The Essence of Thanksgiving

It's a very interesting story in itself. And so, Henry, being the king, being self-willed, decided, well, we'll just start our own church. What a novel idea. Still around. People still do that. They get their own way. They start a new church on the corner, whatever the domination it might be. So he started the Church of England with he as king at the head. Now, that story didn't end at all because when he died, his daughter, eventually, by Amblen, became Elizabeth.

She became Elizabeth I. She was Protestant. There was a great deal of struggle because the Catholics didn't go easy. They still liked power and there was a great deal of intrigue. But Protestantism won out in England. And yet, as with all churches, with all religions, over a period of time, there came about rigidity and orthodoxy and ideas became ascendant. And people who had this freedom to think and to read the Bible, because the Protestant Reformation was taking place with a man by the name of Martin Luther on the continent.

The Bible was being made available to everybody being printed. People were reading this book and they were beginning to make decisions about what was in it for themselves rather than just to be told about it by a cleric, by a priest. Very, very significant development. And people were reading this and beginning to realize certain things in terms of freedom, liberty, conscience. And these people then began to question the Church of England. Because the Church of England still retained a hierarchical approach to its structure.

And in time, in order to suppress dissent, they closed ranks and got very rigid. And people who were adopting other ideas, whether it was Lutheranism or Calvinism, were beginning to want to assert themselves and to maintain their freedoms. So, they became a group of people that we call Puritans, who, because they were being persecuted by the Church of England in England, decided that they needed to leave England.

And there was this new world, what would eventually be North America and the East Coast of our country today, where they could settle and form settlements, towns, and have religious freedom. And so, in 1620, a group of them decided to leave. They obtained a charter for a town in what would have been the area of Virginia as it was at that time. And Virginia, in 1620, stretched from what is current Virginia, all the way north, at least into the area just south of what is now New York.

They thought that they would settle in and around land, at least, in the Hudson River area, and then make their settlement. And so, they left England with a boat called the Mayflower, which was a ship that normally carried wine between France and England. And they leased it or booked space on this boat, basically took it all over for this one trip.

And from England, they sailed over to Holland because there was a place called Delfhaven at the time in Holland, where there were another group of Calvinists who wanted to migrate with them. And they picked up some in Holland, and then they set sail for the new world.

And it was a perilous voyage and trip. They came across on the Mayflower, took more than two months to make that passage. They were very dedicated individuals. They were very sincere in what they wanted to do. They, at that time, did not call themselves pilgrims. That name came a little bit later. They were, if you want a term for that time, they were Calvinists, following the teachings of John Calvin. But they did have this idea of being independent, being free, and worshiping God as they read and saw here.

One of their leaders was a man by the name of William Bradford. He was one of two leaders. The other leader of this group at this time was a man by the name of Brewster. And this is a statue of William Bradford. We have William Bradford, who's a minister in the United Church of God. Good friend who's in Australia currently. But William Bradford was one of their leaders.

And you can see him here, all decked out in the traditional pilgrim type hat and cape, looking pretty much like you imagine a pilgrim at the time. As I said, they didn't necessarily call themselves pilgrims when they set out, but they did adopt that title, that idea.

William Bradford wrote about themselves later on in some of his recordings of what they did and what they wanted to establish. And he said in his own writings, we are pilgrims on a permanent pilgrimage toward a millennial goal.

This is how they looked upon themselves as they crossed the Atlantic. Now, keep in mind something about pilgrims. The traditional European idea of a pilgrim, which is still held in many ideas today, was that a pilgrim was someone who made a trip to a religious shrine.

And they worshipped there. Maybe it was a church. Maybe it was a place where there had been a miracle. And they went there and they were looking for their own miracle. They were looking for some religious experience. They make a pilgrimage. And then they do what they go there to do. Make an offering, say a prayer. And then they go back home. That's a pilgrimage.

These people on the Mayflower recognized that they weren't going back home.

And as they became to look at themselves and what they were doing, they evoked and pulled together the teachings and the stories of the Bible of a promised land.

One of the later pilgrims, a man by the name of John Winthrop, gave a sermon that has come down to us. And he called their endeavor. What they did was to establish a city upon a hill. And he took the terminology right out of Christ's Sermon on the Mount. Ronald Reagan made that quite famous in one of his speeches. And he used it in our own time quite a bit to describe America as a city set upon a hill. The imagery of what Jesus said was something that they applied to themselves. But they recognized that they were on a pilgrimage. And that is closer to what the Bible describes. A pilgrimage, a pilgrim to be. A pilgrim is someone who is always moving and never having arrived.

When you read in Hebrews 11, that term of pilgrims, looking for a city whose foundations and maker is God, you have a description, not only of the people in Hebrews 11, but you have a description of ourselves in our lives. We are spiritual pilgrims moving toward a goal that we have not yet achieved and arrived. We don't go home. And these pilgrims recognize that when that boat, the Mayflower, turned around and went back home, they weren't on it. Their lives were now on this new world. So they looked at what they were doing, establishing a community with biblical ideas, biblical principles. And at the heart of all of it was their conscience and freedom. The freedom to worship God as they knew Him and saw fit at that particular time with the knowledge that they had free of any other religious authority or political authority, telling them what to believe and what to do. This is the essence of the Thanksgiving experience that I think is most important for us. Now, this story goes on. I said that the pilgrims, to go ahead and use that term, on the Mayflower, took over two months to make the crossing.

They thought they were going to land in the area of the Hudson River, which would be modern-day New York, but they chose to land further north and they landed in what we call today the area of Massachusetts. This created some problems because it wasn't according to their original plan.

And the people on board were all very strong-minded individuals. They were strongly convicted about what they wanted to do. And a decision, whether it was by the captain, William Bradford, or whoever, to go someplace other than where they landed, you could well imagine how that would create some questions and it led to dissent. And all these people being holed up on this boat for over two months created some frayed nerves. And so they anchored in what is now Cape Cod, Cape Cod Bay. And they had a meeting on board the ship and they came to some decisions. They basically came to an agreement that they were going to stick together and they signed a document, a charter, that has come down to us. It is called the Mayflower Compact. This is a replica of it, or a copy that was put together later on. The original was lost to history. But all of the heads of households signed this. And it's a very interesting document. It's interesting in terms of religious development and thought in America from that point forward as to what these men and women did. This is a document here that goes through it and you'll see down at the bottom, it was signed on November 11, 1620. Now I'll just read a few lines from it. It's very short, but it was succinct. It says, in the name of God, amen, we whose names are underwritten, do by these presents, solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another. Covenant, and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. And they signed it. And as one historian puts it, they had as a cosigner, although he didn't really sign it, but they had as a cosigner God, because they signed it in good faith among themselves with God as their witness. And they made this compact to work together, to covenant and to combine together into a body of people for the ordering and the preservation and the furtherance of their ends that they set out to accomplish.

They came to America to create His kingdom on the earth.

This is the words of Paul Johnson, a historian who wrote a history of the American people, from which I'm drawing some of this material here at this time. But he, in his opening chapter in tracing this particular story, has quite an interesting comment. He says, they came to America to create His kingdom on earth. Now, that was a noble goal. It didn't happen.

There's never been any human utopian experiment that's ever succeeded in accomplishing and creating the kingdom of God on the earth. Never has happened. There have been many attempts, many, many attempts. Socialist efforts, if you ever go down to New Harmony, Indiana, you've heard of New Harmony, Indiana. That was an experiment in socialism, a harmonization of people together to create a small utopian society. Didn't last. There have been many, many others on American soil, but that doesn't take away the nobility of what they wanted to do and the beauty of what they were hoping to accomplish. So when these pilgrims landed there, they had noble ideas. Now, we all know from the stories that they had some very rough initial months in the colony. And how they survived, whether the Indians fed them, whether they stole from the Indians, whether they fed themselves, or whatever, there is this mythical idea that they had this first Thanksgiving. What they had, who brought what, you know, it's hard to say. They probably didn't have a big honeysuckle white turkey that day. They probably had venison and some other types of birds and fowl. If they had turkey, it was a wild turkey, and it was more dark meat than white meat. And it wasn't as fat and plump as what we have today. They didn't have, they may or may not have had corn, but squashes, but it's part of the story. But within a year, they had they had a some type of a Thanksgiving service. The development of Thanksgiving went by fits and starts to get to the point where we have what we have here today. But it's interesting to note what they had. Paul Johnson had in his book here, he does go into a little bit of detail at one point as to the land of North America. And just for a moment, it might be good just to note a little bit of what he says here, because he makes a comment about the abundance of this land and the unique properties of this land. He says that the land God gave them was indeed a promised one.

They looked upon this land as a promised land, taking the story right out of the book of Exodus and applying it to what they were doing. But Johnson says that it was indeed a promised land. He says in his book, of all the lands of the Americas, what is now the United States, was the largest single tract suitable for dense and successful settlement by humans.

It was the largest single piece of land suitable for dense, successful settlement by humans. North America, what is now the United States. He goes on to show the abundance of animals, rivers, for transportation, for food, the soil. The North American continent, as it later became developed, is the richest area of land just in terms of the soil content of any other land in the face of the earth. The temperatures, the average rainfall of this was suitable for settlement by white Europeans. Don't mean to offend anybody. That might be a bit, you know, politically correct or whatever. But the fact and the reality is that this land was settled by white Europeans of a particular stock. And what happened in Massachusetts in 1620, following on what had already been established in Jamestown in Virginia a few years earlier, the first European settlement in this land. And the ultimate development of this country was by the design of God. This land was, as it were, prepared in advance to fulfill the promises that God did pass on through Abraham and specifically through Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh. And the European, particularly the English stock of these Puritans and other English peoples who came to the shores of North America and settled, whether they were Quaker, whether they were an aristocratic planter class that settled in the Virginias, or whether it was a backwoods, Scots-Irish group of people that I was descended from, and descended from, people like Andrew Jackson, Davey Crockett, who settled into the Carolinas and then expanded westward. Those four basic streams of English stock settled this country initially and began to develop it in fulfillment of the promises that Jacob passed on ultimately from God to the sons of Joseph, Ephraim, and Manasseh. And it was a unique place settled by those white English-speaking peoples who were the descendants of those ancient tribes. And Johnson has a unique way. He doesn't get into all that story, but he does show what a promised land this was. So that's a side of Thanksgiving that is extremely important for us. But their most important legacy was the religious freedom. These people were seeking freedom of conscience. The very fact that you and I can worship God as we choose, as God leads us, is an important freedom. It is guaranteed by our form of government. We should never take that for granted. It was forged even before it was codified into legislative form by people like these, who set out on a rickety boat across waters that they didn't know. And in a form of transportation, they didn't know if they were going to make it. But the desire to worship God according to their conscience was so strong that they were willing to leave what they had in their familiar world for a new world and to face the dangers that were put there. And as a result of that, and all the history that is ensued, we have this legacy. That is what is important for us to keep in mind and to think about as we note the annual observance of Thanksgiving. That religious freedom is something that goes all the way back into the scriptures and is embedded within the Bible and is a gift from God. We first encounter it, if you will, in a major form in this well-known story of Exodus chapter 5. If you will, turn over to Exodus chapter 5. This is where you get into your Bibles here today, this afternoon. Exodus the fifth chapter.

And let's just read again what Moses did say to Pharaoh.

We tend to forget even what was said here, Exodus chapter 5.

When Moses first went to Pharaoh seeking the release of the Israelites from the bondage of the Egyptians, verse 1 of Exodus 5, Moses and Aaron went in and they told Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go. He didn't know that God.

And he certainly was not going to let his prime source of slave labor go with the free efforts that they gave to him and what that meant to his country and to his building programs. He wasn't going to let it happen. But the request that God sent through Moses was essentially one of religious freedom. Let my people go, that we can go out into the wilderness and hold a feast.

Or worship God according, the true God, according to his teachings. That's what they wanted. Now, you know the rest of the story. You know what the challenges that they had. But that desire to worship God according to your conscience is what you and I have right now. You are able to worship God, and I am, according to our belief as we have been convicted and called by God.

We can keep the Sabbath in peace. We can keep the Holy Days in peace. There are inconveniences, there are sometimes big inconveniences that come up. We all face those as we come and go. But the beauty of it is, we can do it. We can do it. There are places today where that still can't be done. The freedom of the human mind to come before the God of creation and worship Him according to one's conscience. And freedom is a gift from God. It is something that He wanted His people to have here and to be maintained. Over them was a tyranny, a political tyranny, as well as a religious tyranny. The religion of the Egyptians shielded them from knowing the true God. The slavery in which they had been embedded kept them from doing what they should do or wanted to do, and giving them the freedom to even come and go where they wanted. They had to ask for their release, and God finally gave it to them as a result.

That is again what God wants all human beings to have. In Deuteronomy chapter 30, let's turn over there, Israel on the threshold of the Promised Land was given last instructions and comments from God in one of the most beautiful sections of the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 30, verse 11, where they are told to choose. Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 11, it says, "...for this commandment, which I command you today, is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. It is not in heaven that you should say, who will ascend into heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear and do it, nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it. But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it. See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil. Two ways, two choices, two trees, to bring up a phrase from the past. In that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you go to possess. But if your heart turns away, so that you do not hear and are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I announce to you today that you shall surely perish. You shall not prolong your days in the land that you go over to cross the Jordan to go in and possess. I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, and therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live. Choose life.

The freedom to choose that is what God gave them. They still had the ability to make the wrong choice, just as you and I do today. We still have the same freedom. We can choose death if we choose to not obey God. That was the choice they had, but they had the choice, the freedom of conscience, to make the choice. That came from God. He provided the miracles of escape and the exodus from their bondage so that they could make that choice.

Again, these are the things we forget or we take for granted and we don't really think about. And I'm just as guilty as any of us here. We can get caught up in what we have.

The wealth, the abundance of what we have, and the things that make up our life.

And a day like Thanksgiving comes and goes and we get together with our family or friends. We enjoy that. We watch a football game. We stuff ourselves and all that's right and good.

But if we forget what was behind the initial story and we fail to remember the spiritual lesson of any such event, whether it's one of God's holy days or whether it's a holiday such as this one, and this one is particularly important because of all the other things that we've gone through.

And real flesh and blood people made dangerous decisions that planted the seeds in this land that we have. And we can say, well, they weren't keeping the Sabbath or they weren't in Dodge Church. And that's beside the point, brethren. Don't ever go down that road. Don't ever dismiss the courage and the bravery of people of the past because they quote, weren't in the church or they didn't keep the Sabbath. That's irrelevant. That's between them and God. That's not our matter. That doesn't take away from courage, bravery.

Doesn't dismiss sin and rebellion either and ignorance and blindness, but that's God's judgment. That's God's doing. Don't ever dismiss the bravery of anyone in the past. That's legitimate bravery and legitimate action that furthers a good and noble purpose or end, especially in a story like this, just because they weren't called of God. That's God's business. But we serve a great God. And God is able to use people who are carnal and unconverted to further his ends.

One of the classic examples is Cyrus the Great, the Persian monarch, the head of this great Gentile power, the second one of Daniel's interpretations of Nebuchadnezzar's image, the Persian Empire, the first ruler, Cyrus the Great, whose story is told in Isaiah and Ezra.

God prophesied in Isaiah 44 about Cyrus long before he came on the scene, and even to the details of how Cyrus was going to overcome and to destroy Babylon and enter into the leave gates. That story is told in Isaiah 44 and 45. And then Cyrus comes on the scene, and Persia takes over what was Babylon.

And what does he do? Well, you turn to Ezra chapter 1 and you see what what Cyrus did. Ezra, that little book back there in the tucked away in the scriptures, chapter 1, just before Nehemiah, right after 2 Chronicles. Cyrus, who had been even prophesied through the prophet Isaiah, was not in the church, wasn't even a Jew or an Israelite, but yet he was used of God.

God moved upon him, and he set in motion the return of the Jews in fulfillment of one of his major prophecies to go back to Jerusalem. In Ezra chapter 1 and verse 2, the decree that he said, Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, all the kingdoms of the earth, the Lord God of heaven, has given me. And he has commanded me to build him a house at Jerusalem which is in Judah.

Who is among you of all his people? May his God be with him and let him go up to Jerusalem which is in Judah and build the house of the Lord God of Israel. He is God which is in Jerusalem. And whoever is left in any place where he dwells, let the men of his place help him with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, besides the free will offerings for the house of God which is in Jerusalem. Cyrus was an interesting monarch from the ancient world to study. He was way ahead of his time. He actually established a code of human rights for his subjects. And he was the one who granted freedom for the Jews to return and to begin to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and set in motion that part of the story. He gave them liberty and freedom. Actually, God did it through him. But it's another example of God intervening among his people to provide his people with a freedom of conscience and a freedom of religion, which is what this part of the story is all about. Because it's a part of God's long-standing eternal story dealing with mankind to give us the freedom of choice. I mean, I'm not turning to the book of Genesis, but what was the story there with Adam and Eve all about? A choice between two ways of life. And they had the freedom to choose. God never dictates or imposes his will upon man. He gives us the ability to choose and the freedom to do that. And he wants us to choose life at all times. When Jesus came on the scene in his very first sermon that he preached in Luke 4 contained this very thought as well. Luke 4. Verse 18. When he got up in this synagogue in Nazareth, which was actually on the Holy Day of Feast of Pentecost, that was the Sabbath day of verse 16. And he took a scroll and he began to read from the prophet Isaiah, which was a reading that coincided on that particular day.

And it's interesting to note in verse 18 what he read from Isaiah where it says, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, in recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, which is a reference to the Jubilee, which itself was a time of release within the larger concept of freedom and liberty that God designed within his law for the nation to have. So Christ's first sermon on the day of Pentecost was about liberty and freedom and the recovery of sight. And again, this freedom of choice.

Where God's Spirit moves, where it works in minds, where it works within his church and among his people, there is that liberty. There is freedom. And we should note that, incorporate that into all of our dealings with one another, certainly in our approach toward God, foremost, to recognize that we have that freedom to worship God. Because God gives us that, then it molds and shapes every other action we have among ourselves. So that we would never, ever dream of imposing our will on anyone else or limiting anyone else's freedom of conscience and their freedom of thought. In 1 Corinthians chapter 3, 1 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul develops this theme. Speaking of the importance, I have 1 Corinthians, it's actually 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 7. I'll have to make that edit before I do this again in Fort Wayne next week. 2 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 7. Speaking of the glory of the new covenant, it says, If the ministry of death written and engraved on stones was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious?

For the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory. For even what was made glorious had no glory in this respect because of the glory that excels. For what is passing away was glorious, what remains is much more glorious. Therefore, since we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech. Unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away. But their minds were blinded until this day. The same veil remains unlisted in the reading of the Old Testament because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart.

Nevertheless, when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now, the Lord is the Spirit. Verse 17 is the one to note. The Lord is the Spirit. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all with unveiled face, beholding as an emirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Freedom. God's Spirit grants freedom. God's Spirit establishes freedom.

That, brethren, is so important never to take for granted in our lives and to understand that as the essence of a gift that God gives to human beings. Now, human government, various religions can take that or inhibit that. History shows us that has always been the case.

But in America, in our history, we have been given a unique opportunity.

We've been given unique privileges. This concept of liberty is so important to understand because, especially when it comes down to a religious sense, when people talk about liberty and they try to mix it up with misguided concepts about the law of God and come to wrong conclusions, that liberty frees them from obedience or need to obey God's law, sets up all kinds of other theological problems, which we are well aware of. We should be aware that that is not the teaching of the Scripture. Liberty and freedom is the teaching of the Scripture. It's not freedom from the law. It's freedom from the penalty of the law. God wants us to understand liberty and freedom comes with a price and a value. But when it comes down to you and I, and in our lives, it doesn't give us license to sin. It doesn't give us permission to flout God's law in any way, shape, or form. When you really understand all of the writings, especially the Apostle Paul and either Romans or Galatians, about the law of God, the freedoms that we have, it all comes into proper perspective. That's a larger subject and needing many, many more expositions and sermons to explain, but we should understand that. What I want to get to for the purpose of the sermon is to help us realize that God gives us this freedom to ultimately bring us back into slavery, to ultimately bring us back into bondage.

Now that might seem contradictory, but it really isn't. If you'll turn over to Romans 6 and verse 15.

It says, What then shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? Certainly not. Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness?

Paul is developing a thought here that the freedom God gives us lays a very, very heavy burden upon us to realize that we then are to become slaves to righteousness. It's not freedom to do as we wish. It's not freedom to flout God's law or to create our own system of religious thought. Start our own church, if you will. No. It is to make us slaves to righteousness. The very freedom God gives us is to become a slave to Him. Down in verse 22, But now having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness and the end everlasting life. Slaves of God. That's what we come down to. The essence of thanksgiving, brethren, is to give thanks to God for this inalienable right of freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of thought, if you want to even take it that far.

Not to sin, not to do what we want, not to just ignore God, not to be distracted by wealth, materialism, and the things that come along with the ability to exercise freedoms, but to ultimately come back into a slavery to God through our willing choice to obey Him and to follow His way of life. That's the essence of thanksgiving. I hope that we can keep that in mind as we begin to indulge ourselves and think about that in this particular season of the year. Understanding what went before, what happened before, and why, and how it fits into a larger plan, either prophetically or, most importantly, God's ultimate plan for all of mankind to be free to worship God as we choose.