In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the sufficiency of the word of God for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. He highlights that the Bible is inspired by God and profitable for equipping believers for every good work. The preacher warns against believing in deliverance, stating that it is not found in the Bible and is a human invention that can lead to punishment instead of deliverance. He also mentions that the apostles provide instructions on how to deal with the world, the flesh, and the devil, and that the epistles give guidance on various aspects of Christian life, with a particular emphasis on living in a fallen world and serving God faithfully.

Hello, my name is Jacob Plath. Today we want to look at a subject which is again one of those causing Christians a lot of controversy, concern. Sometimes I've seen it steal believers' peace away and leave them in all manner of bondage and confusion. Ours is not a God of confusion, and as usually is the case, simply by looking into the word of God most of the confusion can be cleared up. We speak today of the subject of deliverance and the subject of curses. Let us begin first of all with curses. We have a variety of words in Greek and Hebrew for a curse or being under a curse. Some of them are almost, almost synonymous. The primary word for curse in the Old Testament, though, is kalal. Kalal simply means to make light of. Literally, to curse one's parents means to make light of them. It is the opposite of honoring one's parents, which comes from the Hebrew word kavod. Kavod meaning honor, related to the Hebrew term kaved meaning heavy. Your parents should be something heavy for you and indeed, if necessary, a burden you are required to carry, being financially responsible for them in their old age as they were financially responsible for you in your infancy. Hence, the opposite of being heavy is light, and we have here this first Hebrew term, kalal. Another Hebrew term, however, is kavod, meaning to perhaps excoriate, is one word to put it. Another is elah, meaning an imprecation, calling down from evil. Another term rarely used is nachoth, to pierce, and finally, the most common word, harath, meaning to make bitter. These words have Greek equivalents. Most of what the New Testament talks about in terms of curses are simply Greek translations of the Hebrew terms. This idea of the curses in Genesis has its Greek equivalent in epichatarosos. Another Greek word is anathema, where we get the word anathema, calling down evil. You have less common Greek words such as chakalogeo. Chakalogeo is again the equivalent of making right, kalal in Hebrew. Or, another word, kutala, which simply means, more or less, bad speech. Let's begin to understand what kinds of curses a Christian can be under, and what kind they can't. First of all, however, turn with me to 2 Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 17. 2 Corinthians 5, 17. Here, St. Paul tells us, under the influence and teaching of the Holy Spirit, therefore, if any man is in Christ, if he's in the Messiah, he's a new creature, he's a new creation. The old things passed away, behold, new things have come. The old things have passed away, and the new things have come. There are those telling us that after you were born again, the old things have not passed away. If you had a grandfather or a grandparent, or your ancestors were involved in some kind of a lodge or a cult activity, you're under a curse, because the sins of the fathers are passed on to the fifth and sixth generation. And you must go back and investigate your family's background and find out if you are under any kind of a curse, and then this curse must be broken. It was not broken at the cross, they teach. So for one to say you can be under this curse or that curse, someone put this witchcraft on you, or something like this. Now, we do not deny that believers can be demonically oppressed by Satan. St. Paul was. He said there was a buffet of Satan which hindered him, and he prayed for God to remove it, and God indeed did not move it. This idea that we can simply invoke the power of God in every situation and command something to happen is not true. Paul tried it three times, he prayed, and it didn't work. Are we to suggest that Paul had no faith or didn't understand the principles of God? Of course we can't. What curses were broken, what power of Satan are we totally invincible to? Now a time will come when Jesus returns, and the power of Satan will be utterly broken over us. Right now it is totally broken in a spiritual sense, but ultimately he'll have no power even to oppress us, as he can in this fallen world between now and glory. All things are new to those in Christ Jesus once again, 2 Corinthians 5, 17. Therefore, as any man is in the Messiah, he's a new creature. The old things have passed away. Satan always wants to deny the power and proficiency of the cross, and we have people today teaching the error that, no, you're still under a curse because of your ancestors or your family or something like this. Demonic oppression? Possibly. But a curse? That's ridiculous. You may have been under a curse, but when you were born again, you died. The person who was cursed is dead. You are a new creation. The biblical thinking, the biblical teaching, and the mindset we ought to have is that whatever curse the old man was under, he's dead. If he lives in the spirit, lives as a new creation, he's dead. These things have no per se power over us as Christians. It is simply Satan using false doctrine and wrong teaching to deny the sufficiency and power of the cross. Once again, the Bible says, all things are new. The old things have passed away. If he is a new creature, he's a new creation. All these things are from God, says Paul in verse 18, who reconciled us. All of these things. Are you letting Satan deny the power and proficiency of the cross? Do you think as a Christian you're under a curse because of something your ancestors did? My friends, when you were born again, that person who was under a curse, if he was under a curse, or if she was under a curse to begin with, is dead. You're a new creation. Don't let Satan lie to you and think you're still embalmed to the sins of ancestors who are dead because of a person who is now dead. You are dead. You are now a new creation. That person you were who inherited whatever from your family or your ancestral background, or occult activities you may have engaged in before you were saved, that person is dead. But now let's look at what kind of curses the Word of God tells us we can be under. There are specific curses, and there are general curses. Let's look at some of the general curses. Turn with me, please, to the book of Genesis, chapter 3, verse 14. And the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you've done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go, and the dust you shall eat all the days of your life. Satan is under a curse. Additionally, this is reflected in the physical nature of snakes and serpents in nature. This curse remains. More than that, a curse came on the natural creation. When man fell, the universe fell. That's why St. Paul tells us in his epistle to the Romans that creation itself groans out, longing for the revelation of God, the return of Jesus. The sons of God will be revealed. The creation itself is under a curse. So because Christians live in a creation that's under a curse, the whole world lies in the power of the wicked one. Satan is the god of this world. For that reason, Christians will live in countries that have earthquakes. Christians will live in countries that have famines. Christians will live in countries that are under the curse of the fall. But let's continue. Then he said to Adam in verse 17, Because you've listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, you shall not eat from it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. People must work and work hard to survive. Man was always intended to work, but to work by the sweat of our brow, this is part of a curse. And Christians will have to work, often work hard with the sweat of our brow, the same as unsaved people. This general curse we are still under until Jesus comes. We go on reading about the other curses. A curse was put on Eve and on womankind because of the sin of Eve. Do Christian women suffer labor pain when they are going to give delivery to a baby? Of course they do. That curse remains. Christian women will have pain in childbirth, the same as non-Christian women. That is a curse we are under. In the book of Genesis chapter 4 verse 11, And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hands. The curse on Cain. Cain becomes a symbol or a type of all the fallen man. He's told that sin is something that desires him and he must overcome it. We all are under the curse of Cain. Sin desires us. Yet through Jesus, this can be overcome. The Greek word, which is the equivalent of this, is epikaterosos. Epikaterosos, used in the New Testament. These general curses, we as Christians, can be under. Because they are not under individuals, they are under corporate bodies of individuals. Let's look at further examples of this. In the book of Genesis chapter 12, God told Abraham, in verse 3, I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. Those nations which have persecuted Israel and the Jews are under a curse. And those nations which persecuted Abraham's physical descendants, the body of Christ, are under a curse. We go back now to Genesis. I'll put enmity between you and the woman between your seed and her seed. The two kinds of people the Bible calls God's chosen are born-again Christians and the Jews. Satan, of course, hates both of these kinds of people because God loves them and chose them for his purpose. Who are the two kinds of people persecuted by medieval Christians and the most with their inquisition? Jews and born-again Christians. Who are the two kinds of people militant Islam hates the most? Jews and born-again Christians. Who are the two kinds of people most persecuted by the Communists before the Iron Curtain came down? Jews and born-again Christians. The reasons for that are theological and spiritual, going back to the book of Genesis, chapter 3. And those nations which persecute the Church and curse the Jews will be under the curse of God. It goes back at least to the time of ancient Rome. First pagan Rome turned against the Christians, then it went against the Jews, and in the future a resurrected Roman Empire under the Antichrist will do the same. Nonetheless, we see this happening throughout history. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. And this is reiterated to the sons of Abraham, including Jacob. You think of all the great world empires, Rome, Babylon, maybe of Persia, Egypt, Assyria. They were great world powers. Israel, even in the days of King David, was nothing more than a regional power. Yet these great empires have all disappeared. Israel is still there. These nations all curse the Jews, by and large most of them have, and have disappeared. Today it's the same. We think of the modern nation, Germany. Germany built a wall around the Jewish ghettos called Shpetos, and any Jew attempting to climb over the wall was machine gunned by the Nazis. So too, Germany had a wall built around its great capital, Berlin, and any German trying to climb over that wall was machine gunned until that entire generation of Germans responsible for the Holocaust and the Third Reich were dead. Not until Rudolf Hess, the last member of Hitler's entourage responsible for what happened with the Third Reich, died in Stendhal prison did the Berlin Wall come down. You see now the fall of the Soviet Union. They persecuted the church, and they persecuted the Jews. I will bless and not bless thee, and curse and not curse thee. Yes, these nations are under a curse. The disarray you see in the Muslim world with Muslims fighting each other, Iran and Iraq, Iraq and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Black September in Jordan, civil war in Lebanon, this is a curse. But then there's a unique situation of the Jewish people. Indeed, half of my family are Jews, and I'm happy to say my wife and children are Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah. But let's look at it. The curse of the law. Jewish people are either under one covenant or another, whether they keep it or not. They cannot possibly keep the law of Moses, for as the ancient Jewish scribes translated the Septuagint from Leviticus 17, without the shedding of blood there's no forgiveness of sin. Hence not having a temple or a priesthood, there can be no real atonement, kapora korban, for the sins of the Jewish people, unless they accept Yeshua, Jesus, as the Jewish Messiah. Jewish people remain under the curse of the law until they accept Yeshua, Jesus. These general curses prevail. Christians can be members of nations, citizens of countries that persecuted the church and persecuted the Jews, and there'll be a national curse. Christian women are under the curse of labor in maternity. Christians will become ill, they'll be old, they'll have to work by the sweat of their brow. All of these curses we are still under until Jesus comes, even though by faith in him and the assurance of his return we know they're broken. But these other curses, because your ancestors were into the occult or because you were before you were saved? Let me ask you a question. Show me one time, one place, where either Jesus or the apostles broke a curse in the life of a Christian, of a born-again believer. Except when people get saved and they become a new creation, when he takes the curse for all of us. Never. You see, we have all of the epistles of the apostles, the Petrine epistles, the ones Peter wrote, the Johannine epistles that John wrote, we have the Pauline epistles that Paul wrote, we have the rest of scripture for us. And they interpret the teaching of Jesus and show us what he meant. The epistles give us much instruction on many things. We have pastoral epistles, epistles to individuals, epistles to whole churches. The apostles teach us about the last days, eschatology, about ministry, about body life, about worship. They teach us about salvation, about evangelism, about marriage and family. The epistles give guidance and instruction on many, many aspects of Christian life. In fact, every major aspect. But the thing the epistles talk about the most, the things the apostles emphasize the most in instructing Christians about, is how to live in this fallen world until Jesus comes and to serve him faithfully. How to deal with the world, the flesh and the devil. There is nothing the apostles taught about more than how to live in this world. Let me ask you a question. In all of the instructions that the apostles gave, in all the instructions the apostles gave to churches or to individuals, and anything Paul wrote, Peter wrote, John wrote, whatever, why is it that no place, not even one time, do we ever see them saying to break the curse? They say the curse was broken when you accepted Jesus. He became a curse when he died on the cross. But they never broke a curse on a Christian. No place in the book of Acts did the apostles did it. No place does the New Testament teach it. Never. Not even one time. Not even one place. It just simply doesn't happen. Don't you think that if breaking curses over believers was a part of Christian growth, Christian discipleship, victorious life, the apostles would have done it or taught others to do it? They never say anything like that. They talk about picking up our cross, living as a new creation, living a crucified life, walking in the spirit, putting on the armor, rebuking Satan, resisting Satan, crucifying the flesh. They teach all those things in dealing with the world, the flesh, the devil, and the old nature. But never once, not one time, in all the instructions that Paul gives to churches or to individuals, Titus, Timothy, Philemon, in the instructions he gives to whole churches at Corinth, Thessalonica, or Galatia, not even one time does he ever say to break a curse over the life of a believer. Why do the apostles never teach it? They never taught it because it's not scriptural. Why are people teaching it today? Because they're following the inventions and doctrines of man instead of the truth of the word of God. Now, I myself am a Pentecostal. I believe in gifts of the spirit, signs, wonders. I've seen demonic activity and I've seen the true power of God. But the word of God is the basis by which I understand these things. The apostles never, ever taught breaking a curse. The Bible says he became a curse. What they're trying to do is to get you to deny the sufficiency of 2 Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 17. All things are new. The old has passed away. You're a new creation. Even if you were under a curse, if you walk in the spirit, live in the spirit, pick up your cross and follow Jesus, you'll walk in the power of the resurrection. The person who was cursed is dead. Once someone is dead, they're no longer under a curse. They're gone. The law has achieved its full purpose. The curse has bought its worst impact at death. You're gone. Don't let Satan dig up the old man or old woman and get you to live in the flesh. But deliverance is the same. Let's look at this subject. We have two main Greek words for deliverance in the New Testament. One is an obstetric term having to do with childbirth. We find this, for instance, in the book of Revelation, chapter 12, the woman with the man child. The other is what Paul uses in the book of Romans, chapter 1, talking about escape. So one, deliverance, is maternity, having a baby. The other is escaping. No place does the word deliverance occur in the New Testament in the sense of casting demons out of people. The word is not even in the New Testament, let alone the practice. It's not even in there. It's something people invented. Promising people deliverance, they put them into bondage. Let's look at this. Casting demons out of people. We have two Greek words dealing with demons. One is therapeo, meaning healed. In the Bible, people were healed of demonic oppression. Not possession, but oppression. Man is body, mind, and spirit. We're triune because we're imagio dei, made in the image and likeness of God, who was himself triune. Demons can invade our bodies, even our minds, our souls, our emotions. But a spirit cannot dwell in our spirit where God's spirit dwells. A Bible-believing Christian cannot be demon-possessed unless they backslide. It's an impossibility. It is a theological and spiritual impossibility. In many cases, these people were probably never saved to begin with. Now, let's look at it. Therapeo, healed of oppression. Oppression is when a demon works through the mind or body of a believer. Like Paul, with a thorn in his side, a buffet of Satan, he was demonically oppressed. Sometimes the Lord heals this, sometimes he doesn't. In the case of Paul, it was God's wisdom not to, to keep Paul humble. The term here is therapeo. The other term is ekbalo. Ekbalo is a very powerful word in Greek. Ek means out and balo means shoot, where we get the English word ballistic. Never, ever, ever, not one time, not one place is the term ekbalo used in connection with a born-again believer. Once Jesus died on the cross and was born and, and, and rose from the dead and people were born again, never do we see the word ekbalo ever used with a Christian. No place is a demon ever cast out of a Christian, never. Once again, the apostles give us all manner of instruction in great length and considerable detail in a number of epistles, both those addressed to individuals and those to churches. You think about Paul's epistle to Timothy and Titus. You have an experienced pastor instructing younger pastors how to be pastors. And in the way that Paul talks to Titus and Timothy, telling them how to be pastors, he never tells them to cast demons out of people or to break curses. Not even one time, not even one place. Once again, if casting demons out of Christians, if deliverance ministry was of God, it was scriptural and biblical, don't you think it would at least be in the Bible? Don't you think the word would at least be in the Bible? But the word is not even in the Bible. Once again, let alone the practice. Never, ever, ever in all the instructions the apostles give and how to deal with the world, the flesh, the devil, do they teach deliverance? Let's look at the epistle of James. James talks a lot about the devil. He talks a lot about the flesh, but this is what he says in chapter one of his epistle. Verse 13 and 14. Let no one say, in verse chapter one, when he's tempted, I'm being tempted by God. Well, God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. When lust is conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. Notice the word of God puts the impetus for dealing with the flesh and our tendency, our propensity to sin on us. What you have here are people not wanting to crucify the flesh and take responsibility for their own lives, not wanting to pick up the cross and walk in the spirit and have power over sin. They want to cast out the demon or put the blame on Satan instead of themselves. And by doing that, they're giving Satan the means Satan needs to deceive them. Who gets the demons cast out this week? Usually it's the same people who got the demons cast out last week. I myself am a Pentecostal, but I'll tell you something. If you know of a charismatic or Pentecostal church that tells you they have a deliverance service, call them up and tell them to send over two cheeseburgers with raw onions. That's about all it is. The apostles never taught it. Promising people freedom, they put them into bondage. Why do you see these manifestations happening? One, it is hypnotic induction. So a man believes in his heart, so he is withholding the word of God. If you actually believe it, you'll begin to manifest it, the same as a sage hypnotist to make people do these things. Secondly, there's spiritual free induction. If you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, you'll be saved. Satan knows that, so who begins to get you to believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that you're indwelled with a demon? You begin giving him an open door, a mandate to invade you that the word of God says he does not have. It's a trick. It's a deception. If deliverance was a way to deal with the world, the flesh, or the devil, the word deliverance would at least be found in the New Testament. But it isn't. And certainly, the apostles would have taught it, and they would have done it. But they never taught it, and they never did it. The word of God does not give us formulae, it gives us principles. The principles are living a crucified life, pick up your cross and follow in Jesus, persisting in your prayer life, putting to death the flesh. Deliverance doesn't work. It's an unbiblical weapon that will never work. And if Satan can trick you into it, you'll never get the true victory. Dear friends, there are many sincere people who are caught up in this error and deception. The apostles never taught it. Echbalo is never used in connection with the Christian. Nowhere is a demon cast out of the Christian. Not one minister, not one person who's teaching this rubbish can show you one example from the word of God. Nor can they explain why the apostles never taught it and all the instructions they gave the church. I promise you, I assure you, we're told in Timothy what the word of God is for. We're told how it is used. We're told of its sufficiency. For Paul says the following. All scripture in chapter 3 of 2 Timothy is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. If deliverance is a good work, then the word of God should be able to instruct us, train us, teach us in it. So we'll be equipped for this good work. But the fact is, it's not in the Bible. People invented it. And if you believe it, you're going to put yourself not in deliverance, but bondage. God bless you and thank you.