Hey this is Pastor John Ryan Cantu from PNEUMA Church in Houston, Texas.

Thank you for listening to the message today.

I hope that it blesses you and all those that you share it with.

God bless you.

Man.

You know, you know you did a good job when your when your kids say good things about you.

Amen.

So once again, happy Father's Day to everybody.

Let's go to the word now, officially.

Exodus 32, you can stand with me.

Through twenty-nine.

We should be there already, right?

Amen.

It says this, and when Moses saw that the people had broken loose, For Aaron had let them break loose to the derision of their enemies.

Then Moses stood at the gate of the camp and said, Who is on the Lord's side?

Come to me.

And all the sons of Levi gathered around him, and he said to them, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, put your sword on the side of each of you And go to and fro from the gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill his brother and his companion and his neighbor.

And the sons of Levi did according to what Moses said, and that day about three thousand men of the people fell.

And Moses said, Today you have been ordained for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing upon you.

This day.

Amen.

I don't know how many of you say amen to that kind of graphic story, but um let's let's ask the Lord to speak this morning.

My God, we thank you.

For dads, Lord, we thank you for exemplifying what a good father is for us, Lord.

My God, I pray, Father God, that through this word we would be honored, we would be edified, Lord, we would honor you, Father God.

And every dad in this place, Father God, and every son in this place, and every daughter, Father God, and even mother, Lord, would be edified through your word.

We love you.

Speak, Holy Spirit, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

You can take your seat.

I entitled the message this morning, Rise and Kill.

Rise and Kill.

It doesn't get any more manly than that for Father's Day.

And uh I I want you to kind of stay with me as we kind of navigate a little bit through two biblical stories.

By the time I was finished prepping for this word, I realized Word for sons and daughters, for fathers and sons.

So I pray that all of us receive this word.

But I want to focus on the sons of Levi.

The sons of Levi are a perfect example of what it means to go from cursed to blessed.

Now, a lot of times when we talk about curses, We we think in terms of like witchcraft and spells and we think of harmful spirits antagonizing a person and you know when when we think of curses like this, sometimes we we think that You know, if somebody did a curse on me, then I'm a victim of a curse, and somebody did witchcraft on me, and I can't get out of it because of what they did.

But curses go far beyond that.

Curses are often a response to our own actions and the actions of those who came before us that we have not yet broken.

That's how we see curses in the Old Testament.

Additionally, it's not just people who curse people.

God is also known to curse his own people.

Just like we have covenantal blessings from God, we also see covenantal curses from God.

A good example of this is Deuteronomy 28, which basically says to Israel that if you obey the Lord, you will be blessed, but if you disobey, you will be cursed.

That is a promise to bless.

It's also a promise to curse.

God told Abraham, I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you.

But today, somebody say today.

Today we are under a new covenant.

And it's worth saying that, um it's worth saying that because for those of us who are in Christ, we have to know what the Bible says.

We're not under the curse of sin anymore.

The Bible says in Galatians that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

Romans says that there is no condemnation in those who are in Christ Jesus.

Amen.

And I feel like I have to say this because many times Christians walk around still thinking that they're cursed.

And it probably doesn't help that you got a lot of other Christians saying, oh, well, it's because you struggle with that because you're under a generational curse.

Like I feel like we need we need better theology than this.

We need biblical theology.

We cannot confidently say that we have been washed by the blood of Jesus.

But I still got this curse over my life because then what did the blood of Jesus actually do?

What power of blood of Jesus do does it really have if we're still under the curse of sin?

You with me?

I didn't get a lot of amen to that.

I feel like some Christians want there to be generational curses.

Because it goes with our narrative.

But if you've been saved by grace, washed by the powerful blood of the Lamb, there is no curse.

We're free.

We've been freed from the curse.

I I keep forgetting.

I keep forgetting that Juneteenth is now a federal holiday.

I got paid on Thursday.

I was like, why the heck am I getting paid on a Thursday?

Amen.

Yeah.

And and I remembered it's Juneteenth.

And Juneteenth commemorates the day when enslaved people in Texas learned that they were free.

The proclamation of their freedom was made two years before they actually learned of it.

So that means that for two years you had people still acting like, behaving like, and identifying as slaves.

And so when they finally learned that they were free, they started to act like they were free.

But the enemy does the same thing.

He would like to convince Christians.

To believe that we are still under a curse.

He would like to make us think that we can't get out of certain habits and mindsets because, you know, my dad had this problem, therefore I'm going to have this problem.

But let me tell you, you are not cursed just because you're tempted.

You are not cursed just because you struggle.

You're not cursed because you got some bad habits that need to be broken.

And you are not cursed because you're facing consequences of the past.

We gotta stop blaming everything on the devil.

We gotta stop blaming everything on chains that have already been broken and walk in the freedom and the newness of life that we've been granted in Christ Jesus.

Sometimes, listen somebody, sometimes it's deliverance is not about us uh needing to be uh cast out a demon Sometimes deliverance isn't about lifting a curse from us.

Sometimes deliverance is simply about a decision you have to make.

That's it.

Demons exist, demons need to be cast out of people who are not saved.

But sometimes deliverance in the believer is not about a demon that is taunting you, it's about a decision you have failed to make.

Calling yourself cursed.

Just decide to do better.

That's what God told Cain when Cain wasn't bringing the better offering and he was struggling with jealousy.

God said, if you don't do, if you don't just do better, won't you be blessed?

Just choose to do better.

Sometimes we need men and women who know that they belong to God to simply rise up and kill anything that separates them from the Lord.

Rise up and kill anything that is not on the Lord's side.

Rise up and kill those bad habits and the poor mindsets. and every temptation and every struggle.

Sometimes that's all it takes to live in freedom.

You know why?

Because you're already free.

God already saved you.

He already knows you.

He already died for you and resurrected for you to give you that same power.

God has already blessed you with His Spirit.

Start acting like you're free.

From the person next to you, ask them, do you know you're free?

Okay, tell it tell the other person like you really mean it.

Do you know you're free?

Tell any man.

It doesn't have to be a curse anymore.

Not for those of us who are in Christ.

And so I felt like I had to say that because we're going to talk about curses But I don't want anybody here thinking, oh, that's me.

I'm so cursed.

I'm so cursed.

I said yes to Jesus 10 years ago, but I'm still cursed.

No, bro.

Just make better choices.

Okay.

With that said, let's go back to the Old Testament.

Let's go to the Levites.

The Levites come from a descendant who was cursed.

Well one more thing I'll say about curses.

The modern idea of curse, uh curse words, come from curses.

Like if I wanted to be ugly to you, I could curse you.

You did something ugly to me and I wanted to like get get you back, I could, I could curse at you.

Now, just because I curse you doesn't mean that you have to believe what I'm proclaiming over you, but it's different when your dad is the one who curses you That's different.

And in Genesis forty-nine, Jacob, who is the father To twelve sons, who later become the twelve tribes of Israel, he issues prophetic blessings and prophetic curses to his sons according to what they've done.

The Bible says that he's on his deathbed, and it says that Jacob called his sons and he said, gather yourselves together that I may tell you what shall happen to you in the coming days.

And so his sons gather around Jacob and he begins to prophesy over his sons.

Some of them are blessings and others are curses.

Now, if you read through the blessings and the curses, you're gonna notice that the blessings aren't favor and the curses aren't unfavored.

Jacob is not Picking and choosing who he's gonna bless and who he's gonna curse based off which kid he loves the most.

The curses are a result of past mistakes For example, he begins with his son Reuben in verse 3.

It says, Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, and the first fruit of my strength, pre-eminent in dignity and preeminent in power.

And then this is what verse 4 says, unstable as water, you shall not have preeminence, because you went up to your father's bed, then you defiled it.

So I don't know how many kids we have in the room today, so I'm not gonna go over the details of what Reuben did, but he did something uh evil that caused his father to curse him and take away his blessing to give it to another child.

And then he gets to his sons, two sons, Levi and Simeon.

And there's a pretty graphic story in In Genesis 34, I would have you do some homework when you get home this week.

Read Genesis 34.

But something was done to Dina.

Dina is the sister to Simeon and Levi.

And out of anger they react violently.

And so at the end of his life, Jacob calls Simeon and Levi.

He remembers their sin.

This is what he says.

He says, Simeon and Levi are brothers.

Weapons of violence are their swords.

Let my soul come not into their counsel.

O my glory, be not joined to their company, for in their anger they killed men, and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel.

I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them.

In Israel.

So Jacob curses the actions of Simeon and Levi, and he issues this punishment based on what they did in the past.

This punishment was uh that they would be scattered and divided throughout the land.

Now, why is this not a good thing?

Well, because in these days, land was wealth and unity was strength.

And so for Jacob to prophesy that they would be divided and scattered over the land is essentially making them believe that they're not going to have any influence later down the line.

Essentially, it's like your father saying, you're gonna amount to nothing.

You will be nothing because of what you did, because of your past, because of the patterns that you've shown me.

This is gonna be your fate.

This is gonna be your destiny, and your kids are gonna suffer the consequences because of what you did.

And so, as it turns out, the years go by and and Simeon's tribe eventually gets overtaken by the stronger tribe of Judah and they lose their influence.

And the Bible says that the Levites received no inheritance of land.

Everybody else gets land, but not the Levites.

And so you've got these two brothers, they committed the exact same sin, and they're receiving this prophetic curse from their father, saying that their descendants are going to be scattered and divided.

Now I want to make this Let me make this practical.

What you believe about yourself can become a reality.

See you know What you believe about yourself, you begin to tell yourself, you begin to believe it.

And if you begin to walk in it, that can become Your reality.

And so, dads, we have such a powerful influence over our children's lives simply by what we say to them.

We can build up a child in a moment and then the very next moment we can tear that child down.

I don't care how old I am, a 36-year-old man.

And I, man, my dad can still build me up today with his words.

I actually screenshotted something.

Can you share that, Andrea?

Check this out.

It's a text message that my dad sent me last year.

This is uh this was on Easter.

Is it there?

It's not there.

Never mind.

We're looking at nothing I thought it was there.

Um But you know what?

I I I have it.

I saved it to my favorites because it's uh it's um it's something that my dad said to me that That just built me up in a moment.

And uh, you know what?

I can't find it.

So this is not turning out to be a good sermon.

Take your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Look, look, this is what he said.

Um, so this was last Easter, and I I preached the message.

Um Not on the prodigal son, but it was it was a message for prodigals.

It was a message uh where where Peter is returning to what he did before because of his shame, right?

And um so it was a message for prodigals.

This is what my dad says.

He says, I know I've told you before that was a great word regarding a preaching, but this time the word you brought was beautiful, full of conviction for anybody that was that has served the Lord before.

He said, I even wanted to be a prodigal son just to attend the altar call.

Jokes.

And he says, well done.

I am very proud of you.

Now I don't I don't preach for my dad's approval.

I don't preach for any man's approval.

But I ain't gonna lie.

When I s when when he sent me that I was like, yeah Because I respect this man more than anybody.

He's one of the wisest, hard hardest working men I've ever known And there's so many things that he can do that I cannot do.

And for him to say that he's proud of me, man, that is a win for any son.

And so we we have such a powerful influence over our children's lives simply by the words that we say to them.

Now at the end of the day, we all have to answer for ourselves.

Like we we can't keep blaming our parents for everything.

And some of you might be saying, man, Pastor, my dad never said anything like that to me My dad never told me he was proud of me.

My dad never told me that he loved me.

My dad wasn't even present.

Like at some point we have to kill the past trauma.

And look to our Heavenly Father as our source.

We can't do anything about the dads of yesterday.

We can't do anything about what our our dads told us that hurt us.

We can't do anything about the words that we've spoken over our children that have hurt them, but we can do something about today.

Somebody say today Okay, we can't do anything about the past, but we can start today, man.

And so to the dads of today, just know that your words have influence Your words have power.

You can start today to begin to use your words to produce life.

You can start today to build them up, to tell them that you love them, to tell them that you're proud of them.

Man, save your kids.

If you got young kids, save your kids From the trauma and the need of them having to go to counseling later in life because they got unpacked all the stuff that you told them and they identified as and they believed about themselves Choose to build them up today.

Choose to instill good beliefs, godly beliefs about themselves so that they don't have to stumble over daddy issues later down the road Now now some of y'all are saying, but Pastor, I already messed up.

I already set the tone in the relationship.

I can't tell you how many dads I talked to.

Who say, man, my kids don't want anything to do with me anymore.

Because I failed to lead them early on.

And now they don't trust me.

Or I I failed to discipline them early on and now they don't respect me.

I failed to talk to them and be present for them, and now I barely have a relationship with them.

My kids want nothing to do with me.

Now we kind of run into an interesting dilemma.

Like how do I break a curse in my children that I started How do I do that?

We don't talk about that.

We talk about how to break our own curses, our own chains.

How do we break the curses?

And undo the damage that we caused and our adult children.

I don't know who this is for, man, but I don't think it's for most of you, but I do believe it's for some of you.

So for any father who is here today with the complicated relationship with his children, because of the BC version of you, the before Christ version of you Hope is not lost, man.

Stop telling yourself that it is.

It's not lost.

Because you know what?

Now you have power that you didn't have before.

Now you have the power of prayer that you didn't know that you had before.

Pray for your children's healing.

Every single day, pray for their mind, pray for their heart, pray for their soul, pray for their trauma, get on your knees.

And and pray for them in a way that you never prayed for them before.

Make up for all the time, all those years that you never prayed for them.

You have the power of prayer on your side today.

You also have the power of a transforms you.

And they might not see it right away.

They might not believe it right away.

They might think, man, all dad's just he's he's He's trying to come back into my life again.

I've seen this before, but the truth don't lie.

And so if you stick around long enough this time, they're gonna start to believe, man, my dad is a changed man.

Look at what God has done in his life.

You have that power.

Now also say this.

You might have to take the first step You might have to initiate the phone call.

You might have to send them an invite.

You might have to do something that is uncomfortable.

You might have to sit with them and have a godly conversation with them like you've never had before.

And it might be awkward for you, and it might be awkward for them, and it might be awkward for everybody.

But do the things that make you a good father today because hope isn't loss Stop mourning over the chains and the damage that you cause and get on your knees, man, and start praying like a man Start fighting like a man.

Start pleading the blood of Jesus over your children like a man.

Why do we reserve these things for the women?

Why why why when we think about a prayer warrior, we think about a woman?

Why is that?

Because that's what I've seen.

That's what I witnessed growing up.

Men of God, we can change the culture of what it means to be a prayer warrior.

We can join these women of faith and get on our knees as well and bring heaven down to our homes and plead the blood of Jesus.

We can cry with them.

We can be we can be humble.

We can we We gotta do the things that we've never done before.

I don't know who that was for, but I I believe God led me to say it for a reason, even though it kind of derailed my train of thought.

What you believe about yourself can become a reality.

What your kids believe about themselves can become a reality.

Now I don't I don't want to assume that I know how Simeon and and Levi took this word from their from their father.

But honestly, this is not even about Simeon and Levi.

This is about those that came after them.

This is about those who stopped being a victim of what was said about them.

So over 400 years has passed since the sin of Levi, and now the whole camp of Israel is sitting under severe judgment for the sin of this golden calf.

And a question is asked by Moses.

What does he say?

He says, who is on the side of the Lord?

Now that's an easy question for us.

See or no?

Like if Moses came in here and he was like Who was on the Lord's side?

We'd all get up and we'd follow Moses.

We'd like, yes, we were on the Lord's side.

That question wasn't really hard to answer.

It's the next part.

It's the next part.

It's it's the uncomfortable part for us to read.

The Bible says that all the sons of Levi gathered around Moses.

Y'all know me, man.

I like to imagine Bible stories like as movies So like when Moses said who is on the side of the Lord, I feel like it was just silent for like 10 seconds.

And one Levite was like, I stand with the Lord.

Another I stand you know you know what I'm talking about and then and then everybody's like I stand with the Lord and then you got this this group of mighty men standing behind Moses Siding with the Lord.

And it was this epic moment for the Levites who had this reputation of violence and anger.

Here's the crazy part for me though.

Because I'm like, okay, God, they have a reputation for violence and anger, and this is what you tell them to do next.

Put your sword on your side and go from gate to gate throughout the camp and each of you kill his brother and his companion and his neighbor.

Doesn't that like the first time you read that is like God make it make sense?

You got these people like are you are are you calling them be just because you know who they are, what they're capable of?

What is it?

This is some real Old Testament stuff right here.

And this is this one is kind of hard for us to grasp and accept.

Why would God tell the Levites to kill their brothers and sisters and neighbors?

I think that the answer that's most common to this question is that the Levites were being asked to kill anything that was not on the side of the Lord.

God is trying to protect Israel's covenant, and therefore those who stand opposed to God's plan have to be subject to death.

God don't have time to play those games, right?

You got you gotta kill anything that is is not for the Lord.

And that makes sense.

Like that that's a solid answer.

But there's also another reason that's not so obvious.

You still with me?

I'm teaching a lot today.

I don't, I don't, I hope I'm not boring you.

In Genesis 34 Genesis 34, again, Simeon and Levi, they threaten their father Jacob's reputation, and they threatened his influence by acting out in anger.

Again, if we got kids in a room, I don't want to go into the details, but basically, their sister Dinah was brutally violated by a man named Shechem.

And if you read the story, it's it's gangster man.

Gangster stuff.

And they devise this whole plan and it's this whole scheme and there's a lot, there's lying, there's deception, and then there's brutal murder at the end of all of it.

They react as maybe any brother would in anger and in flesh.

They react to a crime with a crime.

They go against what's righteous in order to protect A family member.

That's the key.

I want you to hear that.

They go against what is godly in order to protect family.

So by the time we get to Moses and the sons of Levi, the very same tribe from whom their father Levi acted in violence to protect his sister are now being asked to take the sword against their brothers.

For the Lord.

That makes sense.

Like God is trying to reverse the act to break the curse.

So the Levites have this decision to make.

Your father acted in the flesh, today you're gonna have to react in righteousness Your father reacted in anger.

Now you're gonna have to act in righteous anger.

Your father Levi, he he obeyed his flesh.

Today you're gonna have to obey the Lord.

Your father Levi took his matter and took the matter into his own hands.

Today you're gonna have to learn to trust in God He was reversing the curse.

That's what they were doing.

And so we talked to dads.

Now let me talk to the sons and daughters for a moment.

Some of you are products of good, godly parents.

I don't want to take that away.

I don't want to do a whole Father's Day message assuming that everybody just had poor dads.

I don't think that's the case.

I think many of us had good dads, loving fathers who did the best that they could.

But maybe you picked up some habits from them that are not the healthiest.

Maybe you adopted some poor mindsets and you struggle with the same things that your parents struggled with But I want to tell you, man, that today you have the power to take all of that weakness, all of those struggles, all of those identity issues.

And present them to the Lord.

All that anxiety, all that anger that you got from generations that pass something down to you and give it to the Lord and say, God I give you everything.

God, I want to live righteously for you, God.

God, I want to set the tone today.

God, I want to reverse the curse.

God, I want to reverse anything that is looming over me.

I want to make things better for the generations that come after me.

The Bible says that the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses, and that day about 3,000 men of people fell.

And Moses said, Today you have been ordained for the service of the Lord.

Each one at the cost of his son and his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing upon you this day.

So what's cool about this man is that the Bible tells us that the Levites still ended up with no land.

After all of it, they still, everybody else had land.

Except for the Levites.

So that prophetic curse that was issued by Jacob to his son Levi, it did come to pass.

The Levites were scattered, they were divided over 48 cities in Israel.

But instead of having no influence like maybe Levi thought he was gonna have, they had great influence.

Are you following me?

What you believe about yourself can become a reality.

And so Levi accepts this word from his father Jacob.

Man I'm gonna be cursed.

I ain't gonna have land.

I'm not gonna have no power.

I'm not gonna have influence.

My betters are my brothers are all gonna do better than me, and we're just gonna phase out and we're we're gonna be meaningless in this tribe of Israel that God wanted to set. uh with my my grandfather uh Abraham.

And maybe that's what he believed and maybe that's what he told his children and his children's children and his children's children.

We're not going to have any influence.

We're going to be little we're going to be small among the tribes.

But then there comes a moment where the sons of Levi say, man, we stand with the Lord.

We stand with the Lord.

And the Levites, from this moment on, instead of having no influence, they have great influence.

In these 48 cities, the Levites become priests.

They become spiritual leaders throughout Israel.

The Levites were entrusted with the sacrifice And the offerings to the Lord, all because a godly generation stood up and decided not to be a product of the past anymore, They stood up and sided with the Lord.

Listen, they decided that to pursue a new destiny for their families.

That's what they did.

They decided to rise up and kill anything that was unhealthy, anything that was ungodly, and pursue a better destiny for themselves and for the the the destiny of generations that came before them after them And brother man and sister in Christ, the same thing can happen to you.

I'm tired of talking to Christians who still think they're under a curse.

I'm tired of talking to Christians, man, who still believe that because of what their dad did, because their dad was an alcoholic.

I have to be an alcoholic, it's his fault.

You can reverse the curse today.

You can reverse it.

You can stop it.

Stand with me.

Hallelujah.

Thank you, Jesus.

Prayer team, would you come?

Thank you, Lord.

I want to have the prayer team, if anybody is in need of prayer.

But my main altar call is gonna be like what we do every Father's Day.

If you have your family in the room with you here, I'm gonna ask that you bring them to the altar.

Begin to pray over them.

Begin to kill what needs to be killed.

And make the decisions that as for you in your home, you're going to serve the Lord.

For you and your home, you're not going to allow certain things into your household.

Determine with your kids, determine with your spouse.

That you're gonna serve the Lord with everything that you have.

And begin to pray over them.

And begin to speak life into your children and to your family.

Fathers, I want you to pray over your kids today.

I want you to pray over your wife today.

Can you do that?

Can we open these altars up?

Thanks for listening.

If you'd like some more information on PNEUMA Church, visit us on our website at mypneumachurch. org.

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Thanks again and God bless.