First Thanksgiving in America

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

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This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture and media from a Reformed perspective.

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Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.

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Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.

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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

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Today is November 20th, 2020.

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And if you're following along in our daily Bible reading today, you're going to be reading from 1 John chapter 3.

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Well, it is the Friday before Thanksgiving and I have a special announcement for the program.

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I will be taking next week off in honor of Thanksgiving week, also to give extra time to prepare as our church is going to be preparing Thanksgiving meal, preparing a Thanksgiving meal for Set Free Ministries.

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And we look forward to celebrating on Thanksgiving and having an opportunity to serve alongside that ministry and love the men of Set Free.

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So I won't have any programs next week.

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So I want to dedicate this program this Friday before Thanksgiving as our Thanksgiving podcast.

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And I want to begin by telling the story of the first Thanksgiving.

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Now, I know many of you are probably familiar with this story.

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Many of us grew up hearing this story and have heard it told in different ways.

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But sometimes it's good to be reminded of our history.

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Sometimes history can become very skewed, especially by modern revisionists who want to change what actually happened and make things a lot different than they actually were.

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So I want to give a little testimony to the first Thanksgiving and sort of how things have changed over the years since then.

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And then as I begin to come to an end of the program, I want to talk about some things that I am thankful for and look forward to next week with a encouraged and thankful heart.

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In 1620, the Mayflower left England bound for the New World.

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It was carrying 102 passengers.

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Many of them were Christians hoping to find a place where they could freely practice their faith.

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The crossing lasted 66 days and it was a treacherous and uncomfortable journey.

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These pilgrims, as they came to be known, began working to establish a village at Plymouth.

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And throughout the first brutal winter, many suffered from exposure and disease.

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And only half of the original passengers lived to see the first spring.

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In an amazing act of providence, they were visited by a native named Samaset in 1621 who spoke to them in their native tongue of English.

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He said that he had learned some of the language from the English fishermen who had come to Maine.

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And a short time later, he returned with another native named Squanto, who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery.

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He had escaped and returned to his homeland and by that time had become fluent in English.

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The pilgrims were malnourished.

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Many were ill.

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So Squanto taught them how to cultivate corn and how to extract sap from maple trees, how to catch fish, and to avoid poisonous plants.

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In November, after the first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast.

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He invited the native friends to join them for the feast and that event came to be known as the first Thanksgiving in the New World.

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These annual days of feasting became common practice in the New England settlements.

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And in 1789, George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government of the United States to express gratitude for the conclusion of the War of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution.

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Later, President Abraham Lincoln, in 1863 at the height of the Civil War, entreated all Americans to ask God to commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife and to heal the wounds of the nation.

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And he scheduled Thanksgiving Day to be held the final Thursday in November.

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And with a few exceptions, in the late 30s and early 40s, it has remained so to this day.

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Well that's a basic history of the first Thanksgiving and how we come to our modern expression of Thanksgiving that we celebrate on the final Thursday of November every year.

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I've talked about this in sermons over the years, how I believe that Thanksgiving is really probably the closest thing we have to a biblical holiday in the American tradition.

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Certainly we have Christmas and Easter and those are holidays which are focused on biblical truths.

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Christmas, of course, focused on the birth of Christ and Easter focused on the resurrection of Christ.

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But truly it is not those days which really resemble a biblical day of holiday as much as Thanksgiving does.

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If you look at the biblical feasts, if you look at the biblical holidays, they were celebrated by feasting, they were celebrated by times of gathering, they were celebrated particularly with the giving of thanks.

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And so every year when we as Americans come together to celebrate Thanksgiving, we are in a sense celebrating one of the most biblical of holidays even though this isn't a quote unquote biblical feast day.

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This is a tradition and I think it is a good one.

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And I think it's a wonderful way that we as Christians can be reminded of the importance of giving thanks.

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We are truly a people who often forget the importance of being thankful.

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This Sunday I'm going to be preaching from Psalm 92 and Psalm 92 begins with these words, it is good to give thanks to the Lord.

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I almost entitled the sermon the greatest understatement in the Bible.

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I've decided to go with a different title but that title does stand because this is such an understatement.

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It is good to give thanks to the Lord.

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That is such an understatement because it is good, it is great, it is the best thing that we can do to give thanks to God and oftentimes how ungrateful we truly are.

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I'm reminded of those men who came to Jesus seeking healing and remember those ten men came to him and Jesus said, go and see the priest and as they went they were healed and one of them came back and gave thanks and Jesus said, where are the nine? Where are the others? Where are the others who received the same blessing and yet they have not come back to give thanks? In my life I think so many times how often I have been so ungrateful.

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So often I have forgotten to give thanks for all that I have.

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I often become very focused on the things that are difficult.

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I become so focused on the things that are hard.

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I become so difficult or so focused on the things that are painful that I forget my blessings and I remember one time one of my professors Dr.

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Jerry Powers, he talked about how the sun is so big in the sky but because of how far away it is, it's easy for us to cover it up.

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You can take a quarter from your pocket and you can put a quarter over your eye and it will block out the sun.

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That little small coin will block out the brightness of the sun which is exponentially larger than the earth upon which we stand and yet a small coin from our pocket can block out the sun.

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What Dr.

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Powers would say is that is so much like we are when it comes to seeing the blessings of God.

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We take our difficulties, we take our hardships, we take our trials and we cover our eyes with those and we can't see the blessings that God has given to us and we often miss out and we forget to thank God.

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So Psalm 92, it is good to give thanks to the Lord.

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It is good to give thanks to the Lord and I'm looking forward to preaching that passage this weekend.

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If you're not in a church and you're in the Jacksonville area, can I encourage you to come and be with us? The theme of this week, the theme of this service is going to be giving thanks to our Lord even in times of difficulty.

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We have had a difficult season.

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Many of us this year have faced tremendous difficulties.

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COVID has separated people.

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We've seen people experience sickness and death.

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We've seen people experience economic upheaval, political trials and upheavals.

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We've seen many difficulties and so many of us have that over our eyes and we cannot see the blessings that we have because we're so focused on the difficulties.

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May I encourage you, my friends who are listening to this, to open our eyes and see the blessings of the Son, not just the Son in the sky, but the S-O-N, the Son of God who came to take our sins upon himself and to give us his blessed righteousness.

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Oh, what a blessing that is.

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And I am so, so thankful for the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

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And no matter what trials we face, if we are in Christ, we have the greatest of all blessings.

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And we have a reason to give thanks, not one day a year, not one day a week, but every day, all the time.

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It is good to give thanks to the Lord.

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So again, if you are in the Jacksonville area, if you don't have a church home, can I encourage you to come be with us this coming Lord's Day, this Sunday, as we celebrate the theme of giving thanks to God, even in difficult times.

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And we have Sunday school at 9.30 a.m.

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And we have worship at 10.30 a.m.

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And we would encourage you to come and be with us for both.

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Now, I want to close the service today by saying this.

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I am thankful for so many things, as I've already expressed.

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I am so thankful for my Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

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I'm also thankful for my family.

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I'm thankful for my loving wife.

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And I want to say, from the bottom of my heart, how much I appreciate having a partner in ministry who loves me, who encourages me, who stands with me, who cries with me, who laughs with me.

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And I'm so grateful to have her as my friend, my wife, my ministry partner, and outside of my Savior, my greatest love in this world.

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I'm thankful for my children.

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I'm thankful for my church family.

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I'm thankful for my physical family, my earthly family, many of whom are very encouraging and loving to me.

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I'm thankful that this year we're going to be moving, Lord willing, very soon to be closer to my father's home.

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And I'm thankful that God has paved a way for us to move not too far from where we are now, but move to just outside of Jacksonville, to a place called Callahan, and thankful to have that blessing seeming to be going through.

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So I have so much for which to be thankful.

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And I want to challenge you.

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If you're listening to this today, and you haven't had an opportunity recently to do it, take the time to stop what you're doing and go to God in prayer and tell God for what you are thankful.

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And I want to tell you this as well.

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I would love to hear from you.

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I would love it if you would send me a message and tell me what you're thankful for.

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Maybe you're listening to this on Facebook, and you can just comment right below for what are you thankful today, and what are you going to give thanks for this coming Thanksgiving Day.

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Again, I remind you, I won't be with you next week.

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I'm taking the week off to focus on thanks, to focus on family, to focus on service as we serve the men of Set Free.

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So this will serve as our Thanksgiving podcast, and if you have a Thanksgiving, a giving of thanks that you would like to share, please send it to me.

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I would love to read it.

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Thank you again for listening today and every day.

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I'm very thankful for you.

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Let me say that last thing.

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I'm thankful for you, the listeners, because it is those of you who listen and continue to tell me that you're listening that keep me encouraged to do this program every weekday.

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I'm thankful that you're out there.

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I'm thankful that you're listening, and I would love to hear from you.

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I would be grateful to hear from you and to continue to be encouraged to do this program.

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So again, thank you for listening to Coffee with a Calvinist.

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My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.

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May God bless you, and have a happy Thanksgiving.

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Thank you for listening to today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.

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If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe and provide us feedback.

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We love to receive your comments and questions and may even engage with them in a future episode.

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As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.

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All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior.

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He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.

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May God be with you.