God's Promises to Abraham

Well, good morning again, brethren, and I'm just amazed how much Tom would remember at two months old about what's going on in the world. Well, he says he saw it. I have to say, I don't know it. I don't think I saw it. I'm really not very sure that I did because of the setting. But I wanted to cover something today that I've been thinking about for some time. Actually, I've been reading about. I've gone back over the last several weeks and read an old book, an old book that I have called The United States and Britain or The British Commonwealth in Prophecy. That's a book some of you have, I'm sure. I mean, an old book, not a current book. We have a booklet entitled The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy. I guess it's a little bit different title, I believe. But it's the same essential topic that is being covered. And in thinking about that topic, about how it is that the United States and the English-speaking people in the United Kingdom and then around the world in different Commonwealth areas, how it is that they rose to the incredible power that they have over the last 200 years. You know, I have to. I'm about 70 now. And I think back of growing up, and some of you also were growing up at this time, some of you are younger than that, but I think about growing up in the 50s and then the 60s. And even in the 70s, when I was getting a little bit older, at least into and out of college and starting to work, I remember growing up on a farm in Oklahoma in what I have to look back on at this time as one of the most secure, one of the most blessed, one of the most, whether I understood it or not, one of the most incredible times in human history. You know, today, you know, we have advancements in a lot of areas, but we don't have a lot of the security that it seemed that we had back 60, 70 years ago. And yet, I grew up in the breadbasket of Laurel. You know, I was living on a farm. My dad grew wheat and alfalfa for our cattle.

We had cattle and some sheep and had some pigs at that time. It was a small-town setting. We had a regular school, all 12 grades of us together. It was a rather small operation.

And yet, it was an incredibly blessed time, an incredibly blessed land.

And I have to recall thinking about just how incredible the United States was at that time.

Having been victorious in World War II, having been involved in the Korean conflict, and even later going into a Vietnam conflict, the United States had incredible force around the world.

And not only did we have a great deal of dominance, but we were blessed in just so many, many ways.

And I looked at some of the pictures that are in this old US and BC book, and some of them are just showing how the abundance of the beauty of the mountains, the beauty of the landscape in the many parts of the world, or parts of the United States primarily, it has pictures about the British holding at that time as well. And yet, the thing that stuck out to me, as I said, growing up in a farming community and with involved in cutting wheat, and then getting it out of the combine and into the truck and down into the elevator, they had a picture, again in this older book, a picture that I know where it came from.

It was a picture of wheat. Wheat being dumped into the street, up and down Main Street.

It doesn't say where that is, but I know that was in Marshall, Oklahoma. It wasn't where I lived, but it was in the county or the next county to where I lived. And I, at that time, I mean, at times you would have good crops, at times you would have very, maybe they would be limited at times, but still very good, other times great, and then other times just beyond abundance. And why was it that they were putting wheat and unloading grain trucks into the street?

Well, because all the granaries were full. Every place you, you couldn't go anywhere to store wheat that it was such incredibly abundant right then.

Now, it was obvious to me, even as a young person and as going into my 20s, it was obvious, and it was really remarkably meaningful to me that God has blessed this land. He has blessed the United States and the British people in an incredible way. Now, we have a booklet, as I said, the United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy, and just describing the rise in power that the United States and Britain enjoyed over the last, say, 200 years, mostly through the 1800s and the 1900s, because now we see considerable decline, not only in Britain and in their holdings around the world, but you see that here in the United States. You know, we may want to exert some power around the world, but it's getting harder and harder to do, and we have greater and greater division. But in just reading some of about what it is that we have experienced, this is out of our current booklet about the U.S. and B.C. in prophecy from a physical point of view. Much of the Anglo-American dominance during the past two centuries came from the blessings of favorable geography, favorable climate, and the seemingly endless supply of natural resources accumulated during that time. British territories were concentrated in the most productive regions of the temperate zone, and abundant and dependable food supply enabled them to support steady population growth from the 18th through the 20th century, and certainly the modern descendants of Joseph. And that, of course, is the way that it was being described at that time. Very important note to realize that the people of the British Commonwealth and of the United States are descended from the tribes of Israel and directly Joseph and his children, Epriem and Manasseh. See, that is what, of course, this book points out. Certainly the modern descendants of Joseph had been a fruitful vow, as it says in Genesis 49. The British and American people inherited a treasure trove of natural resources, but the British lacked within their own aisle they drew from an empire encircling the globe, and Americans found everything necessary for national economic greatness vast expanses of fertile soil. That's, you know, you look at the middle part of this country, you don't have a place from, you know, Texas to North Dakota and all through the middle plains and even over through Illinois and Indiana. You can drive through there today flat fields, you know, as far as you can see, and on any road that you happen to be on.

But this is what America, you know, found themselves in possession of. They found everything necessary for national economic greatness vast expanses of fertile soil seemingly endless forest, gold, silver, other precious metals waiting to be mined, massive iron ore, coal, petroleum, and other mineral deposits, and within the confines of the continental United States and even more as they acquired Alaska. Both people possess the best things of the ancient mountains, the precious things of the everlasting hills, the precious things of the earth and its fullness within the territories they exclusively control. Now, that's a description of an incredibly blessed land. And as we may think about it today, if you listen to people in our national discussions that go on, you'll find there are many people who are distressed over the fact that God has provided those kind of blessings, that He has provided that kind of privilege, or that He has provided that kind of wealth and stability and security in these countries that we could call the land of Joseph. And unfortunately, very few fully understand that, well, it's not simply because of our own brilliance that we have acquired this wealth. There are a lot of people that say, well, we do so many things well. That's why we have been so successful.

See, that's not what the Bible says. In Deuteronomy in chapter 8 and chapter 9, you see Moses pointing out to the Israelites that you have come out of Egypt and you really have messed up and you've wandered around the wilderness for 40 years, and God is now going to let the younger generation go into the Promised Land. And yet, He says, you shouldn't think that you are being given this blessing, being given the Promised Land again of the past.

You shouldn't think that you've received that because of your greatness. Here in Deuteronomy 8 in verse 11, He says, take care that you don't forget the Lord your God by failing to keep His commandments and ordinances that I'm commanding you today. In verse 18, He says, remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth so that He may confirm His covenant that He swore to your ancestors as He is doing today. See, they were going into a land that had been promised to them. A land where they were going to be blessed and it was going to be a land flowing with milk and honey was the description of it at that time.

Here in chapter 9 again of Deuteronomy, verse 5, it is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you are going in to occupy the land, but because of the wickedness of the nations, the Lord is dispossessing before you in order to fulfill the promise that the Lord made on oath to your ancestors to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob.

Verse 6, know then that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to occupy because of your righteousness because you are a stubborn people. See, now that clearly was applicable to the Israelites as they entered the Promised Land back then. It also is applicable to the descendants of those same Israelites today. And I think it is important that we be reminded of the reason why we have such incredible blessings in this land. And of course, when people don't appreciate it, and when they don't obey God, and when they don't see that God is the one who can lift them up and set them down. We just don't have a discussion about that at all, hardly. It is mostly just about arguing over political ideas, over political parties. You know, you've got a great deal of strife, even in our current Beyond Today magazine regarding the attitude of many in our country today. We write today is a different time, with a different national mood, and the divisions in American culture may be deep enough to hinder the national will needed to maintain and sustain the power and might of the United States. A prophecy from the days of Moses speaks to a time when a nation's will to exercise power and accomplish would be broken because of sin and the resulting deep fractures in national life. See, quoting out of Leviticus 26, verse 19 to 20, God said, I'm going to break the pride of Your power. I'm going to make Your heavens like iron and Your earth like bronze. Your strength shall be spent in vain. America is at a moment when its pride in who and what it is has been attacked and weakened, and events of the past 50 years have sown the seeds of cultural and spiritual death. See, that's a part of what we are able to say today, looking back on, in essence, the incredible abundance and the incredible blessing that we have enjoyed.

I think we're actually beyond the very best of the blessings of this country. We're beyond that. You know, the Industrial Revolution, in a sense, brought much of that to pass. And that, you know, we write about it, and you can read if you just read our current booklet about that. You see, you know, that it's very, very clear. And yet, you know, there are people who believe in the idea of British-Israelism. There are people who believe that. There are people who promote it, people who write about it. That's not an unknown thing. But what I want to ask and have us think about, because I believe most of us do believe that, we do feel that we are the descendants of the Israelites through Jacob and then Joseph and Ephraim and Manasseh, that we are the descendants of those people as you trace them back from having been displaced from the land of the Middle East and up into Europe and into Britain and finally here. I believe most of us have an awareness of that, and I know 50 years ago I had an awareness of it. I could see, you know, well, it's pretty obvious. This is the most blessed land on the face of the earth. And yet, why did God choose back in the 50s and 60s of the last century, why did He choose to reveal key prophetic understanding at that particular time? See, it's one thing to think, and then the topic of British Israelism. One thing to believe that. But what God actually brought to the attention in a radio program for the most part, and later a pretty massive television program and through the writings of Mr. Armstrong, what He made known was that it's not just that these peoples, these English speaking peoples of these countries have been blessed, but to comprehend that enables us to understand many of the prophecies that are yet to occur and to understand just how it is that nations can be identified in the world today in connection with the Bible. It makes the Bible more relevant. And so more than just understanding of some facts, it causes us to be able to study and read the Bible in the mid-part of the 1900s. Again, looking back on that now, 50 years ago, 70 years ago, God chose to reveal prophetic understanding that provides keys to reading the Bible, to reading the Bible with meaning. See, before that time, you could read the Bible, and certainly we've had people even in this country who've read the Bible and tried to apply it to whatever their knowledge of that was, but they couldn't have understood what we in many ways are incredibly blessed to understand, to understand how you can identify Israel in the world today and how, because of our sins and because of our disobedience and because of our arrogance. See, when I listen to mostly television, or I guess it's more so on radio as well as if I'm listening in the car, you know, I don't hear people who are filled with an understanding of gratitude for the blessings God has given us. I hear people who only want to argue, who only want to insist on their own way, who are jealous of one another, who are prideful, or prideful, I guess, proud and arrogant and clearly rude. You know, those are all kind of the antithesis of what it says the love of God is in 1 Corinthians 13.4. See, that's what we see today. We see people who are so unattuned to what the Bible says and clearly out of context with what's going on. You know, why is it that God revealed that last century in the middle of that century?

Well, in Daniel 12, you see that He pointed out to Daniel that a time would come in the end of the age, and He says here in Daniel 12 verse 4, Daniel, keep the words secret and the book sealed until the time of the end. See, I think all of us believe we live in the time of the end. We believe that we're approaching the time of the return of Christ. But see, what God inspired Daniel to write down and what Daniel did write was he wrote down the words and he kept those words secret and the book was sealed until a given time that God would unveil the information until the time of the end. Many shall be running back and forth and knowledge shall increase. Now, clearly in this digital revolution that we have today, knowledge has increased. You know, every one of you, many of you at least, have some kind of phone that you carry around and you can look up anything you need to know. Whether you want to know it or not, you can look it up. It's easily accessible. Knowledge has increased. If we drop down in chapter 12 verse 8, Daniel said, well, I heard, but I didn't understand. So I said, my Lord, what's going to be the outcome of these things? You know, what am I writing about? And he did write about ultimately the coming of the Kingdom of God. He did write about many of the kingdoms that would rise and fall even after he was no longer alive. And he wrote about ultimately the solution, which would be in the time of the end.

And yet he said in verse 9, or God told him, go your way, Daniel. The words need to remain secret and sealed until the time of the end. And many shall be in verse 10, purified and cleansed and refined. But the wicked are going to continue to do wickedly and none of the wicked are going to understand, but those who are wise shall understand. See, that's the category we want to be in. We want to be in individuals who are wise in allowing the Word of God to be the focus, to be the guide for our understanding, for what we think, for how we act. And of course, ultimately, it is a matter of how is it not a... it's not so much a matter of what we happen to know. It's a matter of how does that affect us? How does that affect the way we live? Being purified and cleansed and refined.

That sounds in some ways good because you want to have a pure heart, but it also, you know, you read verses about being tried in the fire, being purified and being cleansed in difficulty and trial. And so God is not totally interested in just us knowing something. He wants it to affect the way we live. What I want to focus on today is the amazing introduction to what we can talk about, what I intend to anticipate talking about over several different services, regarding, you know, the way that God has provided promises to Abraham. God's enduring promises to Abraham.

And primarily, we read about Abraham. We read about him in different parts of the Bible. Of course, he's mentioned. And clearly, in the New Testament, he's mentioned as the father of the faithful. He's mentioned in a very positive way in Hebrews 11. He is an example for us to follow.

But more than that, I want to just think about what we read from Genesis, basically starting in 12, Genesis 12 through the end of the book, the end of the book of Genesis, because there's a lot of information there that would predict the blessings that God would provide in a sense, in promises to Abraham here in Genesis 12. When God began to work in the life of Abram, his name was Abram at that time. You read about him in chapter 11, being the son, you know, his genealogy is described there, going back to Noah. And of course, beyond Noah, back to Adam if you follow all of the genealogies. But here, in Genesis 12, it says in verse 1, the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred, your father's house to the land. I'm going to show you. And so, in this case, we see an example of the one who would be later called Abraham. Now, we see him willingly doing. Verse 4, it says, he went. You know, God told him to get up and leave, and so he did. But what it says in verse 2 is a description of God's involvement in not just the life of Abraham, but in the life of the next 4,000 years of human beings. The life of the descendants of Abraham.

He says in verse 2, I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. And then in verse 3, he says, I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you, I will curse in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Now, why do I bring this up? Well, I think it's important for us to realize that we're the recipients of those blessings, and that God has been involved in dealing with the people of Israel, the people of Jacob, of Joseph, of Ephraim, and Manasseh, of the British commonwealth of the past and of the United States today. He has been involved in giving us not only the prominence, but the incredible blessings that we enjoy. And so we never want to take that for granted. What you see here in chapter 12 is two phases of promises. One of them being national, being material, becoming a great nation. See, there has not been a nation like the United States of America over human history. You know, this is the most powerful nation not only on earth today, but has it ever been. It has the capacity to do more things. We have that capacity, though, we realize that's being undermined. That's being taken away. But of course, that's because of sin. That's because of disobedience. And you know, when we promote all kinds of, you know, self-reliance and human thinking, then what should we expect? Well, we should expect that when you read Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, if you obey, I'll bless you. If you disobey, you can expect curses. And of course, that's the verse I read in verse 19 of Leviticus 26. Now, the pride of your power will be broken, and so we know that that is taking place today. But two phases, one of them being the national blessing of the descendants of Abraham, and then secondly, a spiritual blessing that would lead to, and actually many people can easily read Romans 4 and Galatians 3 and try to figure out, well, that has something to do with Christ. And He is the one, the seed of Abraham, who is able to provide spiritual blessing. And clearly, that is what is mentioned here. All the families of the earth are to be blessed. See, those were directed to Abraham to begin with.

After God tested Abram with the life of Isaac, and again, I'm not going to go back through all of these. I'm going to only point out some of the things. What we see in Genesis 22, starting in verse 18, is that He elaborated on what He was doing with this man. Verse 15, the angel of the Lord, Genesis 22. 15, the angel of the Lord came to Abram the second time and said, I myself as sworn says the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you.

I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, as the sand that's on the seashore, your offspring shall possess the gates of their enemies, and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed My voice. Now, you see a little bit of an expansion there of what God originally said about promising Abraham a great nation and all the people of earth to be blessed as He did in Genesis 12.

Let's go to Genesis 15. Here you see in Genesis 15, God making a covenant with Abraham. He says after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision and said, don't be afraid, Abram. I am your shield. I am your reward, or excuse me, your reward shall be very great. But Abram said, oh Lord, what will You give me? I continue to be childless in the air of My houses. The LEAs are My servant.

And Abraham said, You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born of My houses to be My heir. But the word of the Lord came to him in verse 4 and said, This man shall not be your heir. No one but your very own issue shall be your heir. So even though at that point God had promised great descendants through Abraham, Abraham didn't have a child.

He didn't have. As we read here in Genesis 15, his wife was barren. He did not have a descendant. And yet in verse 5, he brought him outside. God did. He told him, look up toward heaven and count the stars if you're able to count them. And he said to him, so shall your descendants be. And he believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned to him as righteousness. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham saying, to your descendants I have this land. I am going to give this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.

Now here it appears he's expanding, not just the land of Canaan, the small area that we would see as Israel today, but it's expanding down into Egypt and the Nile and up into the Euphrates. That's a much bigger area and a much more greater, greater blessing. In chapter 17, Genesis 17, verse 1, when Abraham was 99, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless, and I will make my covenant between me and you. And I will make you exceedingly numerous.

And Abraham fell on his face, and God said to him, as for me, this is my covenant with you. You shall be an ancestor of a multitude of nations. Verse 5, no longer shall your name be Abraham, but your name shall be Abraham. For I have made you the descendant of a multitude of nations, and I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you and kings shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you, and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations.

So here God was giving promises to a man, one man, that we begin to see actually in Genesis 11, but directly God dealing with him in Genesis 12, a man who was willing to obey, a man who was a servant of God, who was ultimately to be the father of the faithful. He says, I'm going to establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your offspring after you.

See, amazingly, all of us are the descendants of Abraham. All of us living in this land as we understand what God has brought to pass in the last two centuries, you know, we're descendants of Abraham. And he says, I will give to you and your offspring in verse 8 the land where you are now an alien, the land of Canaan for a perpetual holding and I will be their God. And so he says, right now, I'm going to give you this promised land of Canaan.

God said, as for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring, and you throughout the generations. Verse 15, God said to Abraham, as for Sarah your wife, you shall not call her Sarai. You shall not call her Sarai, but call her Sarah. That shall be her name. And I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her. She shall give rise to nations. Kings of people shall come from her.

And Abraham fell on his face and laughed. You know, often we remember the fact that Sarah kind of laughed when she heard about this. But Abraham laughed too. He said, that doesn't look very likely. That is certainly not something you would expect. He said to himself, can a child be born to a man who's 100 years old? Or can Sarah, who is 90, bear a child? And Abraham said to God, please let Ishmael live in your sight. You know, he had already, again, we've not read through that, but he'd already taken things into his own hands. He and Sarah had. That didn't work out so well. It created an obstacle. But it certainly didn't change what God was going to do. God says, no, your wife Sarah shall bear you a son and you shall name him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant and with his offspring as well. And so God was going to work through the family of Abraham. And then he was going to work through a son of promise named Isaac. In Genesis 26, you see God making a covenant with Isaac as well. There was a famine in the land in verse 1, besides the former famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham, Isaac went to Gharar to King Abimelech of the Philistines, and the Lord appeared to him and said, you know, don't go down to Egypt. Settle in the land that I'll show you. Reside in this land as an alien and I will be with you. I will bless you for you and to your descendants. I will give all of these lands and I will fulfill the oath that I swore to your father Abraham. Verse 4, I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, and I will give to your offspring all these lands and all the nations of the earth shall gain blessing for themselves through your offspring because Abraham obeyed my voice, kept my charge in commandments and statutes and laws. See, that blessing that he had promised to Abraham, he was going to pass on to Isaac and through Isaac to what we read here in chapter 27 to Jacob. And even though, as you read the story, you know that Jacob kind of came about being the possessor of a lot of these blessings through deception. It says in chapter 27 verse 26, Isaac said to Jacob, Come near and kiss me, my son. So he came near and kissed him and he smelled the smell of his garments and yet blessed him and said, Oh, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed. May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine. Let people serve you and nations bow down to you. Be Lord over your brothers and may your mother's sons bow down to you. Curse me everyone who curses you. Bless me everyone who blesses you. God is using a sequence through His blessing to Abraham. His promise to Abraham, He would carry that on through Isaac and through Jacob. And in chapter 28, we see Jacob having a dream. A dream in verse 13, the Lord stood beside him. He said, I'm the Lord God, the God of Abraham and your father and the God of Isaac. The land of which you lie, I'm going to give to you and your offspring and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth. And you shall, verse 14, spread abroad to the west and east and north and south.

And so was he going to be contained right there in the little area in the Middle East? No, he was going to be expanding every direction. And all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and your offspring. So he continued to reiterate not only a national promise, but a promise of spiritual blessings that would ultimately come through Jesus Christ. Verse 15, Know that I am with you and that I will keep you wherever you go and I will bring you back to this land and I will leave you. I will not leave you until I've done what I promised. God was working, having promised to Abraham what he would through Isaac and then Jacob. And here in chapter 35, you see Jacob's name, which actually had a meaning of a deceiver, a name changed to Israel. In verse 9 of chapter 35, God appeared to Jacob again after he came from Padanarama and he blessed him. God said to him, your name is Jacob. No longer shall you be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name. And so he was called Israel. And God said to him, I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. Verse 11, A nation and a company of nations shall come from you and kings shall spring from you. The land that I give to Abraham and to Isaac I'm going to give to you and I will give the land to your offspring after you. God used the same pattern in each of these, pointing out that this was not just for what we're going to do right now in the next century or so with their descendants, but that ultimately descendants down the line would become this great nation and this great commonwealth of nations.

And in chapter 48, chapter 48 and 49, of course, are very important because they point out how that at the end of Israel's life, the end of Jacob's life, he blesses his sons and he blesses his sons of Joseph named Ephraim and Manasseh. In verse 1, after this, Joseph was told, he's in Egypt now, and Joseph has actually preserved his family. He's able to bring them down. Even though he has sold into slavery and into Egypt, God sent him down there to preserve this special, peculiar group of people, this family that he would work through and that he would bless.

Joseph was told that his father Israel was ill. So he took with him his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, and Ephraim. Manasseh was the older. In verse 2, when Jacob was told, your son Joseph had come, he summoned his strength and sat on his bed. And Jacob said to Joseph, God Almighty, this wasn't just my idea. This wasn't just something that I mapped out.

God Almighty appeared to me at Lowe's in the land of Canaan and blessed me and said to me, I'm going to make you fruitful and I'm going to increase your numbers. And I'm going to make of you a company of nations and I will give this land to your offspring after you for a perpetual holding. Therefore, in verse 5, your two sons who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you. See, Joseph had already been there in the land. He had married. He had these two sons and yet he had brought Jacob and all his brothers and their families down into Egypt.

He says, your two sons who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, those boys, Ephraim and Nassau, are now mine. Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine just as Reuben and Simeon are mine. See, he was actually, in a sense, adding to the number of sons of Jacob. He was adding to his sons by saying, these grandsons are on the same part and actually even going to rise above many of the other descendants of others of my sons.

And in verse 17, in this encounter, when Joseph saw that his father's laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, he wanted to change it. So he took his father's hands off to remove it from Ephraim's head and put it on Manasseh who he thought his father should bless first and the greatest. And Joseph said to his father, not so my father, since this one is first born, put your right hand on his head. But his father refused and said, I know, my son, I know, he also shall become a people and he also shall be great, talking about Manasseh, but nevertheless, his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his offspring shall become a multitude of nations. And so talking of Ephraim, his descendants would be the multitude of nations. That would ultimately be, as we see it over the last two centuries, the empire that would rise out of the British Isles and around the world. And yet Manasseh would ultimately be that great nation. So he blessed them that day in verse 20, saying, By you, Israel, we'll invoke blessings, saying God, make you like Ephraim and Manasseh. And so he put Ephraim ahead of Manasseh, and Israel said to Joseph, I'm about to die, but God will be with you and will bring you again to the land of your ancestors.

See, that's incredible when you read through the stories. That's from chapter 12 to almost the end of the book of Genesis, that an incredible story is being described. And yet, that story involves God's blessing and promises to Abraham and to who the people of Abraham would be today.

In chapter 49, you have kind of a conclusion to what we read here in this book of Genesis.

And verse 1 is very important because it points out. Now, you also know, I'm pretty sure, that you see other chapters in the Bible, in Deuteronomy, I think 33 or so, 33 or 4. I don't have that written down. You see a number of listings, actually, of what Moses said that the blessings of many of the children of Israel would receive. But here you see them enumerated in chapter 49. And verse 1 is very important because it says, in verse 1, Jacob called his sons and said, I want you to gather around that I may tell you what will happen to you in the days to come. I want to tell you what's going to happen to you in the latter days, in the time of the end. And he goes through enumerating numerous ones of his sons. And again, you can go through and study those yourself. He points out to Judah in verse 8, Judah your brother shall praise you, your hands shall be on the neck of your enemies, your father's son shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion's wealth from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He crouches down, he stretches out like a lion, like a lioness, who dares rouse him up. But he says in verse 10, the scepter shall not depart from Judah. There was a specific reason that it was through David or through Judah that eventually David would come and eventually Christ would come as certainly the Messiah and ultimately, as we look into the future, you know, the one who will resume authority on earth when he returns. He says through Judah the scepter, verse 10, shall not depart from Judah nor the ruler's staff from between his feet until Shiloh come, until the coming of the Lord and the obedience of the people is His. See, that was a blessing that Jacob had extended to his son Judah. And down in verse 22, he says to Joseph, and so in this sense, he's saying to Joseph, his sons Ephraim and Manasseh, that he was already blessed in chapter 48. In chapter 49, verse 22, he says Joseph is a fruitful bough. A fruitful bough by a spring and his branches run over the wall, talking about how it is that they would be a colonizing people and ultimately into an island where they would fall over from that and again populate this country, the United States of America. Verse 23, the archers fiercely attacked him. They shot at him and pressed him hard, yet his bow remained taut and his arms were made agile by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob, the mighty one of Jacob, by the name of the shepherd, the rock of Israel, by the God of your fathers. In verse 25, who will help you, by the Almighty who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lie beneath, and blessings of the breast and womb, the blessings of your Father are stronger than the blessings of the eternal mountains.

Bounties of the everlasting hills may they be on the head of Joseph, on the brow of him who was set apart from his brothers. See, many people look at, and of course you see this even in our national rhetoric today, people look at the American and the British people in a very negative way. They say people are proud, people are arrogant, people act better than others or act like they're more important than others. You know, God set them aside. God provided a blessing. It's not because of our brilliance, as we read earlier, not because of our righteousness, not because of anything that we have done, but because of God working out His plan in the end of the age. And so, as we think about the remarkable privilege to have the great blessings that we do, we should consider that all of these have come because of God's blessing to Abraham. And of course, we also can read the remainder of the predictions, and those predictions are not very positive. Those are all pretty negative because of sin and because of disobedience. But whenever we hear the discourse going on that is angry and certainly hit nowhere, kind of spinning out of control but condemning, see, God is not a racist. God is not. He's the one who created the different races. He's the one who creates blessings, the one who creates or brings about curses if people disobey. But certainly, for the people of the U.S. and B.C. and for the other Israelite-ish countries that are scattered in other parts of the world, a time of Jacob's trouble is coming. That's what we read in, I think it's in Jeremiah, that direct statement, a time of Jacob's trouble. And we read that in Matthew about a time of great tribulation going to come upon the world. Well, it's going to come upon the people of Israel because we've not respected God's Word. We've not respected His law. And of course, we're going to bring curses upon ourselves. But even when you look here in Leviticus 26 to go back to a chapter we read a little bit about earlier, in Leviticus 26, God said in verse 14, if you will not obey Me and not observe My commandments, if you spurn My statutes and abhor My ordinances so that you will not observe My commandments, you will break My covenant and turn Do this to you. I will bring terror on you.

Consumption and fever and waste. You shall not sow your seed and vein, for your enemy shall eat it. I will set My face against you in verse 17, and you shall be struck down by your enemies, and your foes shall rule over you. See, that was a prediction back then. Of course, both Israel and Judah, as we understand the Bible and can see pretty clearly how it is that God divided that, but both of them went into captivity. Both of them were scattered throughout the world, in a sense, although Judah is much more identifiable because of a certain reason that we'll discuss later. But here you see God in verse 18, in spite of this, you will not obey Me. I will continue to punish you sevenfold for your sins, and I will break your proud glory, and I will make your sky like iron, your earth like copper, your strength shall be spent to no purpose, and your land shall not yield its fruit. You can say that God has provided incredible blessing, but He also expects people to turn to God. And if you look over in verse 40, He says, if you confess your iniquity, and the iniquity of your ancestors, in that they have committed treachery against Me, and they've continued to be hostile to Me, and so I've been hostile to them. In verse 41, He says, if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled, and they make amends for their iniquity, then will I remember My covenant with Jacob? I will remember My covenant with Isaac, and I will remember My covenant with Abraham, and I will remember their land. See, God is not simply wanting to punish people for disobedience. He's going to bring about, at the end of the age, a tribulation that will greatly affect the people of Israel, the people of Joseph, and the other descendants of Jacob, and Isaac, and Abraham. But He wants people to turn to God. So I wanted to go over this to begin with because I think it's a good kind of a beginning, because ultimately, you know, the enduring promises of God to Abraham, it's one of our fundamental beliefs in the United Church of God, they need to be understood. There are numerous aspects to them, but this is, in a sense, a beginning of how it is that God has brought about, even in the end of the age, a blessing on the descendants of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob through Joseph, and for all of us through this country, you know, being the land of Manasseh.