The Alternative

Dr. Tony Evans: When idolatry takes root, leading to iniquity, demons assume you have invited them. It becomes a spiritual invitation. It becomes a curse.

Guest (Male): This is the Alternative broadcast, featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. Some of the issues you struggle with today had their beginnings long before you were born. But today, Dr. Evans shows why we're not doomed to pass on our problems to our kids. Let’s join him as he takes a look at how generational cycles of sin can be broken once and for all.

Dr. Tony Evans: Life's problems are like trees. They have roots. And unbeknownst to many of us, some of the roots of the problems we are now struggling with, enduring, and being devoured by are rooted in generational curses. And today, I want to talk to you about generational curses.

God is a generational God. He told Adam, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth." Satan’s attack on Adam and Eve was not merely an issue related to the mother and the father. He wanted to affect the lineage and the line. In fact, he affected the lineage and the line because Cain killed his brother Abel. The Bible regularly says God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In other words, family generations.

What is a generational curse? A generational curse may be defined as curses inherited or passed down from one generation to another due to rebellion against God. You and I pass down to our children a lot of things. Their racial color is passed down through their parents. Various shapes, hair texture, DNA is passed down.

Children look like parents biologically. But just as there are physical things that children partake of from their parents, there are spiritual things that children partake of from their parents. Many of the things that many of us are facing were passed down.

I want to walk through this with you, looking at a number of passages, so that you understand if you are cursed generationally and how to break it. In Deuteronomy chapter 30, God is completing his discussion of his covenant with Israel. He has spent an enormous amount of time in chapters 28 and 29 discussing blessings and cursing. He discusses in chapter 27 the curses that will follow. He comes in chapter 28, verse two, "all these blessings will come upon you." Verse 15 of chapter 28, "But it shall come about if you do not obey the Lord your God to observe his commandments and his statutes, all these curses will come and overtake you."

The essence of God's relationship with his covenanted people is a relationship of curses and blessings. So if we look in chapter 30, the passage I asked you to look at, he says in verse 15, "See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity." He says in verse 19, "I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants."

Blessing is the enjoyment and full participation in the will of God for your life. Cursing is the misery and emptiness of not fulfilling your divinely ordained purpose. He says, "I have set before you blessing and cursing, life and death, prosperity and adversity." And then he says to them, "So choose."

Generational curses are the transfer of negative patterns in the lives of the children through the parents that affect the individuals, their families, and whole nations, if you will, the Bible recognizes as having been cursed. If your family line is characterized by divorce, incest, poverty, uncontrolled anger, spousal abuse, depression, barrenness, you may be living out a curse.

If you can see a pattern. Now, a person can have these problems and they not be tied to a pattern. Well, then it's not a generational curse. A generational curse is you can look back and you can see this pattern. My mother was angry and mad and vindictive and evil, and I'm finding inability to control my own emotions. I'm seeing a lot of me in her even though I said I'd never be like that. The problem is you may have inherited something.

And we've tried to work with girls who've gotten pregnant as teenagers. When you look at the lives of a number of these young ladies, they are fulfilling a pattern, a pattern they can track back to their mother and to their grandmother and to their great-grandmother, and they are living out a pattern. That's why simply dealing with the biological and skipping the spiritual will never solve the problem. Because you could be dealing with a curse.

The Bible says that these curses are tied to choices. He says, "You choose." "I have set before you," that is I've given you an option of life and blessing, or death and cursing. "Choose life." And he says that the life you choose is not only your life. He says the life you choose affects you and your descendants.

Because God is a generational God. When Adam sinned in the garden, the Bible says that affected the whole human race. For now all men are born in sin. In other words, his decision affected the generations. Many of the things that you are seeing in society today, for example, the random murder of people, the callous, hardcore killing at will.

The Bible ties that to another issue. It ties it to the shedding of innocent blood. In other words, when babies are killed by abortion, which means you shed innocent blood, then that works itself out in society with the expansion of random murder. Because there is a connection, there is a spiritual link to decisions.

So you have to raise the question and you have to answer this question. Do I want to pass this on? Do I want to pass on my alcoholism? Do I want to pass on my drug addiction? Do I want to pass on my lifestyle? Do I want my kids to pick this up? Why? Because curses and blessings are transferred and the choice is for you and your descendants.

What's the cause of a generational curse? Look back at, we could go to a lot of scriptures, but look, look at Exodus chapter 20. Here's the root cause, and we'll try to make this plain to you. Verse four, Exodus 20 says, "You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven or on earth or beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. But showing loving kindness to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments."

Please notice he says there is a direct link, verse four, between idolatry and the passing on of iniquity. Now he's talking to the people within the covenant. And he says to them that your decision to choose other gods, idols—and an idol is anything outside of the true God that you look to to meet your needs. When you have to go outside of the true God to get your needs met, that's an idol. So an idol is not just a tree or somebody looking at the sun. Idol can be money, an idol can be a person, an idol can be anything you look to outside of what God has ordained to meet your needs. That thing becomes an idol.

And with an idol always comes iniquity. And the reason that with an idol comes iniquity is because the moment you take up an idol, you introduce a demon. Idolatry is the track on which the train of demons ride. See, demons have no power with the true God, but they have power with false gods. So once you choose a false god, you have invited a demon into your world.

And that's why the problems are so hard to overcome, because you're not just dealing with the problem. You're dealing with the demon who is instigating the problem in your life. So you're dealing with the spiritual reality. And that's why you try, you promise, you make commitments, you pledge, you do all of that, and this thing won't go away. It won't go away because you're not just dealing with that thing. You're dealing with the demonic power behind the idolatrous act producing the iniquity control.

Guest (Male): Dr. Evans will explain how you can dig below the symptoms and attack the disease that has you trapped when he continues our message in just a moment. First, though, I want to tell you about a special resource package designed to help parents navigate one of the most important assignments God will ever give them. It includes the two-volume, 13-message audio series Parenting on Purpose, along with a copy of Tony’s popular book Raising Kingdom Kids.

Now, Raising Kingdom Kids is a fresh look at parenting from the perspective of God’s kingdom agenda. Loaded with solid biblical principles, engaging illustrations, and practical, real-life advice you can put to work right away. You’ll learn how to teach children about controlling their tongues, developing patience, the value of service and sacrifice, the importance of respect, the value of God’s word, and much more. We’ll send you both resources as our thank-you gift when you make a donation to support the ministry of the Urban Alternative. Get the details today at tonyevans.org or call our resource center at 1-800-800-3222. That's 1-800-800-3222. I'll repeat that information for you after part two of today’s lesson and this.

Guest (Female): How do you share the gospel with confidence? What’s God’s plan for our communities? Why does the Old Testament matter to your faith today? Those are just a few of the questions you’ll get answered when you enroll in the Tony Evans Training Center, an interactive online study experience with Dr. Tony Evans, where you can grow in your knowledge of God’s word and learn to advance his kingdom agenda in your life. Visit tonyevanstraining.org to get started today. That’s tonyevanstraining.org.

Guest (Male): Well, let’s get back to Dr. Evans now with more on reversing generational curses.

Dr. Tony Evans: What God is asking for for those who are in his covenant is an exclusivity clause. A no competition clause. You can't have dual gods. If you have trash lying around your house or in your garage, after a period of time, uninvited guests are going to show up. Ugly guests, guests you don't like. Now, you didn't go out and tell the cockroaches, "Come unto me." You didn't go out and tell the ants, "You know, I open my home for you to make yourself at home." You didn't formally invite them. They invited themselves. But the reason they invited themselves is that the conditions were right. So they thought your trash was an invitation.

You didn't formally choose to say come into my house, all you did was set the stage. So they thought you were inviting them into your house by how your house was situated. When idolatry takes root, leading to iniquity, creating trash in our lives, demons assume you have invited them. And it becomes a spiritual invitation. It becomes a curse.

Don't misread what he says here in Exodus 20, the second half of the verse, "visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children on the third and fourth generation of those who hate me." So we've got iniquity visitation rights. Visiting the iniquity. When a child chooses—because it's a choice here—to adopt the lifestyle or the sinful pattern of the parent, they not only get the repercussions of their choice, they get a visitation.

In other words, God not only looks at their choice, he remembers what their daddy did. So now they got double trouble because they've got their decision, but then they've got the carryover from their parent's decision. In other words, of those who hate me. In other words, because they've made the decision to be an idolater, they pick up the repercussions of their idolatry plus their parent's idolatry. So it becomes accumulated cursing.

That's why the children are often worse off than the parent was. They go deeper into it. And that's why Satan always has a new and improved—you know, our problem growing up, you know, old school, was people, people getting high off of alcohol, people standing on the corner with Thunderbird, people, you know, Jack Daniels. I mean, that was, that was what you were concerned about when we were growing up. Not today.

You got heroin, you got crack cocaine, you know, you got ecstasy, you got, you got—and Satan is just stirring stuff up for the children so it can be worse for the children who've adopted the chemical orientation of the daddy. So he's got something to accumulate it and make it worse. You weren't worried when you sent your children to school growing up about kids blowing them away. When I was coming along, yeah, you would have your incidents, but, but something deeper has gone wrong.

But because people don't look and connect the problems with the spiritual cursing, they just think it's the thing that they're looking at. They never seek to address it spiritually. Now, if this can happen down to the third or fourth generation, then that means curses can come from a series of people. You see, each of us has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and 16 great-great-grandparents.

So if it can flow down to the third and fourth generation, that thing can flow down from any number of people, many of whom you don't know. You don't know your great-great-grandmother or father. You don't know them, but they could have set something in motion. And all you're seeing in your daddy is what was set in motion generations before him. It's a spiritual link, it's a spiritual connection.

Look real quick at Ezekiel chapter 18, verse two. "What do you mean by using this proverb concerning the land of Israel saying, 'The fathers eat sour grapes, but the children's teeth are set on edge?'" In other words, the fathers have adopted something, but the kids' teeth are the ones that are crooked. Your issue may never show up in your lifetime. Oh, it's going to show up though, because once the choice is made by the child, God remembers the father and it is passed down.

One of the great curses of our day is fatherlessness. A generation of children who will grow up never knowing their father, or might as well not knowing him. That's a curse. The repercussions of that curse are financial—the amount of poverty single parents are in—boys who don't know who they are. You have a curse, you see, this thing rolls over that a father may not think of that boy ever, but what's rolling over to the son—a crooked teeth.

He says iniquity has passed down. He goes on in chapter 18, verse 14, "Now behold, he has a son who has observed all of his father's sins which he committed and observing does not do likewise. He shall not eat of the mountain shrines." He doesn't do what his father says. "He keeps his hand from the poor," verse 17. Verse 19, "The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment of the father's iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity. The righteousness of the righteous will be upon him, the wickedness of the wickedness will be upon himself."

In other words, there is a way you can break the curse by changing the choice. Remember in Deuteronomy 30, he said you choose. How do we break this generational curse? Things that we have inherited that we never made the link to daddy, granddaddy, great-granddaddy. We didn't make the link. You must come to God and repent of your own participation. You must be willing to confess your iniquity, that is, your participation in the inheritance. Even though it may have been how you were raised, even though that's what your mama thought, even though that's what your granny taught. No, no, no, no, no. He says you must confess your participation. Then you must confess their participation. Notice what he says. He says confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their forefathers.

Guest (Male): Dr. Tony Evans talking about how we can break the cycle of generational curses. If you’d like to explore this lesson more fully or share it with someone you care about, contact us to get a copy of Tony’s two-volume, 13-message audio series Parenting on Purpose. For a limited time, when you make a donation to support the ministry and request this audio collection, we’ll also include a complimentary copy of Tony’s popular book Raising Kingdom Kids. Together, these resources offer practical biblical guidance to help you strengthen your family and intentionally pass your faith on to the next generation. To make your request, visit tonyevans.org. That's tonyevans.org. Or call our resource center at 1-800-800-3222 where team members are available around the clock to assist you. That's 1-800-800-3222.

Our children may inherit our hair color, our eye color, or even our crooked teeth. But tomorrow, Dr. Evans digs deeper into why patterns of sin and disobedience don’t have to be part of that inheritance. I hope you’ll join us for that.