil. I just thought it was cool.

It says this. He says he holds thing all things together by the word of his immovable power. I remember this scene in the scriptures where he healed a man. You know what?

He used his blindness. He healed him with mud. bro took I mean Lord took mud picked it up rubbed it on this dude's eyes after spitting in it and he was healed of blindness he was a man of the soil he was able to calm the storms I remember when the Pharisees were mad at this lady who committed adultery and they're about to stone her and Jesus starts drawing in the dirt and as he was moving the dirt the Pharisees were moving out of the conversation because they were convicted or something we don't actually know what happened but he was a man of the soil and he doesn't just moved dirt, he moves rocks. I don't know if you remember after he died 3 days later, there was a stone that was pushed aside and he moved the dirt.

He was a man of the soil. So when we look at Jesus, what we see is a man who is the first fruits of a new creation, the first born of a new creation. He shows us the way to live, the way to reverse the patterns. And I love this story in Genesis chapter 9 because as we walk through it, I'm going to try to do it in the right amount of time.

We see what we call, this is a theological word. Can I give you a theological word? It's called a prefiguration of the character of God is expressed through Jesus Christ. And here's what it says.

Verse 22, Ham the father of Canaan saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Jeep took a garment and laid it across their shoulders. Then they walked in backward and covered their father's naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.

Now, let me give you a brief point. In Christ, it is possible for you to choose honor over shame. Amen. You can choose honor or shame.

When we see Ham, what do you think he chose? Honor or shame? Shame. Okay.

I'm trying. I know it's an old school passage. We haven't read it very frequently. He chose shame, right?

In an honor shame society, I need you to understand something. In the ancient world was an honor shame society. Meaning what Ham did to Noah was worse than Noah getting drunk and laying exposed in his tent. It was worse because in an honor shame society, it is so important the way a person is viewed their image.

Especially someone like Noah who is the the progenitor of humanity post flood. Especially Noah who was the covenant head of this new family in the world. It was so significant that Ham what Ham did uh in shame that it I mean I mean that's why Noah cursed him and he he chose the wrong direction. Now now hear me the right way.

I I don't know that I don't know anything about him. Um but I imagine he walked in and there are probably plenty of reasons for him to be frustrated at his father. Look at this dude again all sad because everybody died. He heard the screams outside the boat so he drank too much and he's laying here.

Yeah, I didn't think about the screams outside the boat, did you? Um, so he's got this PTSD. He's laying here naked and I'm looking at it. I'm dealing with this all the time and I'm tired of it.

I'm not going to cover him up this time. So I walk out and I talk to my brothers and and I tell them what happened. But but what Ham did in that moment was so significantly shameful. Here's what happened.

He saw his nakedness. He did nothing about it. He failed to protect his father's honored. He spread the dishonor by telling his brothers.

He undermined the covenant head of the family. Proverbs 30:17 actually says this about honoring your father and your mother. This is how significant it was to the day and age. The eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures.

I know we're different in this day and age. We talk mess about our parents all the time. Any millennials in the room? Oh my gosh, we so frustrated with our parents for whatever reason.

I'm a millennial so I can say I don't know. We're all frustrated at our parents. I know the Gen Xers were too. That's why they became hippies.

Was it Gen Xers who became hippies? I don't know. Gen Zers are talking mess about millennials. I almost went with Gray and someone Gen Z came up to me and said, "You're going to go with millennial Cray.

" Oh my gosh. Like, we all talk mess about the former generation. We all understand what Ham might be dealing with, but what he did in the ancient world was so significant in spreading the dishonor of what happened in his father's tent. And many of us, we encounter or experience bad things from our family members growing up and we look at that and we respond like ham.

We live in frustration and victimhood and then we end up repeating the same patterns because we never actually reverse the trend. That's what living in shame will do. But Shim and Japath did the opposite. Rather than choosing shame, they chose to honor their father.

Do you think Shim and Japet thought anything different than Ham about what their father did? I mean, I'm gonna be honest. If they're all logical people, they're all going to look what happened to their dad. It's just really immature.

You got to know how much you can handle. I know it was probably the first vineyard in the new world. Maybe he didn't know what he could handle, but he figured it out. He should have handled it better, you know?

And if I'm a son, I'm like, "Come on, dude. Like, get your stuff together. You built a boat and you can't even deal with your wine. " Goodness, bro.

If I'm Shim and Japith, I probably have the same internal response. But what they chose, they said, even if he fail, that doesn't mean I have to fail. Even if they screwed up, have to spread dishonor about them to my family, to the people, and say, "It's my parents' fault that I ended up here. " It might be, but what you can do in Christ Jesus is choose honor.

That's what it means to honor your father and your mother. I'm talking to the kids in the room. You're all kids. Just FYI, I don't if you knew that you're all kids to your parents.

And if you're a younger kid, I want to tell you, your parents are going to love me for this. Hey, honor your father and your mother because this is the way God's called us to live. But the real way you honor your father and your mother is even when they screw up, you don't worry about how they screwed up. You focus on how you're going to build up the reputation of the family.

So what they did was they walked backward. Didn't even look on his dishonored. So while there was a huge magnitude in Ham's transgression, there was a great magnitude that is a prefiguration of what Christ did in Shim and Japath's response. Here's actually what it says in Romans 4 7 and 8.

And he's Egypt before the Israelites and went into the promised land is there was a day where they were called to put blood on their door and the spirit of the Lord would go through and anyone who had blood on their door they would be skipped. And then I look at Jesus, right? The author and perfector of our faith who throws our sin, casts our sin as far as the east is from the west. He does not view our sin.

We are not viewed by our sin. He chose to become the curse on our behalf so that we might exist as the righteousness of God in him. He chose to honor us, not to shame us. That's why Paul can readily say in Romans 8:1, "There is therefore now no condemnation, no dishonor, no shame for those who are in Christ Jesus.

" Because he looked at our sin said, "I can do something about it. I can give them honor in the midst of their public shame. In fact, I will be a public I'll be publicly shamed on their behalf so that they can they can reverse some patterns, live in Christ. " In essence, just like Shim and Japath were able to put the blinders on, Jesus puts on the blinders to our sins so that he can offer himself on the cross, raised from the grave, and go present us holy and blameless one day before the father.

I I don't know if you saw that in the passage, but I get really excited to think about what it looks like to have my sin covered. It means that I'm no longer bound by it. And rather than being a soiled man, in Christ's forgiveness, I can be a man of the soil. And now I can follow his lead.

and rule over my family. And when I say rule over, don't hear me. Like all them like what do they call those types of men? Like uh like toxic masculinity.

It's like I'm not talking rule over. I'm I'm going to tell them what to do. They're always standing like this to toxic always. That's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying to have control, right? Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. You can do that in Christ Jesus. The spirit of God will compel you to greater faithfulness.

It'll convict you of your sin. He will help you walk in faithfulness until the day that Jesus returns or until the day that you meet Jesus, whatever it is. And our job is simple. It's not to worry about the past, worry about our sin.

It is to trust in Jesus and allow him to carry us into eternity. And he can carry us into eternity because he chose honor over dishonor. Amen. Watch this.

While while man sinned and fell short of the glory of God, Jesus didn't let us stay in dishonor. In fact, he put himself to public dishonor to present us holy and acceptable to God. And if I had more time, I'd tell you more about this curse of Canaan. But let's just face it, I don't have time.

We'll talk about it some other time. I've got some cool stuff here. It's good. Call me up.

501-9449468. Someone called me last week. It was great. We like had coffee and everything and I got to talk theology for like 45 minutes.

It was so dope. I loved it. But I want to end you with this reality. If you feel shame right now, if you feel like the generational patterns from uh your parents are passing along to you and you're scared about passing them off to your kids, there is one simple solution.

It is to put your faith and trust in Jesus. He will be your foundation to help you move forward in faith. And it's going to be hard for you on your own to build a household um that is stable and helpful and breaks those curses. But I found in Christ Jesus, I'm just we're just breaking I'm gonna back up.

We're just breaking curse after curse. It's so I'm not saying I'm cool. I'm breaking them way slower than some of the people in this room. But I'm still breaking them and I'm excited about it because he's one who breaks down dividing walls of hostility.

And that is an inhibitor that keeps me from understanding who God is. He helps me break the patterns. But there are some people in this room, you're still struggling with your shame. You don't know how to break the patterns.

And I've already told you the truth. The truth is your foundation might be shaky, but it can be stable if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord. Believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. If you can do that, the Bible says prescription, not description, that you can be saved, will be that you will be saved.

And the people who are about to be baptized in this room in a few moments are the ones who have decided to follow Jesus. But there's somebody else in this room, you haven't decided, but it's time for you to do it. It's time for you to break some generational patterns and follow Jesus for the rest of your life. And if you're ready to do that, let's all bow our heads.

We're going to pray a prayer together for the benefit of those who are praying it for the first time. I want to hear you loud. You didn't do it the first two times, but I want you to do it now because somebody in here is going to be nervous to pray that prayer to God. But you being confident in it will give them the boldness to also be confident in it.

So let's pray that prayer out loud. Repeat after me. Say, God, I believe God, I believe that Jesus Christ is your son. Jesus Christ.

I believe he died on the cross. That that covers my sin. That you view me as whole. That you view me as whole.

And that you want me to follow you. you want me to follow you. I commit right now to follow you. I commit right now to follow you.

Help me walk with you. Help me walk. I pray these things in Jesus's name. And all God's people said, "Amen.

" Amen. Can we celebrate those who just trusted in Jesus?