Curses this Side of the Cross

Thursday, 13th December 2007

Have been wanting to blog on this topic, but somehow other stuff came up, so here it is finally :-)
I believe most of us are familiar with stories like the Ugly Duckling, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.

Imagine you going into a bargain-basement store and seeing these books not only in hardcover, but fully-illustrated in colour being sold for only 50 cents each. With Christmas just around the corner, you decide to buy 500 copies -- to give to nephews and nieces, and even maybe for birthdays and other special occasions the following year.

After arriving home and flipping through the books, you discover to your horror that there are missing pages. In the Ugly Ducking story, the ending part about it turning into a beautiful swan is not there. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are still in a deep coma. You thought you had found the bargain of the year, but you now feel like you are the buffoon of the year. You have been cheated and swindled, and in disgust, you decide to throw the entire lot into the garbage bin.

Back in July 2007, I heard a sermon where the pastor spoke very strongly on Deut 28. He was warning the congregation that they needed to be obedient to God, otherwise the curses as recorded in verses 15 to 68 will not only visit them but their generations to come.

Let's look closely at Deut 28:15. It says "But it shall come about it, if you do not obey the LORD your God, to observe to do ALL His commandments and His statutes with which I charge you today, that ALL these curses will come upon you and overtake you."

We also read in James 2:10 that anyone who breaks even one of God's law is guilty of breaking them all.

Honestly, ever since accepting Jesus, which one of us can truly say that we have not committed even one sin? If we embrace what the above preacher said, then every single one of us are going to be cursed to our fourth generation.

Gospel means "good news" and this sure ain't good news.

Remember the story about those books, where the ending part was missing? It is the same thing here. Whenever we hear sermons from the Old Testament without being told of its context in the New, we are being shortchanged. We are being told that the duckling is still ugly or the beauty is still sleeping. So what do we do with such teachings? Throw them into the thrash can where they rightly belong, like those books with the missing pages...

Thanks be to God that Jesus by His death on the cross, has redeemed us from all curses. Any curses as described in the Laws of Moses (ie. in Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers) no longer apply to us because we read in Gal 3:13 that Jesus, by being crucified on the tree, took those curses upon Himself. Even the curse that Adam brought about on mankind because he ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil no longer applies. Sure, in the Garden of Eden, a curse was pronounced upon the ground, and he had to toil in hard labour, but in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus sweat drops of blood that fell upon the ground to redeem it, so that our work need no longer laborious and stressful.

So are you saying that there are no more curses this side of the cross?

If only that were so.

If we search the scriptures for writings that took place after Jesus paid the price on the cross, we see that 2 curses still operate today.

In Gal 1:8-9, Paul wrote

8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!

What was Paul referring to here? I have blogged about this on at least 2 previous occasions, so I won't go into details, but suffice it to say that Paul was angry with the Galatians (and also the apostle Peter) because the grace gospel was being adulterated.

Those who preach a gospel that mixes law and grace are under a double curse, so the sad irony is that while that preacher was trying to tell his congregation that those curses under the law still operate today, by doing so he was instead exposing his very ownself to curses -- those 2 curses that Paul spoke about.

But the good news is that if he (and other law-based preachers) begin to realise that Jesus has redeemed every one of us from those curses and embraces that truth for themselves, even these 2 curses no longer apply to them.

Those of you out there who have crossed over from other churches to New Creation Church, please continue to pray for the pastors of your previous church. Remember, God loves each one of them too. Even though Peter, and even the church in Laodicea had mixed law and grace, I believe every single one of them are now in heaven, and I look forward to saying hi to them when my time here on earth is up :-)