The Blessings of Abraham

Well, thank you again, Mr. Hanson. Good afternoon once again, everyone. Some of you may already be aware of this, but the month of November has officially been set aside and has been declared to become National Gratitude Month. Some of you are probably already aware of that. It's been set apart as a time that is designed to be of time for us to consider and really to reflect on our lives and to be grateful for what we have, to consider what we have, to consider the blessings that we have received, and to really be grateful and to be thankful for those things.

There have been a number of studies recently that have shown the importance of gratitude. In fact, it's been shown practicing gratitude increases happiness and increases joy. It helps you to keep yourself, in some ways, I think, grounded and focused when you tend to consider your blessings and when you tend to consider the things that God has provided us. It helps with positivity, kind of makes you a little more optimistic, right, which everybody can always use a little more optimism. Some people need to tone the optimism down just to smidgey, right, but no, I'm kidding.

But it helps you be more positive. It helps you to, believe it or not, studies have shown, helps you sleep better. Having trouble sleep? Be grateful for stuff, right? And not only that, it helps to provide a little bit more robust immune response. Helps keep you healthy. Helps keep you from getting sick. We're dealing with a degree of sickness in our home at the moment.

That's why my family's not here today. We've got a bunch of coughs going around. In fact, if you've ever been to Deepo Bay, you've been down by the docks where the seals are at. That's what the room in the other room sounds like.

There's a bunch of barking kids, unfortunately, coughing up a storm, but maybe they need to be more grateful. Be more thankful. I'm kidding. But hey, it boosts your immune response. It does. It helps you to become and to be more healthy in that regard. Parents have shown it. But not only that, there's a number of other positive benefits. It's certainly apropos that we take and set aside the month of November, given Thanksgiving and the proximity to Thanksgiving, to really look at that and to consider—and not only that, but to emphasize and to encourage—that people take that in months to really reflect on their lives, to really consider what has been provided, and to be thankful and practice gratitude for what they have.

We live in a country with incredible blessings. If you think about that and you really consider the blessings that we are afforded here in the United States, we live in a country with incredible blessings. We live in a country that provides us with relative security. You don't have to worry necessarily about bombs going off in the streets. You can go to the store and not have to worry about something horrible happening on the way to the store, per se. We live in a nation that's ruled by law. Now, granted, some of those laws are occasionally selectively enforced, but they're on the books. They're there, and we are a nation that is ruled, more or less, by law.

We're a nation with checks and balances. We're a nation that has systems in place that make it so that a single individual or a group of individuals cannot seize absolute power. We live in a country that's rich in resources. We live in a country that is rich in material wealth. And we live in a country with people who have an entrepreneurial spirit.

If you ever thought about that from a standpoint of the United States, we're like a country of entrepreneurs in many ways. Everybody's got their million-dollar idea, so to speak. Many don't see it to fruition. But if you think about the minds and the systems and the industry that built the 1930s and the 1940s in the United States, it's through that entrepreneurial industry that the United States grew and that the economy boomed. We're a nation of people with bold ideas. And, as we've mentioned before, we've talked about this, we're a people who's fiercely independent.

We are fiercely independent. And what we don't like is to be told no. And so, when someone comes up with their million-dollar idea and they go to somebody and they say, here's what it is, and they go, that'll never happen. They go, yeah, watch. And it has led to incredible innovation and incredible technologies. You know, incredible things in the technological sector. The United States has been a world power. It's been a leading nation on the world scene for the better part of 120 years.

In fact, you look at historians, many of them say the turning point for the U.S. that made the U.S. a world power was the Spanish-American War. 1948. Right? That was the big turning point. That is when the U.S. stepped fully into the world scene and became influential and became a country which other countries listened to and paid attention to.

Our president is referred to as the leader of the free world. Okay? Leader of the free world. And the past couple of decades notwithstanding, our democracy, our national security, has been looked upon favorably by the vast majority of the world. In fact, you go to places around the world and there are still people who view the United States as a place where dreams can come true.

Where all they have to do is get out of the place where they are, set foot on American soil, and everything, everything will be better. That is still the view of people in the world, even despite some of the issues that we've experienced over the last couple of decades. Came across a study recently by the OECD, which is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And the study concluded that based on 36 member nations, so they there's 36 of these guys that make this group up as the OECD, and of those 36, America was determined to be the richest and the poorest at the same time. It's kind of, wait a second, dichotomy in terms? Like, what's going on here? Contradiction in terms. They were taking a number and they were looking at it, and of all of the member countries, of the 36 member countries that make up this coalition, the United States was estimated to have a poverty rate of about 18 percent. And so relative to the rest of the countries, that 18 percent was a bigger chunk of the overall population than the poverty in all of the other countries. That's not really a great statistic. It doesn't tell the whole story. In fact, you take a look at our neighbor to the south, the country of Mexico, 35 percent of its people live on less than five dollars and 50 cents a day. Only two percent of our 20 percent of the low end of our earners are that and earn that much. And so it's kind of a deceptive statistic, but either way, it ran in the New York Times. They ran a story about how the United States is lagging behind its European counterparts and how we got to step it up as the U.S. We've got to do better. Well, there was another study that was done by a research and education institute known as just facts that illustrated, if you take a look at that same exact study and you consider the economic supports, the housing subsidies, the food subsidies, the government assistance, the insurance, you know, all the medical care and the things that are wrapped into that bottom 20 percent of the United States, and you took that 20 percent and you made them their own nation, that nation of 20 percent of the bottom earners of the United States would be more wealthy than half of the other 36 in that OEDC group. They'd be more wealthy than half. It's not to say the United States is not without its issues. We are not perfect. The history of our country contains injustices. It contains issues.

It can be a history at times. It's difficult and challenging to examine. But America was, and America continues to be, a great nation. It continues to be a great nation. You know, you look at God's people through history. We look at some of these patriarchs. We look at Abraham. We look at David. Were they perfect individuals? No. But yet God continued to work with them. God continued to bless them, despite their imperfections. And it's the same with America as a nation. I don't want to get into politics here. I really don't. I loathe politics personally. But you're all very aware that President Trump ran in 2016 on the slogan of Make America Great Again. That was the big slogan that he ran on. And the implication of that statement is that America was once great at one point in time. It is no longer great, but that he would make it great once again. That's the implication of the statement, the way that it's written. The slogan really didn't define what he necessarily meant by that, though he ran on an economic platform. And to his credit, there has been a great degree of economic growth over the past years. He's running for reelection on 2020. I don't know if you've heard this or not, but his slogan is going to utilize the slogan of Keep America Great.

Which again has an implication that it was he who made America great again.

And that now we just need to keep the forward momentum going. Another four years. And again, I don't bring this up to be political. It's not intended to espouse one candidate over another. Frankly, none of them can fix the issues that America is facing and the world faces. And for that matter, there are scripture after scripture after scripture that point to God raising up and bringing down leaders as he sees fit to work out his plans and his purposes.

But it is an observation of society around us and the overall perception that when we look at our nation and when we look at the incredible blessings that our nation has been given, essentially, that we have somehow done this by our own hands.

Brethren, we've not made America great by our own hand. The blessings of America have come at the hand of God. Now, he delivers them through many. He delivers them through circumstances.

But America is in the position that she is in because God has determined it to be so.

That is why we see our nation where it is today. It is because of the blessings of Abraham that America enjoys the position that she's in today because of the faith of a man 3,500 years ago who entered into a relationship with God that God held up his end of the promise down 3,500 years later to us. I'd like to examine that a bit today. The title of the second split sermon is The Blessings of Abraham. And this is going to be reviewed for some, and I recognize that fully, and complete disclosure. But with that said, we talked about this, it's been a couple of years ago, I think I gave the message, it talked about Herman Ebbinghaus and how this idea of the curve of forgetting, that if we don't occasionally revisit things, if we don't occasionally take a look at things, I mean we look around our congregation, we've got, what, 50-some kids under the age of 12? If we have not talked about this in 12 years, they've never heard it.

They've never heard it. And so the message that they're getting is the message that they see in the media, the message that they see in various places. We need to understand where the blessings that this country has came from and why. And that's very important that we understand that. Let's go ahead and jump over to Genesis 12 today to take a look at this, and to kind of walk through this process of examining how God worked with Abraham and what God did with Abraham. In Genesis 12, we see the calling of Abram, which was his name prior to God changing his name.

Genesis 12, and we'll pick it up in verse 1, and just kind of by context to give us a little bit of backdrop here as to who and what we're dealing with. In Genesis 12, when God begins working with Abraham, Abraham is 75 years old.

Okay? So he's an older man, granted life spans were a little bit longer. We might argue he's in his middle-age years, depending on the length of the lifespan here. But 75 years old, he was married to a Sarai. He was living in Ur. He had no children at this point in time when he was called and when God came to speak to him and told him what he should do.

And the message that we see recorded here is in Genesis 12 and verse 1. It says, Now the Lord had said to Abram, Get out of your country from your family and from your father's house to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and I will curse him who curses you and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Okay, so God comes to Abraham. God says, I need you to leave. I need you to go someplace new. I need you to go take a step out on faith here and go someplace different. I'm going to take you over to this land and this land that I'm going to show you is going to be a land that I'm going to give to you and ultimately as he lets him know later on and that I'm going to give to your descendants.

We know that Abraham was obedient. He was faithful. The next verse states he did exactly what God told him to do. He got up and he left. Now if you look at the path that he took as he went around the wilderness, it's kind of an interest.

He clearly didn't have GPS. No, but God had him going from place to place and there was a little bit of kind of drifting around somewhat through some of that and kind of similar to... anyway, didn't have GPS. But I always kind of wondered what this conversation with Sarai looked like. I don't know if you've ever thought about that or not. Was Sarai able to hear God at this point in time? Or was this only a voice that Abraham had heard?

Now imagine, ladies, your husband comes to you and you're doing pretty well in the land of her. Things are going good. You know, you're comfortable, you're profitable, and your husband says, hey, we need to pack everything up and go. We're going to go over to this place, Canaan. Why? Well, I heard this God told me that we need to go. Now if Sarai could not hear God at that point in time, that might be a very difficult conversation.

Yet, we see that's exactly what happens. They go. They end up there. We don't honestly know whether or not Sarai could hear him, but we do know one thing, that God did not appear to Abraham until Bethel. Because when God appears to Abraham in Bethel, Abraham says, hello, I'm putting an altar here. Okay, this is going to be a special place because God appeared to me here. Prior to that, it seems that God spoke to him, that he heard him, as opposed to appearing to him.

Regardless, Abraham obeys. He arrives in Canaan. God appears to him there at Bethel, and he tells him, to your descendants, I will give this land, and this place where you are standing someday, your descendants will inhabit this place. Mind you, at that point in time, Abraham had no descendants. So that is not necessarily going to be a point that wasn't, you know, that was not lost on him. That, wait a minute, we're talking here about something that I don't have. I'm 75 years old, maybe at this point 76. My wife is getting up there in years.

She's past childbearing age. You know, it's going to take a miracle for this to happen. Well, what's God have planned? Genesis 15, as the passage of time kind of goes on, Abraham actually takes the opportunity to ask God about this promise that he's given him. To ask him about the descendants that he's promised. And he makes the point very clearly. He says, look, God, Eliezer, my steward, stands to inherit my entire everything I own. He stands to inherit my household. He stands to inherit my flocks. Eliezer, my steward, is going to get all of these things. And God tells him right then and there that, no, it's not going to be Eliezer. But that is going to come from your own body.

You will have an heir. Abraham may be thinking to himself, okay. But it says he believed the Lord and that God accounted it to him for righteousness. Let's go ahead and, if you would jot down Hebrews 6, verses 13 to 15, we're not going to turn there for sake of time, we're going to reference it. But Hebrews 6 and verse 13 is in the context of patience. It's in the context of waiting and enduring and being patient for the promises that God has provided. And it uses Abraham as an example. Writer of Hebrews references him, and he states the following in Hebrews 6, verses 13 through 15. He said, for when God made a promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself, saying, surely, blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you. And so, verse 15, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.

Now, we can debate a little bit about maybe how perfectly patient Abram was.

We do know that at one point Sarai gave him her handmade hagar, in what appears to be, at least, an attempt to take things into their own hands. You know, the promise that God gave him was that the heir would be Abram's, and so Sarai perhaps thought that, well, maybe it's a son through hagar. Maybe that's what the heir is. Eventually, we find out that, no, God had a plan to provide Sarai as well with an heir. One of the things to notice with this, when you go through this section, that promise was delivered to Abraham at age 99. The original promise was given at 75.

Abraham waited 24 years for the fulfillment of that promise. 24 years. He was 99, his wife was 90 when it happened. We see Isaac born. Isaac is the son of promise. He received the handing down of the blessings of Abraham. So Abraham's blessings that he was provided, this birthright that was given to Abraham, was passed on to Isaac. That promise of a son, that promise of an heir, was not the only promise that God gave. It wasn't the only promise that God delivered on. In fact, the promises that were given were fivefold. God told him, I will make you a great nation. Promise number one, you will become a great nation. You will become a great people. Promise number two, God said, I will bless you and I will make your name great. You will have a reputation, a good reputation, a great reputation among those around you. I will bless you, he says. Number three, not only that, you will be a blessing to others. That through the blessings that I give you, you will have the ability to bless others. So there's a responsibility that comes with that, with the blessings that we have received. God says, I'll bless those that bless you and I'll curse those that curse you. Promise number four, and then promise number five, God said that through Abraham, all of the families of the earth would be blessed. Now these promises that God had provided right here at this time in calling Abraham, these promises were passed on from Abraham to Isaac, from Isaac to Jacob, and then ultimately they were passed on down to Joseph's son, Ephraim. Now we're going to go through this, we're going to look at this. So we'll head over to Genesis here in just a second. If you want to start turning there, you can. But these promises were handed down from one patriarch to the children and on down to the next. And in those days, when you think about this, in those days you have large families. There had to be a system of some sort to determine who gets what. Because otherwise you've got some nightmares when you look at some of these families from a standpoint of inheritance. It's hard enough when it's only like two, three kids these days. And we're talking two, three, four, five kids with one, two, three, four, five wives. I mean, it starts to get messy real quick. And so there was a system that was in place here to determine who would receive the inheritance of that patriarch. And it was a necessity. You had to have something in place that determined, you know, fairly who got what. The system of birthright is what was instituted.

And ultimately, it was the decision made that the firstborn son of the first wife, the priority wife, the one that was first received the birthright. That was the system that was put into place. Now, the birthright itself, it wasn't just an inheritance. So the kid that's receiving the birthright is not necessarily sitting back going, I'm getting all my dad's stuff. But it was a double portion.

There was a portion for having been the firstborn son, but there was a second portion that came because that firstborn son had a responsibility. And it was a big responsibility. They were responsible to take care of the family after the dad was gone. They had what sometimes they referred to as the right to rule. Okay, it was a section where they were expected to take care of mom, they were expected to take care of brothers and sisters, kids, servants, animals, flocks, properties, etc. It was a big job. They stepped into that man of the house role when dad died as a firstborn son. And so they got a double portion. They were they were blessed exceedingly to be able to satisfy those requirements. The legal process in all this can actually be determined from scriptural examples, but it seems to obtain that birthright blessing. You had to be the firstborn son of the first wife, and you had to be worthy of that blessing. You could not have invalidated yourself in some way. So we see examples in scripture where individuals invalidated themselves and lost out on the birthright. We'll take a look at a couple of those in a second. In the case of a single wife, it's really easy. It's so easy to determine who the firstborn son of a single wife is. Very simple. But when you start adding in wives, and you start adding in concubines, and you start adding in other stuff, there's various layers, layers, so to speak, of legalese that go on here as to determine who gets what. You know, interestingly enough, there's a modern group today that we can go to to understand some of this even a little bit better based on their practice of polygamy in the 1800s. The Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints has researched this sort of inheritance stuff extensively because these questions came up. How do we determine who gets what and how this inheritance works? And they said, what happened in scripture? Let's look at it.

In Abraham's situation, I'll give you a couple of examples here. In Abraham's situation, he had three quote-unquote wives. You can debate on the legality of those wives, where some of them kind of pseudo-concubines. You can argue all day long. We're going to say he had three wives.

The first wife was Sarah, the second wife was Hagar, and the third wife was Keturah.

Ishmael was the firstborn son of Abraham. He was born before Isaac. He was born to the second wife, which means that should Sarah have a firstborn son, or I'm sorry, a second-born son in this case, but should she have a son, her son takes preeminence because she is wife number one, from an inheritance standpoint. Okay? And that's exactly what happened. Sarah had a child. God provided Sarah with a son, Isaac, and Isaac became the carrier of that birthright because he was the son of promise, and the firstborn son of the first wife. So Isaac, we see at the end of, you know, Abraham's life. There's a process in which Isaac blesses Abraham. He says, you know, the blessing that I was given, the birthright I was given, it is yours. You will become a great nation. You will become a multitude of nations. I will bless you exceedingly. He tells him all the words that God tells him. Isaac goes and marries Rebekah and had twin sons. Esau was the firstborn. By rights, he had the birthright. Okay? We see that instead he got exceptionally hungry, and he sold that birthright. In fact, it says in Scripture he despised it, and so he sold it to his brother, Jacob. And when it came time for Isaac to then pass on the blessing, we see Rebekah work to trick Isaac to bless Jacob instead of Esau. The only thing we have in Scripture that really indicates as to maybe why that is is Esau took a couple of Hittite wives that kind of vexed Isaac and Rebekah a little bit. May have been because of that. We don't really know. But Jacob ultimately received both the birthright as well as the blessing. And so Jacob now has received the blessing of, you will be a nation, you will be a multitude, you will be great, I will bless you exceedingly. That now rests upon Jacob's head. Jacob goes and gets married. Not once, not twice, not thrice.

I don't know what four is. Quo rice? No. He has children with four different wives, wives in quotes. And I say wives in quotes because Leah was his first wife, Rachel was his second official wife, and Bilhah and Zilpah are concubines.

Now Bilhah and Zilpah, as concubines, had an inferior social status to legal wives. And so did their children. Okay, so they were not in the running for birthright as a concubine.

When it came to birthright, the firstborn son of Leah, who was the first wife, had the birthright. Who was that? That was Reuben. Okay, Reuben had the birthright. That was his, that was his to have. Now what do we know about Reuben? What happened?

Well, Reuben committed adultery with Bilhah, went and defiled his father's couch.

It's referenced in Genesis 35. And so he invalidated himself, and he was not worthy to lead the family, which is where it gets interesting. Because who's the next, who's the next born in the order?

Simeon. But the way that the rules worked, it went from the firstborn son of the first wife, not to the secondborn son of the first wife, but now to the firstborn son of the second wife.

In this case, Rachel and Joseph. And so Joseph receives the birthright. It is his to have.

Joseph is the one who is to obtain the birthright when ultimately Reuben invalidates himself. Let's go to Genesis 48. Let's go over to Genesis 48. We'll take a look at this. Because we see that some other things happened here that kind of set into motion some events that have gone on through history. Genesis 48. We know that Joseph had two sons. He had Manasseh, who was the firstborn, and Ephraim, who was the secondborn with his Egyptian wife, Asenath.

Genesis 48 and verse 1 says, Now it came to pass after these things that Joseph was told, indeed your father's sick, and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. So basically, look, Jacob's dying. We need to go see him. Right? And so he brings Manasseh, he brings Ephraim, and Jacob was told, look, your son Joseph is coming to you. And so he strengthened himself, and he sat up on the bed. Jacob said to Joseph, God Almighty appeared to me at Luzz in the land of Canaan and blessed me. And he said to me, Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will make you a multitude of people and give this land to your descendants after you as an everlasting possession. Those are the exact same things that God told Abraham.

And it's because that blessing had gone from Abraham to Isaac and to now to Jacob. And it was now Jacob's opportunity to pass it on to the next generation. He said to me, Behold, oh I already read that part, sorry, five, and now your two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, who were born to you in the land of Egypt, notice he referred to them in second order, first order, in the way that he said it. Manasseh was the first born. Notice how he referenced it here. He brought him in, it says earlier, Manasseh and Ephraim, Jacob references them as Ephraim and Manasseh, kind of a hint that there's something going on here, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are mine. It says your sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, are mine.

And they are mine just like Simeon, they are mine just like Reuben, they shall be mine.

He says your offspring, whom you beget after them, those are yours. But I am taking these two, I'm claiming them. They will become sons of Jacob, they will become sons of Israel, they will become what we now know to be half tribes, essentially, in the place of Joseph, in the tribes of Israel.

It says your offspring, whom you beget after them, shall be yours. They will be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance. And so they would inherit, just like Joseph's brothers, would inherit the blessings of Jacob. And so we see this is the birthright portion that is now being given to Joseph's sons. He adopts them, he brings them into his family, he grafts them into the family in Joseph's place, and they receive the birthright blessing of Jacob. Which means those physical blessings handed down from Abraham, that right of being a great nation and a multitude of nations, a great name that was now passed on to Ephraim and Manasseh. He says, but as for me, verse 7, when I came from Padan, Rachel died beside me in the land of Canaan on the way, when there was but a little distance to go to Ephraith, and I buried her there on the way to Ephraith, that is Bethlehem. Then Israel saw Joseph's sons, and he said, who are these?

Joseph said to his father, these are my sons whom God has given me in this place, and he said, please bring them to me, and I will bless them. Now the eyes of Israel, or Jacob in this case, were dim with age so that he could not see. So Joseph helped him out. Joseph brought them near him, and he kissed them, and he embraced them. And Israel said to Joseph, I had not thought to see your face. No, I didn't think you were... I never thought I'd see you again. He says, but now God has blessed me, and I've seen your children. And we're very thankful for that, that he had an opportunity to see Joseph's children. So Joseph helps him out. Again, he brings him from beside his knees, and he bowed down with his face to the earth. Verse 13, Joseph took them both, Ephraim with his right hand toward Israel's left. Keep in mind, Jacob is dim of sight at this point in time. Joseph's helping him out. He's putting the kids in the right places so that all Jacob has to do is reach out with his hands and bless the kids. He's lining it up as it should be lined up. And it says, he brought the Ephraim with his right hand toward Israel's left and Manasseh with his left hand towards Israel's right hand, and brought them near him. And then Israel stretched out his right hand, and he laid it on Ephraim's head. Crossed his hands. Sorry, there's a mic there.

Who was the younger in his left hand on Manasseh's head. It says, guiding his hands knowingly from Manasseh was the firstborn. So God's up to something here. God's up to something here. And Jacob's in on it. He blessed Joseph, and he said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has fed me all my life long to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads. Let my name be named upon them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. Once again, that blessing of growth, of becoming a multitude, of becoming a great nation, the things that Abraham was promised.

Now verse 17, we see that Joseph took some exception with this. Joseph gets a little upset, and he said, when Joseph saw his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it displeased him. So he took hold of his father's hand to remove it from me from his head to Manasseh's head.

He grabs his hand physically and tries to move it. He says, no, dad, this is wrong. You can't see well enough. You did it wrong. Joseph said to his father, not so, my father, for this one is the firstborn. Put your right hand on his head. He's done nothing to invalidate himself. He should receive the blessing. But his father refused and said, I know, my son. I know. He also shall become a people, and he shall also be great. But truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations. So he blessed them that day, saying, by you Israel will bless, saying, my God, make you or may God make you as Ephraim and as Manasseh. And thus he said Ephraim before Manasseh. You know, Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Asa, both received a birthright blessing. They both received a blessing, even though Ephraim's was a greater blessing. They both received a blessing at that time in place of Joseph.

And so as Jacob set them ahead of one another, you know, Ephraim ahead of one another, Ephraim became the figurehead, quote unquote, of the family. In fact, you look at Scripture at times, the whole entire ten tribes of the north are referred to often times as Ephraim.

They use that name to refer to the whole entirety of the ten tribes at times because he was the head of the family, so to speak.

As part of Joseph's birthright, Manasseh would become a great people, but Ephraim would be greater.

He would become a multitude or a company or a commonwealth of nations.

But he was chosen by God as his firstborn. In fact, Jeremiah 31.9, you can jot it down.

We won't turn there. But Jeremiah 31 verse 9, God says, They shall come with weeping, and with supplications I will lead them. I will cause them to walk by the rivers of water in a straight way in which they shall not stumble. For I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.

God claimed Ephraim as his own.

God chose the blessings that would be passed.

He promised them to Abraham. Abraham gave them to Isaac. Isaac gave them to Jacob. And Jacob gave them to Ephraim and to Manasseh.

And so that blessing, those promises of physical and material and national greatness that God gave to Abraham, descended down the generations to Jacob's sons.

Now we see that Jacob's sons receive, in Genesis 49, their own blessings. You know, the rest of the tribes do receive blessings. Some of them you kind of go, sort of blessing? I mean, I guess. You know, some of them were a little harsh, based on some of their previous behavior.

But Manasseh would become a great nation. He would be blessed. His name would be great. Ephraim's name would be blessed. They would be great. They would bless others. God would bless those who bless them and curse those who curse them. And all of the world, ultimately, would be blessed through them. When Assyria conquered the northern tribes in 720 BC, these kind of disappeared to history. We know they weren't wiped out. In fact, history refers to them as the quote-unquote lost ten tribes. You know, they just kind of disappeared in many ways. But if you look closely, there are clues. There are clues to their migrations throughout the Middle East, throughout parts of East Asia, throughout parts of Europe, throughout the British Isles. There are migrations that these Semitic people made following this conquering that helps us to clue into the identity of these tribes throughout time. One of those clues, actually, is in Isaiah 49 verse 12. Let's go ahead and turn over there.

Isaiah 49 and verse 12, typically when we see directions that are provided for us in Scripture, like, I mean, Northeast, Southwest sorts of directions, most of the time they're using Jerusalem as the center point. You know, typically Jerusalem is like the center of the compass rose, and then all the other, you know, directions and things are given based on that. But in Isaiah 49 and verse 12, we see a reference to the calling back of Israel at Christ's return.

And we see that the God is calling his people back. What does it say? Isaiah 49 and verse 12, it says, surely, in this section talking about bringing the people back from wherever they had ended up, he said, surely these shall come from afar. So from a distance, not necessarily close, but from afar, from a distance. And it says, look, those from the north and from the west, and from the west, and these from the land of Sennim. Land of Sennim kind of translates as the frontier, the south of towards Egypt. In fact, some translations just say to the south.

But what's north and west of the Holy Land? Looking at our world map in our head, what's north and west of the Holy Land? The continent of Europe. The continent of Europe. And so we get some clues throughout, along with a number of other things that seem to indicate that some of these who are dispersed in the Assyrian conquest made it north, and they made it west into Europe. In fact, Jeremiah 31 and verse 10 talks about the gathering of Israel from the far-off isles, from the far-off isles that are north and to the west. So we're looking at a group of people to the north and the west on an isle who grew into a great multitude of nations. You go down through the greatest empires of history, and there is only one that fits that bill. Go down through the Parthian Empire, you go down through the Romans, you go down through the different caliphates, you down through the Mongol Empire. That doesn't work. You down through the Empire of the... that doesn't work either.

The only nation that fits that description that we see in Scripture, the only one, is Britain.

It's the only one. At the peak of Britain's empire, it was stated the sun never set upon it.

In fact, they had tracks of the vast tracks, huge tracks of the African continent. They had India, they had Australia, they had Canada, they had parts of the United States, they had chunks of Asia. In fact, some of those chunks of Asia were just recently handed back. 97, I think, Hong Kong turned hands. Just recent. We know Manasseh came out of brother... out of his brother's midst, his kind of small bands of British citizens sailed west in the 1600s. As time went on, those colonies grew, they became stronger. Eventually, they threw off British rule, became a great nation in its own right. While its brother, Ephraim, became a company or a multitude of nations, a group of individuals that possessed the gates of their enemies, both sea gates, land gates, and who multiplied as the sand on the shore and the stars in the sky.

Brethren, God made America great. God made America great. God made Britain a great commonwealth of people. In fact, I was doing a little bit of research on this, because I was curious how many people were technically in the British commonwealth today. There are 2.4 billion people in the British commonwealth today. When you take all the British commonwealth nations, 2.4 billion.

Now, India is a big chunk of that, so to be fair, the huge chunk. But 2.4 billion people, that is like a third of the world population in that British commonwealth. I think at times, when we look at this, we want to apologize for this fact. We look at conditions at the world around us. We see that other people don't live this way. We see the blessings that we have in the States. We see the difficulties in the rest of the world. And it seems like in recent years, we've wanted to apologize for this. That somehow we had something to do with this, and so therefore we're sorry that we had something to do with this. We were there, but we weren't the reason why.

We were not the reason why. We just so happened by the grace of God to be born here in a country that has the birthright blessing of Abraham. You know, if you travel the world in various places, I know some of you went down to Jamaica this year for the feast, others of you went, like, to the Philippines, and we have a chance to get out and see other parts of the world. Not everyone lives the way that we do in the Israelite-ish nations. It is a stark, I mean, stark difference in places around the world that are not recipients of Abraham's blessings. And again, it's nothing that we've done by our own hand. We were there, we were part of it, sure. But it's God's blessing upon that nation that is allowed for that. And it's not that God loved the rest of the world any less. I mean, we know John 3 16 says he loved the whole entire world so much that he gave his only begotten son. It's not that he didn't love the rest of the world, it's that Abraham was faithful. That God had a relationship with Abraham, and he promised him unconditionally that he would bless him exceedingly. That he would bless his name, that he would bless his people and his descendants. And as history went on, God fulfilled that and is fulfilling those birthright promises given to Abraham through America and Britain and, frankly, through the rest of the tribes of Israel today, throughout parts of Europe, throughout those that are in the Middle East.

But it wasn't just physical blessings that were promised. And I think sometimes we get hung up on that. It's not just physical blessings, and it's not just the Israelites that receives them. God told Abraham that through him all of the families of the world would be blessed. Let's go ahead and turn over to Genesis 49. Because we know that the plan that God had was never just intended to be limited to Abraham's descendants. It was intended to be poured out upon all of mankind. It was something that God had planned to take beyond just Israel. In Genesis 49 and verse 8, we see the blessing that Jacob gives to Judah. We see the blessing that Jacob gives to Judah, and he says, Judah, verse 8, you are he whom your brother shall praise, your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies, your father's children shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion's whelp. From the prey my son you have gone down, he bows down, he lies down as a lion, and as a lion who shall rouse him.

Verse 10, the scepter shall not depart from Judah. Scepter is a symbol of rule, a symbol of authority, nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the people. So while Ephraim was to be the firstborn, was to have the birthright, was to have the blessing, when it came to rulership and the right of rule, that was given to Judah.

That was given to Judah. In fact, it says that the entire family would bow to Judah as a result of that rulership, and that it would not depart from them until Shiloh comes. In fact, I.V. 5, if you want to jot it down, I'll read it really quickly. I.V. 5, verse 1. So we get into I.V. Chronicles, we get ultimately a genealogy here of the family of Reuben. But in I.V. 5, it says his following. It says, Now the sons of Reuben were the firstborn of Israel.

He was indeed the firstborn, but because he defiled his father's bed, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph. Notice given to the sons of Joseph. Plural. Given to Ephraim, given to Manasseh. So that the genealogy is not listed according to the birthright. Verse 2, Yet Judah prevailed over his brothers, and from him came a ruler, although the birthright was Joseph's. So the birthright went to Ephraim, went to Manasseh, but Judah had the right of rule.

We see no references in scripture anywhere that this blessing has passed from Ephraim and Manasseh to anyone else. They are still currently residing with the descendants of Ephraim and Mass of these blessings, of becoming a great nation, of becoming a great name.

Looking at a single great nation with tremendous power, with wealth, with prestige, with global influence, and looking at a great commonwealth or great company of nations, which also have a very strong worldwide presence and impact, they must be related to one another, the brothers, after all.

They must control key strategic land and sea gates around the world in various places.

They must be rich in resources, and they must number in the hundreds of millions or more.

You look around the world scene today, there's only two nations that fit this bill, United States and Britain, and the commonwealth of British nations.

Brethren, God has not failed to make good on His promises to Abraham.

And so when we take the time, as we often do during the month of November, to reflect on the physical blessings that we enjoy, we absolutely must consider the hand of God in those blessings.

And not just in the blessings that we individually have, not just in the things that God has provided for each of us individually and our families, but there are blessings that have been provided to this country that we take for granted. And yet, they are incredible blessings that God has provided. We have a safety and a security in this nation that is not realized in all the nations of the world.

We have prosperity, we have freedom, we have a rule of law, we have, again, boldness of ideas and this entrepreneurial spirit that's fueled innovation and industry, and we have even our own little personal blessings of security and freedom to live our lives in peace.

We get to believe how we want to believe. We're not told what we have to believe.

We get to choose to make that choice, as Mr. Griswold mentioned.

All of these things are a gift from God. And all of these things, brethren, are an unconditional blessing that came to us that we obtained as a result of a relationship 3,500 years ago in which God said, leave your country and go out and I will bless you. And Abraham said, okay.

And those blessings have come down the line for 3,500 years to us. That is why America is great.

That is why the British Commonwealth is great. We're not perfect. In fact, I think you can argue we're quite imperfect. But that doesn't take away the fact that we are a great nation and that we have helped and we have provided and we've done a number of wonderful things over the years as a result of the blessings that we've been given. When you take time this month to be grateful and thankful for our blessings, please take a moment, if you haven't lately, to thank God for the blessings of Abraham. To take him for that relationship with Abraham and through the faithfulness that he showed through the blessings that God delivered his promises down through history, even down to us.