 with that said I want us to open the scriptures and we will just just for a moment I want to touch one thought before we go into communion from Genesis chapter 48 and verse 14 then Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on Ephraim's head who was the younger and his left hand was on Manessah's head guiding his hands knowingly for Manessah was the first born say Lord Jesus open my heart to your word Lord Jesus open my heart to your spirit Lord Jesus open my heart to your faith amen I'm gonna speak to you a message titled when God crossed his arms there was a story in the Bible when when Jacob who is now Israel God changed his name he is coming to an end of his life his eyes are dim he's about to die he's asking his son Joseph who changed the Egypt changed the story of Jacob also brought the family to Egypt and provided for them he says bring me two of your sons the oldest one was Manessah and the youngest one was Ephraim he says bring me those two sons so that before I die I will bless them now in the old days there is this tradition where the father or the grandfather would pray for the children and he would bless the oldest one placing the right hand somebody say the right hand on the oldest one thus signifying that the oldest son will receive double of the family inheritance that he will be the primary stakeholder in the family legacy I mean all the good stuff somebody say good stuff will come on the oldest son and the youngest son well he wasn't very lucky because he got the leftovers he got those things you know how sometimes you give somebody or you acknowledge somebody then you say oh and there was you that's what the youngest son got oh and there was you he got the left hand somebody say left hand and that's not the hand you want to get because in the left hand you would get whatever is left in the left hand you don't get the best you don't get the choices and Jacob is there sitting and he's about to pronounce the blessings on both of them and here is Ephraim and Ephraim knows that he's not gonna get the best not because Ephraim was the worst not because Ephraim was the biggest troublemaker but because Ephraim was born wrong Ephraim was born wrong you know you and I are like Ephraim we were born wrong and I don't mean necessarily that you were born maybe your mom and dad were not together I don't necessarily mean that you were born that you never met your parents but what I mean is we were born wrong as the Bible says we were born sinners see we don't sin we're not sinners because we sin we sin because we're sinners we don't become sinners because we've done something bad we do something bad because we are born with that nature to sin the Bible says within us there is not much good because we were born like that you know some people say I was born this way I was born that way hey buddy we were all born bad that's why you don't have to teach a kid how to lie because it comes so naturally you don't have to teach a kid to be selfish it comes so naturally we were born wrong that doesn't mean we don't have anything good in us it doesn't mean we cannot do anything good it doesn't mean we're not capable of ever doing something good but our goodness is not enough your goodness might be enough to keep you out of Benton County to keep you out of hell only the grace of God will keep you out of hell your goodness may help you to have a good track record in driving and thus having a good insurance good price on your insurance your goodness might help you to have a really good house loan because you have a good credit score your goodness may even help you to have a good relationship but your goodness is not sufficient to keep you out of hell it's like having fifty dollars fifty dollars is good to buy a hundred cups of coffee but fifty dollars is not good enough to buy a car same thing with our goodness our goodness because everyone in here is convinced I'm good on the best day I have good intentions I have a good heart even when people commit sin even when people smoke weed and they get high and they get drunk and they say but I'm still deep on the inside I'm still good and I don't doubt that but your goodness no matter how good it is it's still not good enough to please a holy God you and I are like Ephraim we were born wrong the challenge of religion that creates when religion sees that we have bad we do bad and what religion tries to do is it tries to tell us that if you try to do more good and the good will outweigh the bad then you will get this good blessing from heaven and you will go to heaven because your good outweighs the bad and we have wealthy man in our generation we have celebrities we have people on all kinds of every religion actually is the whole sin is the whole idea is try to do good and make sure there's more good than the bad and then you will be good and then you will reach heaven but in reality that's not how it works in a courtroom and that's not how it works in real life it takes one cup of poison to poison a whole cup of clean water a whole cup of clean water no longer becomes clean if you drop one drop of poison one sin stains the whole goodness that you and I acquire all of our goodness becomes insufficient if one drop of sin hits it the Bible says if one commits sin he's a sinner always your goodness is not sufficient your goodness is good enough to keep you out of in trouble in school but it's not good enough to keep you out of in trouble with God without God's grace can somebody say amen you know I had an incident and when I was in high school I was eating breakfast and syrup that was supposed to go on the pancake accidentally fell on my legs and I was wearing white jeans and I never knew that the fabric in the white jeans connecting with the syrup will create a very interesting smell not talking about the collar and it was right between my legs actually and so and you started to create a smell that was really weird the smell is really bad but it was just a very small part of my pants that was stained the rest of my pants the back the front the inside everything was so clean but those pants could no longer be used though a small part of them was stained no amount of the fact that 95% of my pants were still clean it did not remove the 5% I had to throw away the pants see you cannot say everything in my life is good but there's something just few sins therefore God will overlook the sins and let me go to heaven my friend that's not how it works you and I are Ephraim we're not good enough we're not bad just not good enough and that's exactly what Ephraim was Ephraim was there he is the second born he is born wrong and his daddy the hand that's supposed to go on his head the hand is supposed to go on his head mysteriously it seems as though accidentally goes on the head of his brother and I think secretly Ephraim says yes yes he's gonna get the bad stuff Joseph sees that Joseph knows his dad doesn't have a good vision the good clinics are not there he sees that his dad is missing the lenses the contacts the glasses and he comes to his dad and he grabs the dead's hands he says that I know your eyes are dim but you really went overboard lately because you're not even recognizing which son is cool he says that this hand doesn't belong on the oldest he's the good guy it goes back to the youngest and his dad stops him and he says son I know what I'm doing I'm not moving my hand on the head of the oldest because I'm blind actually because I can see what's gonna happen in the future with both of these sons and what's gonna happen in the future with another son that God will place the hand that belongs on my head and he will place it on the head of his son the things to you and I would deserve the punishment the death the sickness the curses he would place on the head of his own son and his own son we take the punishment for our sin for our sickness for our rejection upon the cross die on it and rise from the dead for our justification somebody give God glory for that if you can put up the verse of Isaiah 53 it says surely he has bore our griefs I want you to say our he has carried our sorrows and we assume him stricken smitten by God and afflicted but he was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities the chastisement for our peace was upon him and by his stripes we are healed did you notice how much of our is included in the verse this tells us that Jesus Christ on the cross was not carrying his own faults and his own sin he was innocent to that degree that pilot who was executing the judgment told the Pharisees I wash my hands because there is no fault in this man he was so innocent that the Bible says Jesus looked at Pharisees and said does anybody find a fault in me and they were all silent he was so innocent that his betrayer who betrayed him for money brought money back and said I betrayed innocent blood what was Jesus dying for whose punishment was he carrying and we read in Isaiah that our sin our infirmity our grief was placed on him God took the left hand that belonged to you and me the hand of sin the hand of sickness the hand of trouble the hand of hell the hand of wrath and instead of putting it on your head he places on the head of Jesus I want you to have a clear picture in your mind for just few moments because in this truth is freedom from sin your sin the one you're struggling with the one you did and the one that you will do the sin that cripples your conscience the sin that opens the door for the devil and the sin that will give you sleepless nights and the sin that can actually even condemn you and send you to hell that sin was already placed and Jesus Christ on the cross you have to in your mind right now see your sin no longer just on you but see on someone else that that sin was hanging on and when you see your sin hanging on Jesus when you see your sin in your addiction on Jesus then you will only then you can see that Jesus's righteousness can be on your heart and on your life can somebody say amen not only our sin but the Bible says also our sickness God placed on Jesus Christ see when Jesus before he went to the cross if I can have everybody's attention from the back and no one walking around please just just for few moments that I could present the message our sickness was also placed on Jesus how was it placed on Jesus the history and the Bible tells us that before Jesus was led to the cross they scorched him they tied him to a post it stripped him of his clothing on the back and they took a whip and they started to beat his back and the law did not allow to beat somebody more than 39 times so he was beat 39 times with the lashes that had stones sharp glass sharp rocks in them and sometimes these lashes would go into somebody's skin and actually get stuck there and the person who would beat another person with a pluck the flesh out of those things that was the moment where every sickness you will ever face every sickness that exists in the world was planted in his body he did not need to go through scorching to pay for your sin he needed to go through scorching to carry your sickness he did not need to go through that merciless beating that most criminals never survived through just to pay for your sin and get you to heaven he needed to go through that because some medical science articles have indicated that all the sicknesses in the world can be placed in 39 categories no wonder why each lash was for each category of sickness that you will ever face that each last for for each category of sickness that medicine will have no cure for those sicknesses he bore on himself we don't ask for healing because it's cute we don't ask for healing just because we want to it's actually been placed already on the on the cross on this body and because of that we can be healed because somebody say amen and the way we receive that healing is if you see your sickness on his body I remember many years ago when it was the first time that actually I witnessed a healing or a miracle in our ministry we were very young and my sister was struggling with the kidney stones and we went to this Lyle Washington encounter camp and as we were there Friday night and she was still on the medicine that will help her to deal with pain and she had kidney stones they were hurting her and as she was there we had a first session where we were teaching about the cross we were teaching about the fact that Jesus died on the cross and I asked everybody to do this that I'm asking us to do right now instead of focusing on your pain instead of focusing on the medicine instead of focusing on what the doctors said and the fact that that sickness that you have nobody gets cured of instead of focusing on how many times you prayed and nothing happened instead of focusing on the fact that you know what this whole healing thing maybe doesn't exist I asked people they said please focus on the fact that your sickness your sickness not your neighbors not your moms not your grandpa's your sickness right now was on the back of Jesus Christ and we actually had that prayer where people we would actually put a physical cross to help people visualize that my pain he took it and then we asked people to do the second thing put your faith in the fact if he took your pain you can take his health you can take his healing and during that prayer I forgot that my sister was standing right there with kidney stones the service finished next morning we were beginning to do a session she runs up to the front grabs the microphone and she's the sister so she can do what she wants and she says I have a testimony she said last night I was in pain when I was looking at Jesus who took my sickness but after all of that is was done pain subsided and I didn't go to the bathroom yet but I have no more pain I can press my body and the kidney stones didn't come out but they no longer dead and they don't exist I don't know what happened to them and we don't care what matters is they're gone and the pain is gone because of Jesus stripes because somebody say a man if you are here tonight and you have pain in your body maybe you struggled with sickness maybe you're one of those people you have sickness either one sickness or another I have news for you today God plays the hand of sickness and Jesus so you can have the hand of healing and the hand of good health maybe you've never experienced a healing in your life and honestly I pray you won't have to but if you find yourself in a sick situation or a sickness you can see that sickness on the stripes of Jesus and then you will find your healing in Jesus name because somebody say amen God placed the hand upon Jesus that was supposed to be on my head but not only it was sin and sickness because there was one more thing that God placed on Jesus that is very important to know about is the curse the Bible says in Galatians that Jesus became curse for ours curse is something that today is no longer talked in a lot of circles in a lot of churches it's definitely expressed fully in books and barns and nobles in the movie theaters in our TV shows curses witches and warlock spells and all of these things are there but we are very silent in the church many times about that but we cannot be silent about something God put on Jesus that people still struggle with today because somebody say man curses still exist demons still exist they hurt people they kill people they torment people and they destroy people's lives when the young girl is trying to keep a boyfriend but cannot and goes to a lady to ask a lady to charm him so that the boyfriend will come back the boyfriend comes back but eventually he leaves and not only he leaves but this person cannot have a relationship with another man for as long as this person lives why because anytime you get involved with witchcraft with casting spells or charms even if it's against someone or for someone you are drawing a demonic power on your life they will hurt your life there are people who cannot get married and they go to a certain place where they buy charms and they wear on their hands to help them attract the loved one not realizing they're practicing witchcraft there are people who have things in their house doors move and things move and they put things on the door on the doors of their house to keep the demons away not knowing that it's actually what's screaming to demons the same coming to my house I'm not saying these things because I read them in the book I'm saying these things because that's what we deal with people here in the United States in the 21st century people whose lives are afflicted and people who are suffering under something they don't understand they say I have a bachelor's degree I have a master's degree I have a good job I have a good car but I'm fighting something I don't even know what I'm fighting and I'm tired of it people who are at the peak of their career throw a rope and throw themselves off of the rope and people see why is everybody committing suicide in my family why is everybody I'm depressing pills everybody looks so beautiful everybody looks so handsome but nobody can make the marriage work there's a curse but the good news is not that there is a curse it's the fact the curse was placed on Jesus Christ how you may say how was it placed I struggle with demons I struggle with addictions you may say you may say I struggle with something that keeps pulling me back because curse is the black cloud that keeps you back from where you want to go and pushes you where you don't want to go that is what a curse is it's not just your flesh it's a demonic forces that are fighting against you but the Bible says Jesus was crucified on the cross to break the power of curse see if he would die by stabbing that would deal with your eternity with God if he would die but being poisoned that would be a quick death and it will atone for your sin why did he have to take the worst the most excruciating embarrassing and painful way to die because every person who lives in the curse lives in exactly same thing Jesus could have easily died by stoning which exactly how Jewish people kill their prisoners why crucifixion have you ever had something that you stepped on a little sharp object that went into your skin and then you tried to walk you couldn't walk you had to use your heels or you had to walk like this until you will get that out now imagine being pulled on two beams of wood and you don't just have a little thing that got stuck in your foot but you actually have two nails that are stuck right through your feet and you have to stand on them for six straight hours and your wrists no they're not just tight and duct tape and then a nail in just a mark of in it but actually the nail goes through and your arms and your feet they hung on nails he didn't have to die like that if curses wouldn't exist if curses don't hurt people if demons don't torment people he would simply die quick but he had to die a painful death because that's exactly what curses do to people they cause people's life to be painful why did he do that so that curse and power of curse can be forever broken over people's lives the witchcraft as spells the demonic oppressions can be broken once for all in people's lives can somebody say a man and somebody say a man that is power in the cross that is power in the blood whatever demon that is hunting in your family you can imagine that on the cross Jesus already suffered for that whatever thing that you are facing right now in your health and you may say there is nothing I can do about it I want to tell you something the torturous and the painful death Jesus endured not just for your salvation but for your freedom from every curse maybe maybe every relationship you pick up maybe you're a beautiful young woman every relationship you start fails every relationship you start disappoints you and you just say you know I'm sick and tired that's exactly what happened to my mom and to my grandma today you maybe you came to watch somebody getting baptized maybe you came you can't just sit through the service and leave but I have a news for you you don't have to live in that curse because Jesus Christ died on a cross for you maybe somebody put a spell on you maybe you would involve in the witchcraft maybe as a young woman I remember we're praying just recently for a young lady who actually physically caught her finger as a teenager with another young teenager and they made a pact with the devil thought it was just a joke start practicing witchcraft reading horoscopes and start playing with witchy boards you know putting all kinds of things in the room and next thing that happens is this person's lives are going haywire and the devil starts to chase that person do you know why and how we can break the curse not because we just scream at the devil and yet at the devil it's because two thousand years ago God took the hand of curse that was supposed to be on my head and he placed it on the head of his son and he let his son endure shame he let his son suffer the nails why so that when I face a curse in my life I have someone to look to and I said Jesus you died for my curse so I will live in the Abraham's blessing and somebody say amen Jesus not only took the curse but Jesus also took the rejection because when he was hanging on the cross he experienced rejection on the level some of us do not even fathom his closest friends did not want to associate with him when Jesus was going through this ordeal one of his friends betrayed him the rest ran away one guy actually chose to run naked from Jesus and to stay with Jesus his own heavenly father when he saw Jesus in all of this thing covered with my sin covered with my curse that he turned his back away from Jesus and Jesus cried out he says father father why have you forsaken me one of the biggest things that destroys young generation is rejection rejection does two things to you either makes you aggressive or passive and rejection usually happens at home rejection it only happens through the people you care about rejection cannot happen through someone on TV it cannot even happen to somebody on Facebook that says something bad about you or rejects you it can only happen through somebody you trust you love and you look up to and we all to some degree in this place have experienced rejection when you feel the pool the pain of rejection I have a news for you today there is someone who took the rejection on the cross you can look to him and when you feel the rejection know that he not only felt it not only just experienced it and not only he can sympathize with you he can help you in your rejection pull you out of your rejection and give you the acceptance you need not only Jesus suffered rejection but he also suffered deep shame you know most of us we see the movies of Jesus or people being crucified we see them in their trousers but in reality when people were crucified they were without clothes they were ashamed beer plucked out you can imagine swollen eyes because he was so beaten the scripture says his face was not recognizable as a human face the crown not a beautiful crown but a crown of thorns every ounce of shame you can experience in your life he did it there shame is a very very very demonic and very scary feeling I've experienced a little bit of it in my life and honestly I think that's the closest thing to hell the sometimes you can get when I was a younger person I remember being invited to birthday parties and this shame that would exist in my life partially was because of my appearance partially was because of my insecurities but I would pull up to somebody's house and the fear the shame of being around people of knowing that I will walk in and as though a plague walked into the house that people will be scared of me that people wouldn't want to know me this insecurity plagued my life so much that many birthday parties I would drive to in the driveway and pull out drive back home and cry because I know I'm better than this I don't want to be like this why am I ashamed why are these people having so much control of me and I blame the people and I blame other people but when I would come back home and when I would come back to church what would help me is the fact that I knew somebody who experienced something like that not just to tell me I know how you feel but I can change how you feel and it didn't happen in one service it didn't happen through one prayer but today I can look and I will tell you if you invite me to your birthday party I will be there and I won't be leaving home probably eat a lot of your food and then go home but something changed my appearance didn't change but God changed the shame that I had inside and he gave me his glory he gave me his kindness because somebody say amen so we see that Jacob he puts the wrong hand he puts the bad hand on the good son and then he has the good hand he puts it on the bad guy and the bad guy gets the good blessing God crossed his arms on the cross he put the bad things you deserve on the head of Jesus and he wants to put the good things Jesus deserves on your head and that's God crossed his arms the question is where is your head God has a hand he wants to put on your life this hand is the hand of salvation this hand is the hand of healing this hand is the hand of glory instead of shame this hand is the hand of healing from your rejection this hand is the hand of purpose and life and meaning where is your head are you willing to come to him maybe you may say well this is just a cool message this is really inspiring I feel the energy but you don't know Jack about real life that I'm going through I might not God does that was one man he was a Japanese soldier who was sent by his commander his name was hero onoda this guy hero onoda in 1944 he was sent to Philippines to wage a war with three other soldiers in the world war 2 and his tactic of warfare was a gorilla tactics where they would hit and run they will attack a village and quickly run from it they will steal a cow they will steal something and hide and their main objective in Philippines in World War 2 as a Japanese soldiers was to collect intelligence and to frustrate their enemy so they did it for the whole year the commander told him you're not allowed to kill yourself and you're not allowed to disappear you have to live off bananas and coconut and you have to survive until you get a different order from me a year passed in 1945 he is walking through the woods as he's hiding he sees a pamphlet he sees a flyer and the flyer says this on August 5th 1945 the war was over he's a Japanese in Philippines fighting a war and sees a flyer saying that the war was over so he took that flyer all four of them read it and they said this must be a trap by the Philippines they want to trap us so do we walk with this flyer in the open square and the poop-poop-poop-poop kill us all so they trashed that flyer they said we're better than this we're not gonna believe in it the fact was the war was over and next year they actually start hearing speakers in the woods of people from Japan saying the war is over in their language and start calling their names and they're saying oh not only they got us flyers they manipulated our family to convict us so we will get out of that newspapers were dropped but they would say no this is just a this is just a lie and one of those three soldiers left this little camp and went and surrendered and this this soldier this main guy said oh my goodness we are in trouble because one of us already betrayed ourselves to the enemy and he will tell them where our secret location is so they hid even deeper few years later one of the other guys gets shot and this main commander with his friend for 20 more years were hiding in the mountains of Philippines waiting to win a war that was already finished 20 years before until one day his friend runs out into the village to get some food and he gets shot by the Filipino police and this guy didn't have the chance to drag his body so the Filipino police took him into the morgue they checked and they found out this is actually the soldier that they're still looking for and if he was alive that means there's another guy that's still alive and they sounded the alarm in Japan that we need to go and find this guy who actually went even deeper into hiding believing he was being lied and manipulated by the media to come out from his war zone a guy named Suzuki a high school college dropout makes it his life's mission to go into Philippines and search every cave and every mountain to find this soldier and after a few years he finds him and he tells him hey the war is over you don't have to hide no more he says they sent you huh how much did they pay you he said until the man who sent me there will not come here I won't believe it he said you're kidding me right he's a dead man is a bookkeeper he's a librarian he's no longer a commander of an army they flew that bookkeeper into the jungles of Philippines to convince this soldier who for 29 years was hiding believing there was still war when the war was no more I wonder how many people do they live just like him God already paid the price and when we hear things like that something in their mind says he's tripping it works for them they come from the good family it works from them for them they're religious all of these miracles they didn't really get healed and that's a devil lying to you this skeptical this kind of a thing which is no that's not for me but reality is Jesus did die on a cross you are a sinner you are in need of him and he can only change your life if you simply push your skepticism if you just simply push all of that fear aside and say Jesus you have done it and I'm gonna trust in you and I'm gonna believe in you and you will be surprised what God can do in your life can somebody say man and God wants us not only to receive his benefits today but also tell other people who are hiding who are living in sin that listen Jesus has done it on the cross and the only thing you have to do is receive and give your life to him and he will change your life because somebody say man I want you to stand to your feet