"The Scars of Sin" - 2 Samuel 13:1-22

What can you learn from the immoral actions of David's son Amnon about the generational scars of sin?

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, Cedar Street Baptist Church, I love you so very much, and it's my joy to be with you here this morning. As uh we're heading down the home stretch of a series. If you're here for the first time, we're glad you're here. If it's been a little while since you've been here, welcome back. But we're kind of rounding third and head for home in a sermon series out of 2 Samuel about the life of King David. And as you can see on the screen, our sermon series is entitled Faithful and Flawed. As we've looked at the life of David, we see a man after of great faith who ran after God's own heart, but also a man of great flaws who ran after God's amazing grace. And I've been mentioning the first couple of weeks of the series, right? It's like a pitch of a roof. Everything is going incredibly well in the life of David. And in his life and in his testimony, we see a perfect example of a person that understands worship, a person that understands grace, a person that is white hot for the presence of God. And then we see in uh in chapter 11, we begin to see the downfall. And we see sin unfolding. And we see the sin that spreads and basically taints the rest of his ministry and even his immediate family. Sin is a cancer that needs to be dealt with, but it's something that we all struggle with, all of us. And I want to say two truths that you need to hold in tension. This is true for every single one of us. Don't you ever forget this. The first is this there is no sin that you have ever committed where God's grace is not still greater. As long as you claim the blood of Jesus, as long as you repent and put your faith in King Jesus, there's no sin so great that his grace is not greater. But the second truth that you need to remember is this although all sin is removed from eternal consequences because of the blood of Jesus, it will always have earthly consequences that affect more than just you. You can be forgiven, but sin leaves scars. And scars go beyond just you. They will affect your family, they will affect your neighbors, and they will affect your friends. So today we're gonna celebrate grace and the blood of Jesus at the end of our time. I'm gonna claim now, and you're gonna hear the fullness of this at the end of the message. The blood of Jesus can break generational scars of sin. And yet at the same time, we need to be well aware of the decisions that we're making. And you know, one of the things I want to say before we jump into the word is this I was talking to a dear brother who's become a mentor to me. He's a retired pastor that lives in Atlanta, and I asked him this question. I said, In your life, where did you begin to make the biggest transition of growth in your life? And he said, Bo, I was pastoring a long time before I actually started really growing in the Lord. He said, and the change was I began to recognize the patterns of sin in my life and in my character. And I will just say this as a pastor who is learning and growing, but also counseling many others. I find when people are outraged by the world, when people are outraged by our country, when they're outraged by the news, they're typically blind to their own character. And they're blind to their own sins, they're blind to their own patterns, and we all have them. And as we're going to talk about some of these patterns you got from your ancestors, you received a strand of DNA that goes a lot further than brown eyes and big noses. You have sinful patterns that you carry into your life that you have inherited from your family. But you're not a slave to them either because of the blood of Jesus. You can do something about it. And that's what we're going to talk about here today as we talk about sin and we talk about the scars of sin. We're going to look at 2 Samuel chapter 13, verses 1 through 22, and our title is The Scars of Sin. There's a cycle that takes place in your life. There's a cycle that takes place in the life of David, and we're going to see that. And the cycle can be broken, but you have to recognize what the cycle is. So we're going to look at this chapter, and we're going to see the son of David, and we're going to see him doing the exact same thing that David did, and we're going to see how it affects more than just you. And then we're going to see how you and I can recognize these patterns and claim the blood of Jesus over our lives. So what's our big idea in one sentence? Here it is. The immoral actions of David's son Amnon reveal the generational scars of sin that can destroy a family. The immoral actions of David's son Amnon reveal the generational scars of sin that can destroy a family. So if you want to know more about that, would you turn with me to the book of 2 Samuel? 2 Samuel chapter 13. We're going to read the first 22 verses. I'll catch us up at the end, basically what happens at the end of the chapter, but in the essence of time, we're going to tackle the first 22 verses. So turn with me if you can. If you don't have a Bible, grab the Pew Bible in front of you or beside you or on page 311 in your Pew Bible. And if you would stand at this time, out of reverence to the reading of God's holy, infallible, inerrant, and fully sufficient word, we are in 2 Samuel chapter 13, looking at verses 1 through 22. Hear God's word to us, starting in verse 1. It says, Now Absalom, David's son, had a beautiful sister, whose name was Tamar. And after a time Amnon, David's son, loved her. And Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill because of his sister Tamar, for she was a virgin. And it seemed impossible to Amnon to do anything to her. But Amnon had a friend whose name was Jonadab, the son of Shime, David's brother. And Jonadab was a very crafty man, and he said to him, O son of the king, why are you so haggard morning after morning? Will you not tell me? Amnon said to him, I love Tamar, my brother Absalom's sister. Jonadab said to him, Lie down on your bed and pretend to be ill. And when your father comes to see you, say to him, Let my sister Tamar come and give me bread to eat and prepare the food in my sight, that I may see it and eat it from her hand. So Amnon lay down and pretended to be ill. And when the king came to see him, Amnon said to the king, Please let my sister Tamar come and make a couple of cakes in my sight that I may eat from her hand. Then David sent home to Tamar, saying, Go to your brother Amnon's house and prepare food for him. So Tamar went to her brother Amnon's house, where he was lying down. And she she took dough and kneaded it and made cakes in his sight and baked the cakes, and she took the pan and emptied it out before him, but he refused to eat, and Amnon said, Send out everyone from me. So everyone went out from him. Then Amnon said to Tamar, Bring the food into the chamber that I may eat from your hand. And Tamar took the cakes she had made and brought them into the chamber to Amnon her brother. But when she brought them near him to eat, he took hold of her and said to her, Come, lie with me, my sister. She answered him, No, my brother, do not violate me. For such a thing is not done in Israel. Do not do this outrageous thing. As for me, where could I carry my shame? And as for you, you would be as one of the outrageous fools in Israel. Now therefore, please speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from you. But he would not listen to her, and being stronger than she he violated her and lay with her. Then Amnon hated her with very great hatred, so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said to her, Get up, go. But she said to him, No, my brother, for this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other that you did to me. But he would not listen to her. He called the young man who served him and said, Put this woman out of my presence and bolt the door after her. Now she was wearing a long robe with sleeves, for thus were the virgin daughters of the king dressed. So his servant put her out and bolted the door after her, and Tamar put ashes on her head and tore the long robe that she wore, and she laid her hand on her head and went away crying aloud as she went. And her brother Absalom said to her, Has Amnon your brother been with you? Now hold your peace, my sister. He is your brother, do not take this to heart. So Tamar lived a desolate woman in her brother Absalom's house. When King David heard of all these things, he was very angry. But Absalom spoke to Amnon, neither good nor bad, for Absalom hated Amnon because he had violated his sister Tamar. Let's pray. Oh, Lord Jesus. Sin is more dangerous than we can ever understand. Lord, it takes us places that we don't want to go. It makes us stay longer than we want to stay. And it makes us pay a price that we never had any dream of paying. And it always affects more than just us. There are scars that we bear from our fathers and mothers, and scars that our children bear from us. But Jesus, I claim the pure, cleansing, redeeming blood that you shed on Calvary, that it's powerful enough to deal with these scars. But Lord, help us before we plead the blood to understand the cycle. We're walking around this planet completely blind and ignorant to the generational scars and cycle of sin that we keep living out that we've gotten from our ancestors, Lord, and it needs to stop. It needs to be broken. Let today be a day where we would stick a flag in the dirt and say, not anymore, not here, and claim your blood to begin a new journey. And be with us right now, I pray, in your name, the name above all names, Lord Jesus. And all of God's people said, Amen. This is our fourth week talking about that word that I know we would love to talk about something different, but we need to recognize the real issue. We need to not play church. We need to recognize the real issue in our lives, and it's a three-letter word, it's sin. I said three weeks ago there's stages of sin. Sin doesn't happen in a vacuum. There's a condition of the heart where sin begins. There's criteria, the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. That's pleasure and power and possessions. There's the moment that we say yes or maybe to those sinful desires and it's conceived in the heart. And then there's the consummation when we actually commit the sin, and then there's the consequences that come, which we're going to talk about today. But then there's the spread of sin when we don't confess it, when we don't nip it in the bud, we deal with more damage, more deceit, and more death. Sin always brings some kind of death, whether it's physical or spiritual. And then I mentioned last week there's a solution. We have to begin a process. Sin must be confronted, it must be confessed, it must be corrected, and it must be cleansed. Today we're going to go even deeper. And we're going to look at the scars. We're going to look at the cycle. And as you are listening, I want you to think of your own life. And I want you to think of your family. I want you to think about where you come from. And I want you to think about in your own journey patterns that you're experiencing. Because I would venture to say that you and I, we can point out the sin of the person sitting next to us so easily. And yet we are so blind to the patterns of our own life that we live over and over and over and over again. And Jesus is a chain breaker. He's a cycle ender. He wants to write an entirely new journey. He wants the last chapters of your book to not be the first chapters. But we need to look at the life of another family who's laid bare before us in this chapter in 2 Samuel 13 and be honest, because even though we may not have committed the exact same things that David and his family did, this is our family scrapbook too. And I'm going to share a few things from my own life and try to encourage you to be transparent in your life as well. So we're going to be looking at these generational scars of sin from David's family scrapbook. But I want you to be thinking about your own as we walk through this together. And in this, we're going to, again, because there's 22 verses, I can only hit the high notes, the key words in the movement of the text. I want us to look at three things. Starting in verse 1 and looking through verse 22, we're going to look at the scar of sinful behavior, the scar of sinful betrayal, and the scar of sinful blame. So let's look, number one, as we look at verses 1 through 5. The scar of sinful behavior. As you look at verses 1 through 5, the words that come to mind are this: like father, like son. It is eerie to look at Amnon, the son of David, and see that he has the exact same problem and situation that his father David did. Now, again, if you're new to the Bible and you weren't here the last couple of weeks, David committed adultery with a woman who was not his wife. He saw her bathing on the rooftop, and then he committed, he was an accessory to murder to cover up the adultery because she had gotten pregnant. And God said that there would be discord in his family because of this sin. Well, now the discord is starting to unfold. It says in verse 2, as Amnon, David's son, is looking at his half-sister Tamar, it says in verse 2, and Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill because of his sister Tamar, for she was a virgin, and it seemed impossible to Amnon to do anything to her. Just like his daddy, David saw a beautiful woman, also a forbidden woman. For David, it was a woman who was married to one of his loyal soldiers, Uriah. She had a big neon sign that says, not yours, not yours, not yours, not yours. And David's response to Bathsheba, she's mine, she's mine, she's mine, she's mine. And the same with Amnon. He looks at a beautiful half-sister Tamar, same daddy, different mama. And he wants her. And he desires after her to the point it says that he is sick. And that is exactly how sin behaves in the human heart. It begins with a desire that is something forbidden, and that desire becomes a demand. I want becomes I will have. And that with that demand comes a false promise from sin. Sin says, if you have, you will be satisfied. And everybody in this room that has chased after forbidden things knows there is no sin that you could ever commit where your soul will find satisfaction. God just will not allow it. He did not create the human soul to find full satisfaction apart from his will. It will never happen. It is a false promise. But it's the same behavior that David handed down to his son. And we have to say, as we look at our lives, it may not be sexual sin, but I want you to look at where you are right now in the church pew. And I want to ask the question: what part of your family lineage led you to be where you are right now? Now, some of you would quickly tell me the good stuff. And is the good stuff there? Of course it is. You know, we're all a mixed bag of sin and blessing. God gives us great gifts, He pours out great graces, and yet every single one of us, by how God has gifted us, we have sinful patterns and tendencies in our life, and they just didn't come out of thin air. Nature and nurture got you to where you are today. You're born with a sinful nature that we inherited from Adam and Eve, and then you were raised with a family, either good or bad, but you've inherited traits and they're not all good ones. And so I want to say, as we look walk through this story, do you recognize a pattern of behavior in your family ancestry? All right, whatever it is. Do you have a problem with anger? Can you trace that back to your parents or your grandparents? Do you have a problem with being overly analytical, a perfectionist, or very critical, very judgmental, never at peace, always wonder why people do things. And you probably got that from your great-grandparents or your grandparents or your parents. Think about patterns. If I were to ask you and you could not answer me, you may be stuck in a pattern that you don't even know. Now, I will tell you just this is pretty vulnerable, but I want to be real. So I'll share this with you. When I think about my mother's side of the family and my father's side of the family, there's patterns in both of them. And by God's grace, I've I've dabbled in some of this, and I've also been redeemed from some of this. Now, my mother's side of the family moved from Dublin, Ireland, to uh Massachusetts in the first part of the 20th century, and my mother's side of the family is named the Delahanys. All right, good Irish name. And uh the Delahanys, when they moved to Boston, Massachusetts, apparently my great-grandfather uh owned a very, what today is still around today, a very famous distillery called Mr. Boston Liquor. I'm told today if you go to your local liquor store, it's kind of the bottom shelf stuff. I don't say that from experience. Don't start any rumors in God's house. Uh but my great-grandfather uh was a big part of that and apparently sold his share of the business long before it became a famous company that it is today. But that that distillery is a symbol. If my mother was in the room today, she would tell you alcoholism is a huge pattern in my entire side of the family. My mom always says to me, Bo, you always talk about being Italian. You don't ever embrace your Irish heritage. And I always say, Mom, because I don't know who to embrace. They're all gone. My great-grandparents, drinking problems, cancer, died. My grandparents, they died before my mom was done her teenage years. I don't even know what they look like. There was one picture in my mother's bedroom of their wedding day. They died before, again, my mother ever graduated from high school. And then my mother had two brothers, my uncle Ed, my uncle Frank. They died from drinking, all of them. And I love my uncle Ed, he was one of my favorite people. And I remember at 12 years old being with him at a at a hospice facility named Fair Acres, and there was nothing fair about leaning over my uncle and watching him die because of alcohol. And I began to see patterns in my life. Now, by God's grace, I never fell headlong into alcoholism, but I do know in 2009, at 29 years old, when I took my last drop, and I just remember thinking, this is a dumb way to live. Nothing good is ever going to come out of this. I've got an entire side of the family that I don't know. I'm not doing this. And in 2009, by God's grace, I made a commitment. I'm not drinking another drop of alcohol until the marriage supper of the Lamb. When Jesus said, I will not drink the fruit of the vine until I drink it anew with you in the kingdom. Well, when Jesus has wine, I'm gonna have some wine too. Until that time comes, not the rest of my life, not one more drop by God's help. Now, my father's side of the family, this sin is a lot more socially acceptable. It's the sin of achievement. All right, if you were to if you were to get a tour of my family on the full genetic side, they're all high-driven, high producer, high productive, CEO, business owner, superintendent, principal, air force. I mean, it's just everywhere. Business owners, public educators, uh, executive vice president of international shipping for UPS. I every time we'd go to family reunions, I started to avoid going because I felt like, man, I've done nothing in my life. These people all have vacation homes, they all have master's degrees, most of them have doctorates, and I would admire them. A couple of years ago, I went home to visit my dad and one of my absolute favorite cousins, Jim. We call him Winky. He um family nicknames are hard to hard to get by. Winky came to talk to me. He's one of my favorite people. He's really just one of the godliest men I've ever known, highly successful. I would I hope he can come and visit one day because I know at least John and Bubba would love him. He's he's been an administrator and a principal and a great athlete, uh, college football player, Air Force, just a tremendously successful man. But I kept talking about how insecure I am about my full genetic side. They're all high achievers, and I I just feel like nothing compared to them. And he said, You don't know the other side of it. He said, The other side is where many of us have been so driven, it's an obsession. And it's an obsession that leads us to have. A soul that is never at rest. See, the society will pat that on the back, and yet at the same time, that's still a sinful pattern that we're not we're trying to go beyond what God intends for us. And because of that, God never gives us a peace. And I had some of that in me. You know, I think about this. Um, I've been blessed over the years to go to Florida many times with Jim Savage and um get away for a few days, and I drive around Daytona, where I lived for two years when I worked in baseball. And every time I look at the palm trees and I smell the salt air, I say, Bo, you were here for two years living on the beach. And yet the day you got there, you started you started planning on how you could get out of there to the next rung, into the next rung, into the next rung. I was so driven. And I recognize now it's because I didn't have Jesus in my life. But I just want to say this don't let this sermon go by as just an entertaining story before you go to lunch. You have patterns in your life that are sinful, and you got them from your ancestors. And if you don't know what they are, you're in more danger than you think. But Jesus' blood can overcome these things. He can, but you have to know what they are. And we all can look at our life and we can say there's behaviors that we inherited from our family, and it's been passed down, and by God's grace, we need to say no more. It stops with me. I'm not gonna raise my children and my grandchildren to be this way. I'm gonna I'm gonna tell them the blood of Jesus can change this. I believe that. I claim that today. And I want you to claim it for your family scrapbook, too. So that's number one, the scar of sinful behavior. Number two, let's look at the scar of sinful betrayal. Behavior will always lead to betrayal when behavior is outside the will of God. Now, as you look at verses six through fourteen, just look at verse six for a moment. Here's where the betrayal begins. It says, So Amnon lay down and pretended to be ill. And when the king came in to see him, Amnon said to the king, Please let my sister Tamar come and make a couple of cakes in my sight, that I may eat food from her hand. Now skip ahead to verse 11. In the middle of the verse it says, He did exactly what he planned to do. It says, He took her, took hold of her, and said to her, Come lie with me, my sister. She answered him, No, my brother, do not violate me, for such a thing is not done in Israel. Do not do this outrageous thing. As for me, where could I carry my shame? And as for you, you would be as one of the outrageous fools in Israel. Now, therefore, please speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from you. And then verse 14, but he would not listen to her, and being stronger than she, he violated her and lay with her. Betrayal. Now, there's a little difference between father and son on this one. For David, all the betrayal took place after the sin. After he committed the sin, what did he do? He tried to get Uriah to come and lie with his wife so he could hide the pregnancy. It didn't work. Then he went and tried to get him drunk and sent him down to his wife. That didn't work. So then he sends him on the front lines to get killed. All the betrayal of an innocent soldier took place after the sin. Well, for Amnon, the betrayal took place before the sin. For Amnon, it was betrayal of his own father. He lied right to his face. He walked right into his scheme. He said, Bring that beautiful daughter of yours, Tamar, to come feed me, and I can eat right from her hand. And it played right into his scheme. He betrayed his father, and then he betrayed his completely innocent virgin sister, half-sister. Betrayal. Sin leads to the scar of betrayal. Sin always affects more than the sinner. It includes betrayal against others, and most of all, it always includes betrayal against God. Sin is any thought, word, action, or attitude that you have that is against the nature and the character and the will of God. And you know what we don't recognize? I know what I'm gonna say. You're all gonna amen because you you know this is true here, but in the time of sin, it doesn't make its way here. God is good and his will for your life is the best that you can't improve upon his will. What he wants for you is for your very best. What he wants for you is your highest joy and satisfaction. That's what he wants for you. Why do you sin? Because you don't trust him. Why did Adam and Eve sin? They didn't trust him, they didn't believe that he was offering his very best to them. They thought he was withholding something good. And that's what Satan got Adam and Eve to believe. Well, if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you'll be like God knowing good and evil. Surely you will not die. What Satan was saying is if you want the best, if you want the height of joy, if you want this and if you want that, go after it and get it, because that's the only way you're going to be satisfied. God says the exact opposite. If you want the height of satisfaction in your life, surrender your life to me. Surrender your life to me, and you'll get me. And I will fulfill the desires of your heart with my presence, with my love. And I will guide and direct your path. You can never have satisfaction outside the will of God. Now you can be promised, a false promise that you will, but you'll find out as Amnon did, you're worse off than when you first started. That's number two, the sin, the scar of sinful betrayal. But let's look at the blame. This is something we all understand as sinners. There's the scar of sinful behavior, the scar of sinful betrayal. Third and finally, let's look at the scar of sinful blame. Verses 15 through 22. Starting in verse 15, it says, Then Amnon hated her with a very great hatred, so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said to her, Get up, go. And then you skip ahead to verse 21. It says, Then King David heard of all these things, he was very angry. And verse 22, but Absalom spoke to Amnon, neither good nor bad, for Absalom hated Amnon because he had violated his sister. This is the false promise of sin. Anytime you start plotting to do something that is not the will of God, you really do think you're going to find a greater happiness by going outside the will and the character of God. And the reason that you and I do these things is because we really do think that thing that I desire, that person that I think is going to fill my heart, or that object that I need to have, or that professional achievement that I will not stop until I achieve. If I achieve it, I will finally experience pleasure and fulfillment that I do not have right now. And it's a false promise that leads to emptiness, and you'll become more empty after you have it than you did before it. How do I know it leads to emptiness? Look at how Amnon responded. Shame and blame. Why was he angry at Tamar she didn't do anything? Because he was redirecting his shame. Easy to cast on somebody else. You didn't bring me the pleasure that I thought you would bring. I can't stand you. Get up and get out. All that comes from recognizing that sin is just offering a false promise. He felt shame. And in the midst of that shame, he decided to blame. Shame and blame. Same response since the Garden of Eden. What happened in the garden? Shame happened first. They realized they were naked and they hid from God. And then what happened when God confronted them? The blame game. Who did God go to first? Adam or Eve? He went to Adam. What did Adam say? He didn't say, You're right. I completely disobeyed you. He said, That woman that you gave me, she made me eat from the tree. And so he said, All right, Eve, why did you eat from the tree? Well, that snake that you led in the garden made me eat from that tree. Shame and blame are the scars of sin. Period. You and I will never be able to remove the shame from our lives or be able to take responsibility and not blame others until we surrender ourselves fully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. When you and I fully belong to Jesus, he covers our shame. The way that God covered their nakedness with animal skins, well, Jesus covers us in his blood. And we can recognize that those sins are forgiven. But we also have to recognize we can't cast blame on anybody else. If there's one thing that would continuously mark the counseling ministry of the last 10 years I've been a pastor, is when people come to me for counseling, the first things out of their mouth are blame for other people. I need counseling, Pastor. Well, what's wrong? This person and this person and this person, and I can't tell you, there's only a handful of times I ever remember somebody coming for counseling saying, you know, it's me. And I really need to help. I need to repent. It's always everybody else's fault. Nobody meets their standard. No church meets their standard. No boyfriend or girlfriend meets their standard. No, no friends meet their standard. It's always everybody, I'm looking for something because I'm the right standard and everybody else is wrong. And that's an issue of sin. When we look at ourselves and we begin to recognize where we are responsible, God can do some work there. God never works in illusion, he always works in reality. And until you get real with him, you can't begin to start experiencing his healing. But when you can begin to be honest and be vulnerable and be naked spiritually in front of God and confess sin the way that David did last week, he can begin to heal. But it does leave scars. And we need to recognize the decisions that we make. It makes a difference. Let me just ask you this. Think in your own life, okay? I know that your pastor is the only sinner in the room. You guys are all perfect. You've never experienced this, but just try with me and pretend for a minute, okay? Think about a time in your life that you wanted something that you couldn't have, however big or small. You knew it was wrong, but you wanted it. And you did what you had to do to get it. Nobody in this room, if that's the case, would ever say, and once I got it, I was fully satisfied. No, you would say you were more empty than before you had it. God in his love will never give you peace and fulfillment outside his will. And it's out of his love that he won't. He won't sell you out for second best. Now he may hand you over to what you really want if it's not him, but you won't be handed over with a smile on your face. Hell is a place where people are handed over to what they really want because they don't want God, but nobody there's smiling. The default disposition in hell is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Think about what it is right now. Can I just say this right now? What do you want right now? What's getting you up in the morning? What's driving the bus for you? What is your motivation right now? What are your goals right now? I can tell you this. You're not going to be any more happy if you achieve them than right now if you have Jesus in your life. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with seeking after things. Okay, work is a good thing, it's a gift from God. But at the same time, if you're not fully content walking with Jesus in this season, you're not going to find it by having something you don't have right now. He offers it to you right now. He lives with you in the right now. He's the great I am, not the I was or I will be. The I am is I'm with you right now. And he wants you to be content with him right now. And he may give you great gifts and he may give you great abilities, but whether he does or whether he doesn't, if you have Jesus right now, you have everything you need. You can't get better than Jesus. He is the lover and the redeemer and the sustainer of your soul, and he's inviting you into something right now. And it doesn't matter what you've been through, he can heal that. And it doesn't matter what you desire in the future, he can do something with that as well. This is who Jesus is. And so the question becomes is he enough? Do you really want Jesus? Do you really want Jesus? Or is there something else you want more than him? Because if you do, whatever it is that you want more than him, that's the sin that God wants to address in your life right now. So let me sum this up. Let me sum it up. We can break the cycle of our generational scars of sin when we renew ourselves in Christ's redeeming blood. We can break the cycle of our generational scars of sin when we renew ourselves in Christ's redeeming blood. Now, listen to Galatians chapter 3, verse 13. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. He broke the curse. He broke the cycle of generational sin by his blood. None of you in this room can say, Well, I am who I am because of my family, and there's nothing I can do about it. No, you could say, I uh maybe I got here in part because of the genes that I have, but I'm not a slave to that. I can change. That's why my passion is spiritual formation. That's why the mission of this church, I'm so white hot and laser beam focused on it. The mission of this church is heads, hearts, and hands being transformed through the gospel. It is a belief that we say every Sunday because of the good news of Jesus Christ, because of who he is and what he's done, you can change. I believe it. I've tasted and experienced just small bits of this in my life, and I want more. I want God to change other things in my life. I want to enjoy him with everything I have. Because the reason that you're on planet Earth is not your mission, it's your relationship. Whatever it is that you do for Jesus, God can find anybody else to do that. But the one thing that only you can offer Jesus is your heart. No one else can do that but you. God wants to use us to change other people's lives. But let me tell you what I've learned. The most passionate and powerful tool of evangelism and missions is a heart that's on fire for Christ. And when you have great intimacy with Him, it is amazing how ministry happens. People are unbelievably attracted because they know something's different about you. And when they ask you what's different, then you give them the reason for the hope that you have in Christ. That's mission. The great Scottish preacher Robert Murray McShane used to say, What my people need most from me is my holiness. What he meant was if I love Jesus, ministry's gonna happen. But if I don't, I can't give them something I don't have. Think about your life. Again, think for a moment about your family. What are the patterns? What are things in your life? And you said, Man, I can't believe this happened to me. I said, never. And I did the same thing my parents did, or the same thing my grandparents did. I said it would never happen. Can I just say, I don't care where you are, I don't care what you've done, you can start a whole new chapter. But it has to happen this way. As we close, I want to say this right now, and I speak from experience on this. Three keys to breaking the sin cycle as we pray. All right, there's three keys. Look on the screen. Recognize your patterns continually. Repent of your sin immediately and rely on Christ unceasingly. Let me talk about the first one. Recognize your patterns. Here's how this happens. They would spend a significant amount of time before they went to bed at night, and they would review their day quietly in prayer. And they'd think through their conversations. And they would think through their irritations, people that bumped up against them and irritated them, things that frustrated them, things they were obsessing about more than they should have. And they were very introspective. They would ask themselves hard questions. Who am I upset with right now? What am I going after right now? What's my true motive right now? And they would ask those questions at night before they went to bed and they would lift them up to God so that it wouldn't spread. So they could correct it before their head hit the pillow and start fresh with a new day. And when they recognized sins, they repented of them immediately. They didn't let it fester. All right, when you're irritated by somebody or something, there's something deeper in there. Rather than just roll your eyes and bless them out on social media, when you go home and pray about it and ask God to walk with you through the conversations that you've had during the day, that's where God says, Ooh, I'm ready to do some surgery. Will you open yourself to me that I can get in there and fix this? I can get in there and change this. And then you begin to repent of those things. And then you rely on Him unceasingly. Lord, I don't know how to change this, but I know that you want to change me. As I get up for the next 24 hours, God, sweeten my spirit towards this person. Lord, help me. I was a little manipulating today. I tried to control this situation. I know that's not of you. Help me, Lord. I forgive me for being manipulating. Help me to go to that person and apologize to them. All these little things, they become big things. But if you recognize them, if you take them to Jesus day after day after day, you're going to find that you'll still have new irritations and new frustrations to work on. But you'll look back at other things you used to be frustrated about, things you used to be over and overly analytical about. And maybe you're not as anxious about them as you used to be. And you're not perfect, but you recognize God's working on your life. And then you want Him to work on your life some more. As we pray, I just want to say I'm more convinced about this than I've ever been. This is a focal point of what real transformative ministry is all about. Letting God change your character from the inside out. But it will not happen until you really get honest about what are the patterns in your life. What are those patterns? Again, some of you deflect on other people's issues so you don't focus on your own. And some of you just get really, really busy doing good things for God. And it gives you a free license to not work on your own character. God says, if you let me work on you, great ministry is going to flow out of that. And you're not, you don't have to be a slave to those scars of sin. So as we pray, here's the invitation. What is one thing in your life, one area that you've been battling, and it may be because of your ancestry or it may just be your own personality. What is one area that in the pew right now, as you pray silently to God, you can say, God, I don't want to be this person anymore. I know that you can change me. I believe that you want to change me. I offer my heart to you, Lord. I need your grace. Help me to grow. As we head into this invitation, be honest with God in prayer. Open your heart to him. That's what he's looking for. Open, honest prayer with God is where healing can start. And our God is a healing God. He's a chain breaker. He doesn't want you to be held back because of your DNA from your family. He could do something brand new and he wants to. But you have to open your heart to him, and he can heal the scars of sin. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, I pray right now that you'd wash over this whole sanctuary with your precious Holy Spirit. I pray that you'd cast out every distraction, all the things that we're looking for next week and next month, all the plans that we make that we we think are gonna fill our hearts and make us happy, only to leave us more empty because they're not rooted in a relationship with you. We don't need anything else. We don't need another achievement, we don't need another possession, we don't need another anything. We have you. We can have full joy in this moment because we have you. Help us to slow down, help us to sit still, help us to open our hearts. We you offer us joy unspeakable. Let your joy be in us. That our joy may be filled to overflowing. Help us to know your love that surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fullness of God. All we need is you. Open our hearts to show us, Lord, what we're replacing in our hearts other than you right now. Lead us, I pray, in your name, Jesus.