Giving thanks

We have come here on this day to do something that I believe will become a tradition in the best sense of the word and that is to take advantage of this Thanksgiving weekend to bring a special offering to the Lord, how beautiful it is when families Individuals come to the House of the Lord and kind of shake hands through centuries and centuries to bring an offering, a sacrifice of praise to the Lord as the ancient Hebrews did in Old Testament times.

In many countries of the world the harvest time is a time of gratitude as it was for example for the pilgrims when they came to this nation there in Plymouth, and through the years as generations, nations and even villages have celebrated for harvest time because that means provision and abundance, and hope for the future as well.

On previous occasions I have spoken with you about God's call to our Church to make an evangelistic presence and a prophetic presence in the city where we are, and God has also called us to make a presence of life, transformation, renewal and of service to our community. The presence of the mayor this morning is in a sense part of this expression of recognition on the part of this city of the role of service that our Congregation plays and for this we give thanks and glory to the Lord.

And it is good that at a time when immigrants are accused, among other things, of being a source of crime and deterioration in our nation, there is a Church that has so many immigrants, among others that we are, that is making light and is being leaven of life here in the city of Boston.

I thank the Lord for all the people who work daily in León de Judá serving in schools, serving immigrants in our offices, teaching English as a second language, providing heat to people who are destitute, homeless, our Church, you often do not realize everything that is done from this community to bless all the members of this community.

And all that service and all that spiritual blessing has a material platform under it, a very concrete platform of places, spaces, heating, furniture, maintenance and many other things that make possible the glory that is on top of that platform. When we come here many times during the week and look for a place in the small parking lot that we have, we can't find parking because there are a lot of people working. When all the people who work helping the city are in our offices there is no space to park down there.

And thanks to the Lord, much of the support of those personnel who serve our city, we do not pay for it on behalf of our Congregation, but we give thanks to God for philanthropic agencies, state agencies and the federal government that give financial aid to pay for the greater part of the operations of that social service that we do, and not only that, but there are also services that we offer, for example through our radio program, which I would say serves thousands of people five days a week and I always stumble with people who listen to it, they are not members of our Church, they are not members of any church, but they are blessed through the dissemination of the Word of God through our radio program, truckers, housewives, taxi drivers listen that program that comes out of the preaching of our Church every Sunday.

And let's not talk about our internet program, the projection of our messages, right now there are people from many parts of the world watching our service and later during the week thousands of people connect with our sermons and with the resources that we offer through our web page.

I could literally be here for another 15 minutes talking about the different services and missions that our Church literally provides to the world, and all through generosity and visionary vision, worth the redundancy of you our brothers who give your tithe every day and his offering to the Lord.

Everything that we enjoy at this time in our Church, our physical plant and the other resources, and ministries that we have, we owe all of this firstly to a generous God to whom we give glory and honor, and then, we must be clear , we owe it to a people who generously share their financial resources continuously, let's give them a round of applause too.

Part of our discipleship goal is the formation of a generous people with God, delivered to the Kingdom of God, a generous people is essential for a Church to be light and salt in the world around it, the other value so that it has an impact on community is gratitude, spiritual generosity comes from a heart grateful to the Lord, that is why as a community we have gathered above all to thank God for all that He has given us in this season of thanksgiving, the Lord He has given us in so many ways.

I remember when we arrived here at this building the first time we had a special service to inaugurate that temple next door, the original temple, and we read Psalm 126:1 to 3, Psalm 126 says: "When the Lord brings back the captivity of Zion we will be like those who dream”, and I felt like we were in a captivity during the construction and I longed for the moment to receive that certificate of being able to be here and to be able to get out of that project.

And the psalmist continues saying: "Then when we come out of our captivity our mouths will be filled with laughter and our tongues with praise, then they will say among the nations: great things has the Lord done with these, great things has the Lord done with us, we will rejoice" .

I never imagined that when we bought this building and began to renovate it 22 years ago, the amount of blessings and miracles that God was going to do among us through the years, that it is appropriate as a people to come together and thank God for all His goodness among us, we have many things for which to thank the Lord.

In First Chronicles chapter 16, we are not going to read the chapter but you can follow along with me, First Chronicles chapter 16, I want to choose an image that encapsulates everything we are doing today. We see here in First Chronicles chapter 16 that David chooses a special day to thank the Lord for having recovered the Ark and brought it back to the tabernacle again after some time in captivity, and David wanted to mark that great occasion with a time of extraordinary worship, and the first thing you can see is offer burnt offerings and peace offerings to the Lord, and once David does that, what he does is he gives the people things to eat, and I think that's important because I believe that vertical generosity must also be accompanied by horizontal generosity, and that is what we do through all the social services, all the ministries and missions, is to serve horizontally, to give freely what we have received freely. so many people in our community.

I have studied, I have taken the time to study the system of offerings that were given in the Old Testament and Scripture offers a certain pattern or sequence, first came the sacrifices that made propitiation, that is, justification for the sins that the people had committed. committed and after that sacrifice of propitiation came the offerings of peace and gratitude for the benefits received, and that should be the order every time we offer offerings to the Lord: first we purify ourselves, we confess our sins, we acknowledge that we are indebted before God, and then we bring our offerings before the Lord, and as we see, in those offerings and sacrifices in this case they are accompanied by adoration, by liturgy using that word in the classic sense, on the part of the priests and Levites who offer burnt offerings to the Lord , incense and symbolic worship.

David calls the people to praise the Lord, to call upon His Name, and we see here in Psalm 16, for example, verses 8 to 10 that he says: "Praise the Lord, call on His Name, make His works known to the peoples, sing to Him, sing psalms, speak of all his wonders" verse 24: "Sing among the nations his glory and among all the peoples his wonders because Jehovah is great and worthy of supreme praise" and we have done that this morning, we have declared our praise and gratitude, and joy before the Lord.

And then in verses 28 and 29 of this passage David talks about paying tribute, bringing tribute to Jehovah and coming before Him, in other words that emotional gratitude must also be accompanied by concrete and material gratitude. In verse 28 it says: "Atribute to the Lord, O families of the peoples, give to the Lord glory and power, give to the Lord the honor due to His Name, bring an offering and come before Him prostrate before the Lord in the beauty of holiness." .”

And that is what we do today, we offer the Lord a tangible, tangible offering as an expression of spiritual gratitude. I believe that many times we do not understand what happens in the spiritual world when we give to the Lord. I asked the Lord to give us a spirit of revelation to understand and feel a little of what happens in the spiritual environment, the spiritual blessing that is unleashed when we give our offering to the Lord.

In a couple of minutes I am going to ask you that in an orderly manner and in a sequence that we already have predetermined we go as families, as individuals to bring our offerings to the altar and to prepare ourselves concretely I want to simply point out some of the things that we we are going to be expressing through this offering of gratitude.

First of all we are giving thanks to God for the constructions and the buildings that he has allowed us to carry out and for freeing us I would say from the lion's mouth and successfully getting us out of these great and risky endeavors as well, and we have had to stretch out, this offering in part is to help heal a little those risks and those extraordinary efforts, and by faith we have moved, and we thank the Lord that until now he has never left us in shame.

Secondly, we thank God for our development as an institution, our programs, our government as a Church, our administration and all the beautiful things that we as an institution enjoy.

And thirdly, for allowing us to be a blessing to our city through our spiritual and social ministries, to be a presence of life as we have seen this morning through the presence of the mayor here.

Fourthly, because of the harmony and diversity of our Congregation, I can say without human pride before the Lord that this Congregation that is gathered here in this space is something very exceptional in this city and even in this nation, this is something very exceptional. brothers what we have here.

Fifth, we are giving thanks for the spiritual gifts that manifest among us every time we come together to worship the Lord.

Sixthly, we give thanks for our families and our children, for the growth of new couples getting married, new babies being born within our Congregation, people who meet and end up getting married, and others who become friends, and who one way or another they end up creating family bonds of affection in our Congregation.

Almost finishing, we thank the Lord for His generous provision in the material sphere because every Sunday we receive offerings and tithes from the people of God that help us maintain our operations and be a Church that can bless the city with its operations.

And finally we thank the Lord for all that He will do in the coming years. When we arrived here in Boston we never imagined the things that God had destined for us in the Church, my faith was not great enough to believe that God would do what He has done with us, we have seen the Lord exceed our expectations and I believe that God who has blessed us and delighted us with His blessings still has even greater things for us in the years to come and we will be glad and thank the Lord for His mercy and goodness.

Pastor Gregory: Father in the Name of Jesus we thank you that you are good, because truly Lord Your mercy is forever, Father we recognize that we are not worthy, that we cannot earn everything that You have already done among us but Lord, We thank you and in this dawn Lord we mark that until now Jehovah has helped us, we thank you Lord because you are the same God yesterday, today and forever, faithful you have been, faithful you are and faithful you will be Lord. Father what awaits us, we cannot even imagine Lord and Lord we want to serve you not halfway but until the end Lord, Father that this moment is not only something looking back but looking forward giving thanks prophetically by faith for all that You will do among us in Jesus Name, amen and amen.

Pastor Roberto: Let's give the Lord a round of applause of gratitude and praise to Him who deserves it, amen and amen.