Thanksgiving and Spiritual Blessings

So, brethren, Thanksgiving is next Thursday. It's kind of nice the kids get off a little bit of vacation time, be with the family. It's a unique American tradition. It's not based on paganism, but on wanting to give thanks to God. We recently celebrated the biblical Feast of Tabernacles with Thanksgiving, giving thanks to God in this fall season before winter sets in. And the pilgrims established it after they planted their first crops back in 1620. 1620 in the Boston area. And with the help of friendly Indians, they had a crop coming up. And then a deadly drought set in. It wasn't raining when it should have. And they didn't have reserves of food. It didn't look well for either the pilgrims or their neighboring Indians. And so what did they do? They prayed and fasted. They even talked to the Indians who prayed and fasted too. And soon the rains came, the crops continued, and they had a bumper crop that year. And they knew who was the author of that, and they wanted to thank God. And so that was the first Thanksgiving that was celebrated among the pilgrims and their friendly Indians. For three days they were able to eat when they had been starving to death. This is from a Jewish food website. It says, The Feast of Tabernacles celebrates the autumn harvest, a similarity to the Thanksgiving holiday observed in the United States, which is not coincidental. Prior to making their way to the new world, the pilgrims, themselves the victims of religious persecution, spent several years among the Sephardic Jews in Holland. When they later celebrated the legendary first Thanksgiving, their conscious frame of reference was the Feast of Tabernacles. So Thanksgiving is not just to eat delicious food, but also to thank God for the great blessings that He has poured down on us and the great truths that He has given us. And commissioned us to go to the world and to be part of His work, preaching the gospel and preparing a people. That, in very succinct language, is our commission to preach the gospel to all the world and to prepare a people who are the ones that come into the church. We start preparing them for God's kingdom.

So here are three great blessings to be thankful about during Thanksgiving. When we pray, let's have these in mind. First, thank God for the wonderful truths about the past, present, and future history of the United States, Great Britain, and the rest of modern Israel. I'm going to go into each one. I just want to mention them right up front as part of the purpose of the message. These are our spiritual roots, being able to understand Bible prophecy. So we have a booklet on United States and Great Britain and Bible prophecy that goes into all of this. Secondly, to appreciate the country's founding of the Bible, to be thankful to appreciate the religious roots of the Bible, producing religious tolerance, goodwill, where God's church was able to thrive. Thirdly, to realize to much who has been given, much is expected. The responsibility for backing God's work and getting the gospel out. We have a responsibility. God is calling us. He's not calling anyone else to do this. Just yesterday, I was impressed by a speech by Mike Johnson, the new House of Representatives speaker. In the World Prayer Network Zoom call, he mentioned about, quote, a time of judgment for our country, which he called, quote, dark and depraved, and cited an increase in young people who, quote, identify as something other than straight. This is what he prayed, quote, so we cry out to you, God. We do humble ourselves and pray. We repent for our sins individually and collectively, and we ask that you do not give up on our nation, nor give us the judgment that we clearly deserve, but that your mercy and grace would guide us through these terrible, troubled waters, and that you would heal our land. Yes, quite a man, not too many of them around. I pray for him every day, and God sustains him, because he is like one of those men that it mentions there in Ezekiel 33, who stands in the gap. He was willing to take it because, boy, they lambasted him terribly. Terribly. How dare he say these things? Well, 20 years ago, anybody would have said that. Now he's the outlier. He is the exception.

So let's look at some of these wonderful truths about the history of the United States, Great Britain, and the rest of Israel, our spiritual roots. By the way, Roy Tower is one of the descendants of those original pilgrims, so it's kind of nice to have somebody that went all the way back to the Mayflower, his ancestors. So from the Bible, we learn that Abraham's descendants would receive special blessings, not only physical, but spiritual blessings. And we learn how we can be part of it. I wasn't a descendant of Abraham before coming into the church. I am now a spiritual descendant, and that's a great blessing. In the book of Genesis, we actually have 10 chapters dedicated to Abraham and the blessings that would come from his faithfulness. Let's look at Genesis chapter 22. Genesis chapter 22, this is one of the many times from chapter 12 on. You can just go ahead and do a little study and underline how many times these promises of God to Abraham were repeated in Genesis chapter 22 in verse 15. After Abraham had offered Isaac and God intervened, he says in verse 15, then the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven and said, by myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son. Blessing, I will bless you, and multiplying, I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore. And your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. Be a rich, abundant country. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice. So Abraham returned to his young men. They rose and went together to Bathsheba, and Abraham dwelt at Bathsheba. So we see here why? Because of the obedience of Abraham, his faithfulness through all the tests he went through during his life.

They would also receive great material blessings. So it wasn't just a relationship with God and being with God, but there would be physical blessings. Notice in Genesis chapter 49. These are prophecies for the future. Genesis 49. It says verse 1, And Jacob called his sons, these twelve sons, and said, Gather together, that I may tell you what shall befall you in the last days. So it wasn't talking about just their lifetimes, but into the future. And it would go all the way till the last days. That's used in the Bible as a key term, talking about before God establishes his kingdom, the last days of man's rule upon this earth. And then I want to just focus on verse 8, talking about Judah. There are two great blessings involved. Judah's would be the one where the Messiah would come from. It says, Judah, you are he whom your brothers shall praise. Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies. So God is going to bless them. You can even see that today. The Jewish people have no right, in a sense, to be able to fight all these enemies, and they still come out at the top. You will be on the on the neck of your enemies. Your father's children shall bow before you. Judah is a lion's whelp. From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He bows down. He lies as a lion, and as a lion, who shall rouse him? That's the symbol of Judah, the lion. The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, talking about his descendants, until Shiloh comes, talking about the coming of Christ, and to him shall be the obedience of the people. And so, from Judah would come all the kings of Israel. And this continues on even today. We trace this all the way down to now, Charles, King Charles, who just took his throne. Go back, and in that booklet on the United States and Britain and Bible prophecy, it goes through all of this history. And I want to talk to you a little more about the background of this history. But then it goes on and mentions Joseph in verse 22. It says, Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a well. His branches run over the wall. It would be a people that would multiply enormously. The archers have bitterly grieved him, shot at him, and hated him. Still, that way, because of the blessings of this country, there's so much envy and hate. But his bow remained in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob. From there is the shepherd, the stone of Israel, by the God of your Father, who will help you, and by the Almighty, who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath. So it would have good weather, it would have oceans surrounding them, and plenty of rivers and lakes. Did you know that where there's the the biggest body of fresh water in the world? How many know that? What is it, Roy? It's the Great Lakes. That's the biggest found reserves of fresh water in the entire world. It just happens to be where all the industrial and the Mississippi goes all the way down, just like a big highway. It says, blessings of the breasts and of the womb. Just multiply. You have close to 330 million people now. The blessings of your Father have excelled the blessings of my ancestors. Up to the utmost bound of the everlasting hills, they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him, who was separate from his brothers. And God keeps his promises, and he has abundantly blessed this family. In Galatians chapter 3, we have to see now who is part of Israel. I've mentioned this before in previous sermons about who is a true Israelite. Let's cover it in Galatians 3, 27 through 29.

It says, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ, that's the great majority here of the congregation, doesn't matter what nation you're from, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Talk about spiritually, we are the Israel of God. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's seed. Let's talk about descendants and heirs according to their promise. So you can imagine what a great privilege for all the people on the earth to be inserted into this blessing of spiritual Israel. It's the greatest calling any human being could ever have to be part of spiritual Israel. So how many of you have ever heard of this author Jair Davide? How many have heard of him? Okay. Jair Davide? Yes. He was a Jew in Australia who in the 1970s and 80s as he was there, he grew up and he read about our booklets on the United States and Britain and prophecy and all of these. He was familiar, but as a Jew, he said, oh, this is not right. These are just some British Israelite society. But they moved to Israel from Australia and he was a very intellectual, sharp cookie. So he went to the Hebrew University and as part of his thesis that he wanted to do was about Great Britain and the US and other nations and he was going to show how that was not true. He started studying in the Hebrew University, Hebrew Library, the National History Library in Israel and he was shocked. He actually turned around and became the biggest proponent of it and he wrote this book, The Tribes, which is he used classic historical authors. He went through everything on the Jewish side of things and also from the secular side.

What is the conclusion in this book called The Tribes? He says, in general, it was said that the children of Israel, the lost ten tribes of Israel, would procure the blessings that the prophets said. They would rule over the nations so that they would become a civilizing influence over the world. Certainly Great Britain, the US has also done its part, civilizing. He says, and that on the whole, compared to gentile nations, they would be more merciful. They would have a sense of social justice. They would help the Jewish people return to their land. And that has all happened and it wasn't luck or coincidence. He explains about how the nation of Israel came to be in 1948. Just want to read an excerpt from this book. English, French, and Jewish thinkers, beginning from the 1600s, began to consider the establishment of a Jewish state in the land of Israel. From the 1600s, they already had that idea, but there was no way to make it into a reality. In the late 1800s, the Jewish Zionist movement was formed to work for the formal establishment of a Jewish state in Israel. At the same time, Jewish settlement in the land increased significantly. The Turkish rulers of Palestine and the local Arabs were essentially hostile to this movement, but the British used their influence. This is what would be a tribe of Ephraim. They became the semi-official protectors of the Jewish presence. In 1917, the government of Great Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, which declared the purpose of establishing a Jewish homeland. Why them? They are all brothers. They are all converging in history at a certain time when prophecy has to be fulfilled.

On the whole, it may be said that since the 18th century, most countries of the world were anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic, while the United States, Britain, and France, and related nations in Western Europe and overseas, like Australia, what used to be South Africa, was that they were ambivalent, which means they had mixed feelings, with a favorable attitude prevailing more often than not.

This book brings proof that part of the reason for this ambivalence was heredity, why they had a different attitude. I have three books written by him. He's an excellent historian. We quote him in our booklet on this subject as well.

If you read these books, it leads you to understand Bible prophecy, how the major nations, God would guide them to eventually fulfill their different purposes, what roles they would play. Let's go to Amos chapter 9. This is one of the key scriptures dealing with modern Israel. Amos, the book of Amos. Okay, here it is. Amos chapter 9 verse 8. This is a prophecy and it's a promise. At the time Israel had been taken by the Assyrians, Judah was taken by the Babylonians, they were long gone, and yet this is what the prophet Amos says, For surely I will command and will sift the house of Israel, as grain is sifted in a sieve, yet not the smallest grain shall fall to the ground. Verse 14, it says, I will bring back the captives of my people Israel. They shall build the way cities and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and drink wine from them, and they shall also make gardens and eat fruit from them. I will plant them in the land, and no longer shall they be pulled up from the land I have given them, says the Lord. So this is talking about when Christ comes back. And he says that God knows how to bring back Israel and Judah and join them when Christ comes back. So those nations have not disappeared. Humans might not know where they're all at, who they are, descendants of whom. God says it's like a grain that not one is going to fall to the ground. It's all going to be retained, their identities. So we go now to the second point, which is appreciate our religious roots in this country. How that religious tolerance was established here that allowed God's true church to thrive. Tim LaHaye, in his book, Faith of our Founding Fathers, says this, Whenever I study the history of America, I am conscious that we are a miracle nation. It was a miracle that Columbus found this part of the world. It was a miracle that the early colonies survived and built a nation during those first 156 years. It was a miracle that they rebelled against the motherland. By the way, 156 years is the time from Mayflower in 1620 and going all the way to the time of the Independence Declaration of Independence and all of this. It was a miracle that they survived. It was a miracle that they rebelled against their motherland England. And even a greater miracle that they won the Revolutionary War. Have any of you seen some of these programs on just the incredible things that happened for Washington to finally come up victorious?

It was a miracle they survived the period of the Articles of Federation, you know, before the Constitution was established from 1774 to 1789. And still another that they found upon this continent a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Equal under God and equal before the law. It is still a miracle that this nation exists today as a strong and free people. In few places of the world have religious convictions been so fiercely maintained and defended as they were in America during the period of their founding. Why? What is the reason? The most common motive for coming to this land among the original settlers was their quest for religious freedom. That's why we can still have somebody like Mike Johnson be the speaker of the House. So let's look at just one of these miracles. Focus our attention, the founding of this nation by the pilgrims, which we're going to be celebrating next week. God willing, I'd like to read from another book, Gabriel Sivan, in his The Bible and Civilization, says, quote, no Christian community in history identified more with the people of the book than did the early settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who believed their own lives to be a literal reenactment of the biblical drama of the Hebrew nation. They themselves were the children of Israel. America was their promised land, the Atlantic Ocean their Red Sea, the kings of England were the Egyptian pharaohs, the American Indians the Canaanites, the Pact of the Plymouth Rock was God's holy covenant, and the ordinances by which they lived were the divine law. Like the Huguenots and other Protestant victims of the Old World oppression, these Puritans dramatized their own situation as a righteous remnant of the church corrupted by the Babylonian harlot and saw themselves as instruments of divine providence, a people chosen to build their new commonwealth on the covenant entered into at Mount Sinai. Just one more quote. Ken Spiro in his book World Perfect says, A very significant political revolution was taking place in the New World. Unlike the Puritans in England, who of necessity lived under English common law and were ruled by a king in Parliament, the Puritans of America had no central authority or national governing body, yet they did not lapse into anarchy. Instead, they created communities governed by elected councils of elders similar to the presbyters of England. Their communities were both stable and prosperous, with mandatory school systems modeled after the Jewish ones. This unique political evolution goes a long way toward explaining the strong sense of independence shared by the colonies and their early success of democracy in America. The Puritans felt that God was watching them, and the fear of heaven was a thousand times stronger than the fear of the crown. That talks about the spirit here in America. Let's go to the final, the third of these blessings. Not take them for granted, because they're not automatic. As Luke 1248 tells us, to whom much is given, much will be required. So we have a responsibility to do God's work and not be passive observers or just recipients of it. We have a job to do. To get the true gospel out to the world, especially the nations of Israel, who have received great blessings and have great responsibilities, which means greater accountability. Let's turn to Matthew chapter 24. Matthew 24. Here, again, is not only a commission but a prophecy. Matthew chapter 24 verses 12 through 14.

You can read this in different versions because it's very important. It says, and because lawlessness will abound, the love of many, and many translations have many believers. It's not talking about just regular people out there in the world. They've always been pretty lawless, but it's talking about church people. Because of this lawlessness, this sin abounding, the love of many will grow cold. It would be hard to be a dedicated Christian in these days. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. He who perseveres faithfully will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all nations, and then the end will come. So that's our part. That's part of our commission. That's what God says is going to happen. We as a church have a big responsibility to help out in this way. So we have a lot to thank God during Thanksgiving, remembering these three principles, the first one. So thankful for the wonderful truths about the history of the United States, Great Britain, and Israel. They are our spiritual roots. Secondly, appreciate the religious roots of this nation that allowed God's true church to thrive. And thirdly, not to take God's blessings for granted, for they are not automatic. They can be taken away. So to finish, let's go to Malachi chapter 3, because some can get discouraged. And God wrote this in verse 13 to encourage us. He knows what's going on. He says in verse 13 of Malachi 3, says, Your words have been harsh against me, says the Lord. Yet you say, What have we spoken against you? You have said, It is useless to serve God. What profit is it that we have kept His ordinances or commandments and that we have walked as mourners, people that are serious, dedicated, mourning for this world, sighing and crying for the abominations that we see in modern Israel, as well as the rest of the world. We are that way before the Lord of hosts. So now we call the proud blessed for those who do witness are raised up. They even tempt God and go free. Apparently, it doesn't look like they're being punished immediately. They can get away with a lot. Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another. They encouraged each other. And the Lord listened and heard them. So a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who meditate on His name. There's a special place that God has for them. He's not going to forget them. Verse 17, They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, on the day that I make them my jewels. Just like a crown has jewels, and these are special, precious people to God. And I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves Him. He's very merciful, very loving. Then at that time, you shall again discern between the righteous and the wicked. You'll see the difference between the two sides, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him. So let's be patient and enjoy this Thanksgiving because there's so much to be thankful about. Just don't forget, with great blessings come great responsibilities and also great accountability.