Watchman Radio Hour

David Shulze: Welcome to the Watchman Radio hour. Coming to you from Portland, Oregon, here in the beautiful Northwest. This is David Shulze, your announcer. The Watchman Radio hour is a production of Watchman Radio Ministries International, an evangelistic ministry reaching out to the peoples of the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And now here's our speaker, Alex Dawson, to bring you this week's message from God's word.

Alex Dodson: For our scripture reading today, let us turn to Malachi chapter 3 and we'll begin reading in verse 6. Let us hear the word of God. I, the Lord, do not change. So you, oh descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your forefathers, you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me and I will return to you, says the Lord Almighty. But you ask, how are we to return? Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask, how do we rob you? In tithes and offerings.

You are under a curse, the whole nation of you because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit, says the Lord Almighty. And then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land, says the Lord Almighty.

Our Father in heaven, we thank you for the Bible that you have given us. We thank you that it's your infallible word and that we can put our full confidence in everything that it says. And now, oh Father, as we come to study your word, we pray that you will send forth your Holy Spirit in great convicting power in Christ's name, we pray. Amen. Modern revisionist historians rarely see the hand of God in the beginnings of our nation or his hand in the great revivals that have come to this land. They simply ignore such things or repudiate them.

The history of our nation is often presented by modern historians in such a way that we are left in confusion and can say see little rhyme or reason to our history. Great men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are dragged in the mud, so to speak, and made out to be the less than honorable persons they really were. The pilgrims and Puritans are mocked at, are ridiculed and made out to be people they never were. Their great achievements and moral living are looked down upon or denied altogether. The best way to understand and know our forefathers is to read their own writings or to read historians of their day or close to their day.

Many of today's revisionist historians have an agenda to tear down rather than to build up our nation. The fact is that we as a nation come from a godly people who first came here. That doesn't mean they were all perfect. Yet they as a whole honored God and their heritage influenced many generations, even down to the last century. Yet today we have mostly forgotten our forefathers and the principles they stood for. We have pushed them off into the far distant past and seek to invent our own morality, rejecting much of what they advocated. Israel rejected and turned away from the path of their forefathers and sought to establish their own morality.

When confronted with their sins, they could not recognize them because they had forgotten the law of God. Our text for today is Malachi 3 and verse 7, which again says ever since the time of your forefathers, you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me and I will return to you, says the Lord Almighty. But you ask, how are we to return? As we we are called to return to God. And as we think about our own nation and how far we have fallen as a people, we need to heed God's call to repentance in our day.

It's not too late for our nation to repent of its sins. Though God's judgments continue to fall on the land, yet we can still repent and turn back to God as a people. Now let us see in the first place that they had turned away from the faith of their forefathers. Again, our text says ever since the time of your forefathers, you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. They had turned away from God's laws and commandments. The patriarchs had followed the Lord and obeyed his commands. Yet this generation and many generations before them had turned away from the Lord's commands.

Colin Daly write the reason why Israel waits in vain for the judgment and the salvation dawning with it is not to be found in God, but in the people, in the fact that from time immemorial, they have transgressed the commandments of God and yet they regard themselves as righteous. They reply to the call of repentance saying, wherein, in what particular shall we return? Matthew Henry writes, we have here God's controversy with the men of that generation for deserting his service and robbing him. Wicked servants indeed that not only run away from their master, but run away from their master's goods.

Matthew Henry goes on to write, they had run away from their master and quitted the work he gave them to do. You have gone away from our ordinances and have not kept them. The ordinances of of God's worship were the business which as servants they must mind. The talents which they must trade with and the trust which was committed to them to keep. They went away from them, grew weary of them and withdrew their neck from that yoke. They deviated from the rule that God had prescribed to them and betrayed the trust lodged with them.

They had revolted from God not only in worship, but in conversation. They had not kept his ordinances. This disobedience they were chargeable with and had been guilty of even from the days of their fathers. Even as in the days of their fathers of old who were sent into captivity for their disobedience or now for some generations past, you have fallen off from what you were when first you came back out of captivity. Ezra owns it in one particular instance since the days of our fathers have we been in great trespass under this day. Isaiah 59:2 says, but your iniquities have separated you from your God.

Your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear. Israel had turned away from the God of their forefathers and for a long time had disobeyed his commands and ordinances. And then let us say see that our current condition as a nation our current condition as a nation and a people. We also have turned away from the God of our fathers. We have sinned greatly against him. We have deviated from earlier generations. Our forefathers honored God and feared him. Now we seem to think we can live without God in our affairs as a nation.

Our revisionist historians have done a great dishonor to our forefathers and have treated them in a derogatory way, saying much about them that is totally untrue. They have robbed us of our godly heritage. We cannot accept such deception. We must remember the godly heritage that we truly have as a nation. We go back to the original writings of our forefathers and we can see what a godly people they were who first came to these shores. William Bradford wrote the history of the pilgrims as one of them and as an eyewitness of all that happened to them.

He writes in a Plymouth plantation about their arrival in America. He says having found a good haven and being brought safely inside of land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean and delivered them from all the perils and miseries of it. Again, to set their feet upon the firm and stable earth, their proper element. Bradford, who was the first governor of Plymouth colony, goes on to write concerning their first arrival in America. What then could now sustain them but the spirit of God and his grace?

Ought not the children of their fathers rightly to say our fathers were Englishmen who came over the great ocean and were ready to perish in this wilderness. But they cried under the Lord and he heard their voice and looked on their adversity. Let them therefore praise the Lord because he is good and his mercies endure forever. Yay, let them that have been redeemed of the Lord show how he hath delivered them from the hand of the oppressor when they wandered forth into the desert wilderness out of the way found no city to dwell in, both hungry and thirsty.

Their soul was overwhelmed in them. Let them confess before the Lord his loving kindness and his wonderful works before the sons of men. At another time, Bradford comments on an exploratory party that it sought another place to settle. He writes after this on the 18th of September, they sent out their shallop with 10 men and Squanto as guide and interpreter to the Massachusetts to explore the bay and trade with the natives, which they accomplished and were kindly received. The Indians were much afraid of the Tarantines, a tribe to the eastward, who used to come at harvest time and take away their corn and often kill some of them.

They returned in safety and brought home a good quantity of beaver and reported on the place, wishing they could have settled there. But it seems that the Lord, who assigns to all men the bounds of their habitations, had appointed it for another use. And thus they found the Lord to be with them in all their ways and to bless their outgoings and their incomings, for which let his holy name have the praise forever to all posterity. And then a letter from their friends in England in the early days of the plantation goes like this. Loving friends, we most heartily salute you in all love and hearty affectation, hoping that the same God who has hitherto hitherto preserved you in such a marvelous manner continues your lives and health to his own praise and all our comforts, that the same God who has so marvelously preserved you from seas, foes, and famine will still preserve you from all future dangers and make you honorable among men and glorious in bliss at the last day.

And so the Lord be with you all and send us joyful news of you and enable us with one shoulder so to accomplish and perfect this work that much glory may come to him that confoundeth the mighty by the weak and make his small things great, to whose greatness be all glory forever and ever. And from another friend in England who was organizing another ship load of settlers to come to America, we see the intentions of these first settlers to America. Though they were not all godly men and women, yet many were and they had noble intentions in coming to this land.

James Shirley writes to the settlers at Plymouth, most worthy and loving friends, your kind and loving letters I have received with thanks. It has pleased God to stir up the hearts of the adventurers to raise new stock for fitting out the ship called the charity with men and necessaries both for the settlement and fishing. Though with very great difficulty, since we have amongst us some who undoubtedly served their private ends and thwart the others here and were the instruments of God's glory elsewhere rather than aiming at the general good and furtherance of this noble enterprise.

But still we have many others and I hope the majority, very honest Christian men whose intent I am convinced is holy for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, the propagation of his gospel and the hope of gaining these poor Indians to the knowledge of God. Later, William Bradford would write what he believed was the purpose of Plymouth plantation. He writes thus out of small beginnings, greater things have grown by his hand who made all things out of nothing and gives being to all things that are. And as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light in candle here in candle here as shown to many.

Yay, in a sense to our whole nation. Let the glorious name of Jehovah have all the praise. These writings are from the settlers themselves who came to America in the 17th century. They are our roots and we need to listen to them and their great purposes for this land. We need to reject the deception of modern revisionist historians who think they know a lot, but actually know very little about this great land of ours. We need to listen to people like William Bradford, who was a man of vision along with his fellow settlers. They had a vision for America, a vision that saw this land being settled for the glory of God.

And we need to carry on that vision today. Peter Marshall and David Manuel in their book, The Light and the Glory, write about the early days of the pilgrims and also quote from Bradford. They write they had begun their long journey by kneeling on the dock at Delfshaven to ask God's blessing. And they ended it on the sands of Cape Cod, kneeling to thank him for that blessing. Yet Bradford, always the realist, went on to marvel at this poor people's present condition. No friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weather-beaten bodies, no houses or much less towns to repair to to seek for succor with winter storms howling around the tip of the Cape.

Whichever way they turned their eyes, save upward to the heavens, they could have little solace or content in respect of any outward objects. For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weather-beaten face and the whole country full of woods and thickets represented a wild and savage hue. If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world. Let it also be considered what weak hope of supply and succor they left behind them.

What could now sustain them but the spirit of God and his grace? Not too many years after the arrival of the pilgrims who founded the Plymouth colony, there came another group of settlers who would found the Massachusetts Bay colony. The first governor was John Winthrop. He landed in Massachusetts Bay with 700 people in 11 ships. This began the great migration which was the last 16 years when more than 20,000 Puritans came to America to settle. William J. Federer writes in America's God and Country. On July the 11th, 1630, aboard the Arbella, John Winthrop authored his famous work a model of Christian charity which became a guideline for future constitutional covenants of the colonies.

He writes this love among Christians is a real thing, not imaginary. It's absolutely necessary to the well-being of the body of Christ as the sinews and other ligaments of a natural body are to the well-being of that body. We are a company professing ourselves fellow members of Christ. And thus we ought to account ourselves knit together by this bond of love. For the work we have in hand, it is by mutual consent through a special overruling providence and a more than an ordinary approbations of the churches of Christ to seek out a place of cohabitation and consorship under a due form of government, both civil and ecclesiastical.

Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into covenant with him for this work. We have taken out a commission. The Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. If the Lord shall please to hear us and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath he ratified this covenant and sealed our commission and will expect a strict performance of the articles. Otherwise, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us when 10 of us shall be able to resist 1,000 of our enemies.

When he shall make us a praise and glory, that men of succeeding plantations shall say the Lord make it like that of New England. For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work, we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world. Federer goes on to write, on May 19th, 1643, Winthrop organized the New England Confederation among the colonists of New Plymouth, New Haven, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

They covenanted together under the Constitution of the New England Confederation, which began with these words. Whereas all came to these parts of America with the same end and aim, namely to advance the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and to enjoy the liberties of the gospel thereof with purity and peace and for preserving and propagating the truth and liberties of the gospel. In these writings, we can get a glimpse of the true purpose of our forefathers in coming to America. They had a noble purpose and we as their descendants in posterity need to go back and capture that noble purpose again.

Yet at the present time, we are far from that noble purpose and desire of our forefathers for this land. We've sinned greatly against God and our sins are multiplying daily. The wrath of God is already being revealed from heaven against all our ungodliness and we still refuse to recognize it and go on in our sinful rebelling against the God of our forefathers. Secondly, let us see a call to return. Again, our text says in verse 7, ever since the time of your forefathers, you've turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me and I will return to you, says the Lord Almighty.

Here is the call to repent of their sins. Zechariah 1:3 says, therefore tell the people, this is what the Lord Almighty says, return to me, declares the Lord Almighty, and I will return to you, says the Lord Almighty. James 4:8 says, come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Matthew Henry writes, what a gracious invitation God gives them to return and repent. Return unto me unto your duty. Return to your service. Return to your allegiance. Return as a traveler that has missed his way.

As a soldier that has run his colors. As a treacherous wife that has gone away from her husband. Return, thou backsliding Israel. Return to me. And then I will return unto you and be reconciled. We'll remove the judgments you are under and prevent those you fear. This had been of old the burden of the song as Zechariah 1:3 and it is still. And then we see God's call today on our nation. One of the problems with Israel was that it they didn't realize their sins against God. They cried out, how are we to return? How are we to repent?

What have we done? They thought they were okay, but they weren't. That's one of the great problems with our nation today. We think we're okay, but we aren't. We deny our sins. Matthew Henry writes, what a peevish answer they returned to this gracious invitation. But you said with disdain, said it to the prophets that called you, said it to one another, that said it said it to your own hearts to stifle the conviction you were under. You said, wherein shall we return? Note, God takes notice what returns our hearts make to the calls of his word.

What we say and what we think when we have heard a sermon. What answer we give to the message sent us. When God calls us to return, we should answer as those did. Jeremiah 3:22 which says, behold, we come. But not as these here, wherein shall we return? What we need today in this nation is conviction of sin. We need to be convicted of our sins so that we will want to return to God. That requires the work of the Holy Spirit among us. Lamentations 5:21 says, turn thou us unto thee, oh Lord. And we shall be turned.

Renew our days as of old. And Psalm 85:6 says, wilt thou not return again and quicken us that thy people may rejoice in thee? We need to pray for revival to come back to this land, to turn us back to God. That's our only hope. And then thirdly, God would return to them. If they return to him, God would return to them. Again, our text says in verse 7, ever since the time of your forefathers, we have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me and I will return to you.

Repentance would bring God's blessing on their land. Verse 11 and 12 says this. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit, says the Lord Almighty. And then all the nations will call you blessed for yours will be a delightful land, says the Lord Almighty. Their land would be blessed if they turn back to the Lord. In Joel 2:12 through 14 it says, even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend your heart and not your garments.

Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love. And he relents from sending calamity. Who knows but that he may turn and have pity and lay behind a blessing, grain offering and drink offerings for the Lord your God. Blessings would come to the land. Their crops would be abundant and the land would be productive so that they would have excess and plenty of offerings to give to the Lord. God's blessings come to a nation that returns to God. In Psalm 85:9 through 12 it says, surely his salvation is near those who fear him.

That his glory may dwell in our land. Love and faithfulness meet together. Righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs forth from the earth and righteousness looks down from heaven. The Lord will indeed give what is good and our land will yield its harvest. If our nation returns to God, the economy will get better because God will bless the land. Today we have the cart before the horse. We want a good economy without coming back to God. It won't work. God will bless this land when it repents of its great sins and returns to him.

Today we need a spiritual revival and when that comes, things will get better. And now you need to repent of your sins and you need to turn to Christ. Only he can forgive you and give you a new life. Jesus came to save sinners. Come to him. Repent at once and turn to the Lord. Our Father in heaven, forgive us for our great sins. We have sinned greatly. Our sins are piled up to heaven. Our sins are increasing daily. Oh Father in heaven, we pray that you would have mercy in the midst of your wrath and that you would pour out your spirit on this land with great convicting power.

That you might turn us back to you. Oh Father, we know that our forefathers honored you who first came to this land. Oh Lord, please change our hearts as a nation that we might once again get the vision of our forefathers and we might turn back to you. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

David Shulze: We hope this week's broadcast has been a blessing to you. If you have any questions about Mr. Dawson's message, please write us. You may email us at info@watchmanradio.org. Our mailing address is Watchman Radio Ministries International, Post Office Box 13251, Portland, Oregon 97213. That's Watchman Radio Ministries International, Post Office Box 13251, Portland, Oregon 97213. You may listen to this broadcast at any time on the internet at www.oneplace.com. In the list of ministries, just select the Watchman Radio hour. This week's program and previous programs are always available there for listening. Our web address is www.watchmanradio.org. That's w a t c h m e n radio dot org.

www.watchmanradio.org.