Grace Bible Church
Pastor Teacher
Robert R. McLaughlin
Friday November 28, 2014
This unique Holiday reflects ‑ perhaps more than any other ‑ our national religious character.
“Thanksgiving began as a holy day, created by a community of God‑fearing Puritans sincere in their desire to set aside one day each
year especially to thank the Lord for His many blessings.
It was officially proclaimed as a national holiday by President Abraham Lincoln on October 3, 1863.
Traditionally celebrated on the last Thursday in November, Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the celebration to the third Thursday in November “to give more shopping time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Canada first adopted Thanksgiving as a national holiday in November 1879, and it is now celebrated there annually on the second Monday in October.
Why not start out with the grace of God because all of have us failed in some way or another.
The Exodus generation failed in thanksgiving simply because they didn’t have a capacity for it.
The more garbage you have in your soul, the less appreciation you have for anything that the Lord or His people have ever done for you.
Once you develop hardness of the heart and at the same time garbage in the soul you lose your capacity for appreciation and thankfulness.
1. Thanksgiving is an act of giving thanks and grateful acknowledgement of the benefits of the grace of God.
2. It is an expression of gratitude toward God based on your doctrinal capacity to appreciate who and what He is.
3. Thanksgiving is also the mental attitude forged from cognition and inculcation of Bible doctrine plus subsequent capacity for life from metabolized doctrine in the right lobe.
4. Thanksgiving is also an expression from capacity for appreciation of God and the mental attitude of gratitude toward Him.
5. Thanksgiving reaches its peak in personal love for God the Father and occupation with the person of Christ.
If there is no gratitude toward God, obviously there is no gratitude toward people.
In order to give thanks toward God, one has to know God, and one has to know what is revealed about Him, about His person, and about His plan.
2PE 2:21 For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment delivered to them.
Chesed does not mean lovingkindness but grace, undeserved divine favor, for His grace is eternal.
Very few believers seem to understand the mighty deeds of the Lord, and I am not talking about miracles, but how he has structured for us the PPOG.
The word keep is the verb hamar which means to guard, to watch, to preserve.
Guarding the justice of God means that you operate in the integrity which God has made available.
Once you learn to guard the justice of God in your life with doctrine pertaining to the justice of God in your soul, you will be filled with the happiness of God.
When someone wrongs you, you don’t have to seek revenge…..you don’t have to fight back….
Once you understand all of this that’s the way you guard the justice of God in your life.
Once you understand that the Lord is just and that He will do the perfect thing to do if you give your problems over to Him, you guard the justice of God.
TLJC is so real to you that you use the shield of faith to put everything in His hands, and that’s when you stop having problems because you put the problems in the justice of God.
A part of using that shield of faith in EPH 6:16 is to put people and situations into the hands of the Lord…….
True happiness is guarding the justice of God.
What guards the justice of God among people is the shield of faith.
You have guarded the justice of God, and by guarding the justice of God you have a happiness that this world can’t even begin to understand.
The ruler of this world jumps up and down in fury at the thought of it, says EPH 2:2 and 2CO 4:4.
If the believer does not guard the justice of God he will end up taking matters into his own hands and this inevitably results in the transference of arrogance.
They never follow through with the appropriate response.
You can come right up to the point of recognizing the problem, but not move toward the solution.
Humility is not recognizing your problem, humility is moving toward the solution.
Transference arrogance can be illustrated by Joseph’s brothers.
Joseph’s brothers assumed in arrogance that once their father Jacob died, that Joseph would take revenge on them for selling him into slavery. = That was transference arrogance.
Those ten brothers were living fragmented lives, flawed even when living happily in Egypt.
It was the brothers themselves who had motivational and functional revenge in their souls.
They transferred their own arrogance and evil motivation and thinking to Joseph.
Joseph was not like his brothers who lived fragmented lives, with a fear of retaliation.
The arrogant person who falls apart under pressure assumes that because he is afraid, that the object of his antagonism is also afraid.
The arrogant person who falls apart under pressure assumes that because he is jealous, that the object of his antagonism is also jealous.
The arrogant person who falls apart under pressure assumes that because he is filled with hatred, that the object of his antagonism is also filled with hatred.
Transference arrogance is defined as the fragmented life which takes one’s own flaws and transfers them to someone else.
The application of humility to your life is to know your own limitations.
Moses had to learn this lesson in his own life when he attempted to liberate the Jews from slavery the first time by killing a taskmaster.
Moses had to learn his own limitations, and in the process, learn humility so that he could become god’s servant, an instrument for the deliverance of Israel.
How many times have you, aware of your own flaws and sins, assumed that these are the faults of others as well?
A part of knowing your own limitations is to realize that those are your sins and flaws; don’t transfer them to others.
The Jews had flaws and their flaws were the same as Pharaoh’s flaws.
They despised Pharaoh but in reality they despised Pharaoh for the same thing they had in themselves.
Pharaoh was negative and rejected the word of the Lord and they did exactly the same thing.
The problem is you despise in other’s your very own flaws.
1} What justice is. 2} That God is just. 3} How justice applies to your life. 4} And then YOU adjust your life to the justice of God.