Well, please turn in your Bibles to Joshua chapter 6, and we're going to be finishing off this chapter today. Joshua chapter 6 and verses 22 through 27. But Joshua had said to the two men who had spied out the country, go into the harlot's house and from there bring out the woman and all that she has as you swore to her. And the young men who had been spies went in and brought out Rahab, her father, her mother, her brothers, and all that she had. So they brought out all her relatives and left them outside the camp of Israel, but they burned the city and all that was in it with fire. Only the silver and gold and the vessels of bronze and iron they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord. Joshua spared Rahab the harlot, her father's household, and all that she had, so she dwells in Israel to this day because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho. Then Joshua charged them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before whom the Lord, who raises up and builds this city Jericho, he shall lay its foundation with his firstborn, and with his youngest he shall set up its gates. So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout all the country. Amen. Father, we thank you for your Word. It is our delight to study it more and more, to come into conformity with it. We bow our necks beneath the feet of King Jesus, and we declare we want to be faithful to you. We desire to be your faithful bond slaves. And so as we continue to listen to your instructions from Joshua, we pray that you would quicken the Word to our hearts. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, in today's passage, we're going to be looking at God's blessings and cursings. It's a very important topic, and it's a much neglected topic. There are actually several Hebrew words and some Greek words for blessings and cursings. And when you count up all of those words, they occur hundreds of times in the Bible. And when you study each of those times, you begin to realize that these curses and blessings are not mere words, wishes, prayers, or hopes. No, there is a supernatural power that goes to the thing that is being blessed and that is being cursed. Right from the beginning of the Bible you see that when God in Genesis 1 blesses creation, immediately things begin to happen and he declares all of those things good things. And in Genesis chapter 3, when he curses creation, it brings forth thorns and thistles. And Romans chapter 8 says, as a result of God's curse, there was futility that the creation was subjected to, and bondage, and corruption, and groaning, and laboring. Okay, so we can understand that. God backs up his own curses, and God can reverse those curses. You know, in the law of God, it shows the ways that we can take away the defilement of the guilt of blood from the land through the blood of Christ. And so we understand that. God backs up his curses. But what about the blessings and the curses of men? Surely those don't have any power, do they? Well, on their own they don't, but demons can take advantage of sinful curses, and if a curse is consistent with God's will, God can send angels to back those up. But whether it is angels, God's angels who enforce curses and blessings, or whether it's demons who do so, there is a power that is behind both of those. And I want you to turn with me to Luke chapter 10, and we're going to be looking at both. 10, and what I want to do before we dive into Joshua 6 again, I want to give a little bit of background on this subject so that we can understand it a bit better. Now in Luke 10, in verse 1, Jesus sent out 70 disciples, not the apostles. These are 70 evangelists that he sent out. And in verse 5, which is where we're going to start, He says, but whatever house you enter, first say, peace to this house, and if the son of peace is there, your peace will rest on it. If not, it will return to you. Let's just stop there for a moment. When they pronounced shalom upon a house, It says that there was something that went from them to the house, and if a son of peace was there, that peace would rest upon that person, and if there was no son of peace there, then the peace would return to them. So there's something that's traveling from them to the house and sometimes travels back to them. How that is exactly, we're not entirely sure, but my supposition is it's either God's Holy Spirit who takes that or some angels are taking that blessing, or in a bit we're gonna be seeing curses that go out from them as well. Okay, so that's the blessing. He goes on in verse 7, Nevertheless, know this, that the kingdom of God has come near to you. But I say to you that it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city. Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, who were exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades. He who hears you hears me. He who rejects you rejects me. And he who rejects me rejects him who sent me. Then the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name. And he said to them, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven. So this blessing and this cursing had something to do with battles between demons and good angels, and humans were a part of that equation. But let's dig into this a little bit deeper. What about curses from pagans? Are those empty? Well, it depends. God didn't just ignore Balaam's attempt to curse Israel. He went to great lengths to prevent such curses from happening, and Nehemiah says God turned the curse into a blessing. So that seems to imply that if God had not done something, that curse would have accomplished something very negative in Israel's life. The point is, God took that demonic curse seriously, and he stopped its power. So when the enemies of Christ curse us, it's important to reject the curse in the name and in the authority of God. Psalm 109 says, As he loved cursing, so let it come to him. As he did not delight in blessing, so let it be far from him. As he clothed himself with cursing as with his garment, so let it enter his body like water and like oil into his bones. Let it be to him like the garment which covers him, and for a belt with which he girds himself continually." And there are many, many other passages that indicate that demonic curses need to be renounced. By the way, demonic blessings also need to be rejected and renounced. Watch out who you get blessed by. A lot of people don't realize the dangers that can be involved in being blessed by other people. People have had Indian shamans, you know, lay their hands on them and pronounce a blessing upon them, and they've been plagued with demons from that time on. You know, shortly after President Clinton became president, His wife, Hillary Clinton, went to an Indian shaman, and he laid hands on her and blessed her. And frequently what happens is people receive supernatural powers from the demonic when they receive these kinds of blessings. It's a very common practice to receive those powers. Mark Bubek's book, The Adversary, and his second book, Overcoming the Adversary, both document people who have received very unusual demonic powers with a blessing, and of course they've gotten demonic bondage right along with that. But once God delivered those people, he points out they lose both the bondage and those supernatural powers that went along with that. And so there are both good blessings and cursings and bad blessings and cursings. Satan is an incredible imitator and counterfeiter of God. And I'll just give you one example. Just as God gave the gift of tongues, we saw witch doctors out in Ethiopia who could speak languages that they had not learned. We heard German and English and other languages, and it happened immediately after they called upon the demons to fill them. But so-called Christian pastors have often conferred demonic powers to people after blessing them. And I'm talking about heretical pastors, not good ones. And I'll just share one story. We had a friend who couldn't pray normally anymore after he was blessed by a Oneness Pentecostal pastor. You know, he laid hands on him and blessed him. And we found out about it when my dad asked him to ask the blessing at the dinner table, and he said he couldn't. He started crying and said, ever since that guy laid hands on me, I have not been able to pray normally. It's the only stuff I can understand. that comes out, my dad said, well, go ahead and pray anyway, and we'll test the spirits, as 1 John 4 commands us to do. The guy started praying in tongues. My dad asked the spirit, and I forget exactly all the words that he used, but he asked if Jesus Christ was come in the flesh. He tried to say yes, but a voice out of his belly said no. My dad cast the demon out of this person. He instantly lost his gift of tongues. Mark Bubeck also has had to cast out demons who have performed the good. He's a charismatic, okay, so this is not a charismatic versus non-charismatic issue. This is an issue of saying, be careful who you get to bless you, right? Because there is a power in blessings, there is a power in cursings. We need to understand we live in a world that has supernatural warfare going on between elect angels and demonic angels. And it's a world filled with blessings and cursings. One more point that I wanted to give is that several scholars have pointed out you do not have a covenant without blessings and cursings. It's because of the covenant that the curses of chapter 6 began to be experienced by Israel itself in chapter 7. When God established the covenant in Deuteronomy 27, He presented both blessings and cursings. And there are actually passages where The words blessing and curse stand for the covenant as a whole. People call it a metonymy, some people call it a synecdoche, where it's a part of the covenant stands for the whole. Well, that would be impossible unless blessings and cursings were essential to the covenant. For example, Zechariah 5.3 speaks of the scroll of the covenant, and it calls that scroll the curse. And there's other passages that speak of the covenant by the term the blessing. For example, Psalm 133.3 or Galatians 3.14. Anyway, it's an essential component of the covenant, and it's astounding to me that there are not more covenant theologians who take this issue of curses and blessings more seriously. Curses are dangerous things, whether the power behind those curses is God or Satan, and blessings are powerful things. Those who have had demonic blessings and curses need to have those reversed by renouncing them and receiving the protection of Christ who received all of our curses in our place. In any case, curses are real. When somebody curses you, don't just laugh it off. Renounce it. I do so out loud. And you can pray for God's blessing instead, or you can even pray, may those who curse me be cursed. And if you thought that cursing or blessings are empty words, I would encourage you to read Derek Prince's book, Blessing or Curse, or Robert Fugate's book, Biblical Curses, Divine and Demonic. or my paper on negative thinking, or Robert Fugate's book on biblical imprecations. Here's the point why I'm bringing this long introduction. The modern church has been so infected with scientific materialism, they tend to be skeptical of anything in the supernatural. And it's a dangerous thing. These are not empty words. Okay, enough by way of introduction. Let's dive into Joshua chapter six. We're going to start with the blessings in this chapter. Verse 22 says, With faith, there automatically comes the first blessing of salvation. She was spared the curse that came upon Jericho, and she was ushered into the incredible riches of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was an instantaneous blessing that was brought by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Brandon tells how he went from not seeing God in anything to suddenly at his conversion seeing God in absolutely everything. God quickens this blessing with His very presence. It's the most awesome blessing of all. But did you realize we could not have the blessing of salvation if God's covenant curse had not fallen upon the Lord Jesus Christ? It's impossible, absolutely impossible. This is how central the subject is. This is vividly portrayed in Genesis 15 when God covenanted with Abraham in order to bless him. And what Abraham did is he was making sacrifices to the Lord, looking forward to the Lord Jesus, but he cut the animals in part. And this is what they call cutting the covenant. So why were the animals cut in half? It was so that the people in covenant would walk between the pieces of that animal, and they were symbolically saying, hey, if I break this covenant, may I be cut off just like these animals were cut off from the land of the living. Well, in Genesis 15, rather than letting Abraham walk through the pieces of the animal, God immobilizes Abraham and he just has to watch as God in a theophany, a burning lamp, moves between the pieces of those animals, in effect saying that he would bear the curse of this covenant instead of Abraham bearing that curse. And this is how Abraham received God's blessing. It's a perfect picture of what Jesus did when he died for us and had God's wrath poured out on him and the cross. Galatians 3.13 says that Jesus became a curse for us. So that passage as well indicates blessings and cursings are central to the covenant. This is why Rahab was spared God's judgment on Jericho. By the way, that scarlet cord that she hung outside of her window, Most theologians have said that was a symbol of her faith in the future shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, right? Salvation is an awesome blessing that reverses the ultimate curse. The second blessing mentioned in verse 22 was the physical protection of her house. So these people, the spies, were able to go into the harlot's house because the house itself did not collapse with the rest of the wall. It was spared. It was blessed. Keep in mind that her house was built right into the wall, so it was the only portion of the wall that did not fall down. And that means that her house was, and that portion of the wall was spared. And of course, this was part of what the spies made her promise to do in Joshua 2, 17 through 19, and let me read that for you again. So the men said to her, we will be blameless of this oath of yours, which you have made us swear, unless, when we come into the land, you bind this line of scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, unless you bring your father your mother, your brothers, and all your father's household to your own home. So it shall be that whoever goes outside the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be on his own head, and we will be guiltless. And whoever is with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head if a hand is laid on him. And so there was a protection of her home and all of those who were in her home. Don't overlook the important concept of making your home a sanctuary from demonic curses. Your houses can be places of refuge from demonic attack. And I encourage parents to walk around the perimeter of their home, praying God's protection over it, even anointing the doors with olive oil or something like that, and praying a prayer similar to this prayer. Lord, I dedicate this house to you. Just as the Israelites applied the blood of lambs to their houses, I apply Christ's blood to this house and give it unreservedly to him. Whatever sins have given demons access to this house, I put them under the blood of Christ, and I claim the protection of Christ's Passover blood. Please send your warrior angels to escort all demons out. They no longer have legal ground here. This is your house. We dedicate it unreservedly to you. Would you now set a guard before this house?" See, we have a legal right now in our covenant relationship with God to claim Christ's blood as protection from the demonic. In Colossians 2 verse 15 it says, his blood triumphed over all principalities and powers. It was the basis for destroying all the works of the devil according to 1 John 3 verse 8. And so there is a defensive aspect to the blood. And it's interesting how demonized people, they can tell the difference. And I'll just share one testimony. We invited a demonized woman to our house. And when she walked through our front door, I saw her eyes snap and grow soft. And she said, it's so peaceful in here. And her whole countenance changed. Well, we knew immediately why, as we had prayed that God would send his angels around our house and not allow any demons in. And if there were any demonic attachments on people, that our angels would force those demons to remain outside. Okay? This is an important thing. Rahab escaped the curse on Jericho in part because her house was blessed, right? And I think it's a very important part of God's covenant blessings. Thirdly, it says, all that she had was blessed. Now she had left behind her harlotry, her religion, any artifacts that God had cursed from that pagan religion, and that's implied in verse 23, and we'll look at that in a bit, but all the rest of her belongings were spared. God doesn't just bless people, he blesses the animals that belong to those people, and even inanimate objects that belong to his people. I'm gonna read a few scriptures that show how extensive this is. Genesis 2 verse 3 says, then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. God blesses days and time. Have you ever had days where the whole day seemed to be frittered away and you're so frustrated at the end that you didn't get what you wanted to get done? Well, it may be because you didn't ask God to bless your time and your time management. Genesis 27, verse 27, speaks of God's blessing on a field. And yes, we admit it. We ask God to bless our garden. There is nothing neutral in life, and even your garden needs God's blessing. Genesis 39, verse 5 says, the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had in the house and in the field. Notice, on all that he had. Exodus 23, 25, he will bless your bread and your water. Deuteronomy 33, verse 11, bless his property. Deuteronomy 7, 13 speaks of blessing on the womb grain, wine, oil, cattle, and flocks. The point is, God loves to bless everything that we have if we have dedicated everything that we have to the Lord. And one of the scriptures that I love to use to claim this blessing on everything that we have is 3 John verse 2 where he says, beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health just as your soul prospers. The next thing that was blessed and avoided the curse was Rahab's household. Verse 23 says, and the young men who had been spies went in and brought out Rahab, her father, her mother, her brothers, and all that she had, so they brought out all her relatives, and we'll just stop reading there. Notice that this influence of the blessing went to the father, to the mother, and to the brothers. Remember, we said before that these people had pimped her out. They were guilty as sin, and yet because of her, on account of her, they were blessed. 1 Corinthians 7.14 says that the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband. Same verse says that the children are set apart to the Lord. Luke 19.9, Jesus said to the tax collector, today's salvation has come to this house because he also is a son of Abraham. Acts 11.4, who will tell you words by which you and all your household will be saved. Acts 16, 31, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household. When God blesses, there is a power that goes behind that blessing unless we nullify the blessing with our lack of faith and our affirmations, you know, like just saying, oh, our family is hopeless. Don't say things like that. Don't say things like that. That is nullifying the blessing. If there was ever a hopeless family, it would have been the pimps in Rahab's family, and yet she believed God's blessing. Now they, of course, had to affirm their own faith by entering into that house, right? And they avoided the curse that way. And conversely, if they had identified with the gods of Jericho and the perversions of Jericho, they would not have been welcome in that house. And we'll look at that later. But let's focus right now on the blessing. You too can claim blessings for your household. Now let's look at the last phrase of verse 23. reading the whole verse again, and the young men who had been spies went in and brought out Rahab, her father, her mother, her brothers, and all that she had, so they brought out all her relatives and left them outside the camp of Israel. Why would they leave them outside the camp of Israel? After all, Hebrews says that they were already believers. Rahab, for sure, was a believer at this time, yet she has to wait outside the camp of Israel. Well, there's a very good reason for this, a reason that always applied to all converts in the Old Testament. Both Jewish and Christian commentaries point out that the law of God required lepers and Gentiles to live outside the camp until the priests could determine if they were qualified for membership in the assembly. This would involve instruction, getting rid of anything occult, the males getting circumcised, all of them getting baptized. And Ezekiel later mentions many Gentiles going through this conversion process, this training process of receiving proselyte baptism. Just by the way, this is exactly what John the Baptist was doing with Israel. He was saying, the tree's been chopped down, Israel's no longer considered as a true church. If you want to join the true church, you have to get converted. We're treating you like pagans. And so they had to go through the conversion process, the training process, and then receive proselyte baptism. Now, none of that's mentioned here in this chapter, but the commentators say it is implied by verse 25 when it says, she became a full Israelite, which the law of God would not have allowed without all of this going on. Before that could happen, The law required that they had to remain outside the camp to ensure that there was a complete cutting off of their pagan past. It was only then that they could join the synagogue and the nation. And by the way, this is one of the reasons, one of many reasons, why we require that people be members in good standing in some evangelical church before they can come to communion. They might be believers, and they'll say, yeah, I'm a believer. Why can't I come to the Lord's table? We say, well, Rahab was a believer, and her family were believers as well. They were outside the camp and had to remain there until it could be demonstrated that she and her family met the biblical conditions for joining. Hebrews dealt with Jewish people who claimed, hey, we belong. We're professing believers, and yet they did not meet these qualifications. And Hebrews 13.10 says, we have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. The right to eat the Lord's table is not automatic for professing believers. That's a side trail. We're gonna get back to the main point of blessing. Why do I call this temporary separation of Rahab and her family outside the camp a blessing, an incredible blessing? It was a blessing because it ensured that none of Canaanite life and occultism made it past their conversion, and doing that was a protection for the family. And any one of us can inadvertently give legal ground to demons to curse us, even though we were believers. That's what happened to Achan in the next chapter. Let me give you our own personal testimony on this. And my wife doesn't mind my sharing this story. Our family gave legal ground to demons to come into our house one time when my wife accepted a hospitality gift from some international students. It was an idol that came in. I was away on a trip. She was planning to throw the idol away later, but it came into the home. And what had happened was, You know, a lot of times when the students would come into our home, they would live with us, they would want to bring a gift, and he brought an idol. And he was confident that this would be a blessing to us. And I don't remember what Kathy's response was, but by not wanting to be rude and receiving this idol as a gift, demons must have felt that they had an open invitation, even though Kathy planned to throw it away later. Well, that day, Kathy experienced enormous demonic attack, and she actually felt like she was dying. It was super frightening. She immediately recognized what was happening, called upon the Lord Jesus, claimed His blood to deliver her. She later called me. I was out of the country. And we prayed over the house to protect it from any demonic attachments from that Korean, and she got rid of the legal ground. But the point is that It is a blessing to take the time to ensure that nothing of Canaan makes it into Israel. When Presbyterians put hedges around the Lord's table and require certain prerequisites, we're doing it to protect those people from eating unworthily, eating judgment to their own soul, but we also are trying to protect the church because when they eat, they're covenanting with us. And if we're allowing them to covenant with us and they've got demonic attachments, then we can inadvertently bring demonic attack upon ourselves to harass our congregation. So I spent a little bit more time on that because it is a question that's come up. There is a biblical basis for the practice of hedging the table. The next blessing is listed in verse 25. And Joshua spared Rahab the harlot, her father's household, and all that she had, so she dwells in Israel to this day, because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho. Now just as a side note, when it says, so she dwells in Israel to this day, shows that the book of Joshua was not written hundreds of years later, like a lot of liberals claim. It was written by Joshua, you know, it's straightforward. It was written in his lifetime. But that same phrase hints at her full acceptance. We later learn that she married Solomon, and her descendants included Boaz, King David, and the Lord Jesus Christ, okay? If the Lord blesses, this blessing can go from generation to generation. It's an amazing blessing from the Lord, and nothing but lack of faith and rebellion can reverse that. Deuteronomy 7, 9 speaks of God as being the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments. Praise God. And then finally, verse 27 speaks of God's blessing on Joshua. So the Lord was with Joshua, and his fame spread throughout all the country. Ultimately, the blessing of the Lord is the presence of the Lord in our lives. You cannot successfully seek his blessing without seeking him, okay? Psalm 119.2 says, blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with the whole heart. Do you seek the Lord with your whole heart? Well, then you can rejoice. You can have faith that God loves to bless absolutely everything that you have. And we'll see many more blessings in this book, but I believe we get those blessings because His supernatural power backs up those blessings. We come next to the curse found in verses 24 and 26. The destruction of Jericho in verse 24 was because its demonic culture was an offense to God, and it finally came under God's curse. God conscripted Israel to fulfill the curse by destroying it. This was not normal warfare. We saw last week that God did not allow Israel normally to fight in this way, but this was carrying out His judgments that He had already made in his courtroom. I'm just very quickly going to deal with verse 24. But they burned the city and all that was in it with fire. Only the silver and gold and the vessels of bronze and iron they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord. And as I mentioned in the last sermon, gold, silver, and vessels were purified with fire. I explained that adequately. I'm not going to say more about it other than to say It's a scary thing when a city or a nation comes under God's curse. And we need to pray for our nation that God would bring repentance. Repentance is the way that without it, we're down a slippery slope to judgment. But I do wanna end with Joshua's very interesting curse on anyone who rebuilds Jericho. Verse 26 says, Then Joshua charged them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the Lord who rises up and builds this city, Jericho. He shall lay its foundation with his firstborn, and with his youngest he shall set up its gates. And this curse found its fulfillment exactly in 1 Kings 16.34. Now, in the earlier verses of 1 Kings 16, it was talking about King Ahab and his sins, and that he sinned more than cause God's wrath to come more than any of the previous kings. But verse 34 says, in his days, Heel of Bethel built Jericho. He laid its foundation with Abiram, his firstborn, and with his youngest son, Segub, he set up its gates according to the word of the Lord, which he had spoken through Joshua, the son of Nun. This was how little Heel valued life. He sacrificed his oldest son to try to gain the blessings of the pagan gods when he laid the foundation of the city. He wanted the gods to protect the city. And then he sacrificed his youngest son to the gods in order to gain their favor when he set up the gates of the city. And since he was immersed in paganism, he probably didn't even read the book of Joshua. He didn't know about this prophecy. But in any case, by seeking the blessing of demons, he ended up receiving God's curse. The two are an inverse of each other. And the point is, curses and blessings are inevitable. They happen because we are in the midst of a cosmic war for this world. It is a war between God and his angelic forces and Satan and his demonic forces. We know who's going to win. But there's going to be a lot of collateral damage and a lot of casualties in the process. But I want to tell you that these casualties are needless. They're needless if people would once again take seriously the need for protection against the demonic. You do not need to be a casualty. And understanding curses and blessings is an important part of that process. Ignorance is not bliss. It is incredibly dangerous. Hosea 6 verse 4 says, My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you. But especially notice that first phrase, My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Not just pagans, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Jesus spoke of the religious leaders of his day, and he said they are blind leaders of the blind, and if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a ditch. And there are many, many passages that speak of Satan and demons taking advantage of the ignorance of Christians. Okay, David said that God had taught his fingers for battle. Well, in a similar way, we need to pray that God would teach us how to engage in spiritual battle. so that the blessings and the imprecations we utter are consistent with His will and carry His power behind them. His blessings can reverse the curses of the enemy, and His curses can reverse the demonic blessings of the enemy. Glory in the fact that if God is for us, no one can be against us. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you are a supernatural God who is not absent, not millions of miles away, not unhearing of our prayers. You are constantly working consistent with your covenant. And if we pray contrary to your covenant, we pray without knowledge, our prayers will not be answered. We know that. Father, I pray that you would teach us how to pray in a covenantal way, in a way that brings down and tears down the strongholds of Satan. Help us not to use the weapons of this world, which are futile, but help us, Lord, to learn to use the weapons that you have granted to us, which are mighty in you. Help us, Father, to take seriously this concept of blessings and cursings, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.