Let us give thanks for Thanksgiving! In this podcast, we talk about different ways you can celebrate this Thanksgiving. We live in a nation where the authorities formally call on us to give thanks to God. And they want us to take the day off – and get paid for it.

You can find my Fifteen Tips for Celebrating Thanksgiving here

Happy Thanksgiving. Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, and we're here to talk about giving thanks. Hey, Jason, isn't this nice? It's wonderful.

I'm looking forward to the thanksgiving and to the overeating. Yeah. Hey, we happen to live in a country where the government calls you to give thanks to God explicitly for many, many years. I'm so thankful that we live in this country. I'm very grateful for it.

And God is preserving this nation. But Jason, we have such a rich heritage of our government calling us to give thanks. Yeah, it's amazing when you look back through the history of Thanksgiving, It's actually an official thing that started back in the Plymouth colony with Governor Bradford and a gentleman by the name of Edward Winslow. I think one of the things we want to do today is just give some, put some resources into the hands of families since Thanksgiving is on Thursday, we're right on the cusp of it. And to give especially dads some things that they could put their hands on, maybe read around the Thanksgiving table, it'd be really profitable.

So Dad's thing one would be the account of the first Thanksgiving from two first-person testimonies. One is Edward Winslow. So if you just Google Edward Winslow and Thanksgiving, his account of that gathering together with the American Indians and their King Massasoit is there. And then if you Google William Bradford Thanksgiving, you'll get his account of it. Both of them are about a paragraph, so that's not long reading.

These things, you know, these things were written in times of trouble. God's people stare down the darkness with thanksgiving. And that's what we want to do as well. And that particular thanksgiving, the first one, The year was 1621. They don't know the exact date, but it was probably late October in 1621.

And it was hard times, but it was sort of a respite of hard times. It was a time of abundance, and so there was plenty to share. To give thanks is to have a foretaste of heaven, because that's what you do in heaven. Amen. You are so thrilled with God and what he did and what he's doing that you can't stop saying, Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty.

Here's some more ammunition for families. There is a Thanksgiving Psalm. Psalm 100 actually has an inspired superscription over that psalm. This is not an uninspired heading from the publisher. This is part of scripture.

And Psalm 100 is named a psalm of thanksgiving. So let me read it because it's not a long one. Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing.

Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he who has made us and not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. Be thankful to him and bless his name, for the Lord is good, His mercy is everlasting, His truth endures to all generations." So you have this beautiful psalm that is named by God, inspiring the author to name it a Psalm of Thanksgiving, and it talks about God's double claim on His people.

First, He made them. Our life is owed to God, we wouldn't have it without Him. But also, He's poured out His mercy on us. And of course, now in the New Testament era, that comes into focus through Jesus Christ, He's had mercy on us. Christians are the thankful people.

Romans 1.21 says that the unbelievers were not thankful, but the believers are thankful. You know, I was thinking about John Bunyan's book, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Centers, and he gives this long list of reasons for us to be thankful. He chose us, he drew us, He spoke to us, He loved us, He redeemed us, He blessed us with every spiritual blessing. He predestines us, He made us alive, He raises us up, He seats us in the heavenly places. He created us for good works.

He made grace to abound to us. Lots and lots of reasons to give thanks. Sweet. If you want to create a Christian culture in your home, it should be a culture of thanksgiving. Right.

And everything give thanks. Fathers and mothers particularly need to set the culture of Thanksgiving in their home, really just to be faithful to God and also to represent God to their children. Right, because this isn't made up. There's a lot to be thankful for. God is good and is good to us in very practical ways every day.

Here's a little more US history. The Thanksgiving Proclamation of the Continental Congress in 1777. So if you're familiar with US history you know that's in the middle of war. So on November 1st, 1777, the Continental Congress made this Thanksgiving proclamation calling the nation to a day of Thanksgiving on that upcoming December 18th. And it's remarkable reading.

This is a one-pager also, so it's not a long read, but you won't be able to believe that a Congress of the United States spoke in these terms. It calls on the name of Jesus Christ, it repents of sin, and it gives thanks for battlefield victories and God's faithfulness in sustaining the nation up to that point and the abundance that was still part of American life and even in the middle of war. So it writes it like you would write it as someone who knows the Lord. Those are such great statements. Hey, remember when we were preaching through Nehemiah and you had the Thanksgiving choirs?

Right. Remember? So Nehemiah takes one group around one way around the wall and another group went around and they are the Thanksgiving choirs. So they're singing all the way around the walls like that And then they meet. They met at the temple to worship.

Yeah. Yeah. So maybe a family could do something like that. Maybe you could have your little Thanksgiving choir, you know, reenact the beauty of that. We are called to be a thankful people.

And I'm really grateful for that. God pulls us out of our fears, He pulls us out of our anxieties into a better place. He's always trying to bring us into a better place. And to be too despondent over the things that are happening in the world is inappropriate because God is in control. God is doing all these things.

Even the things that we might be fearful about, the truth is God is orchestrating every one of them, and so there's no reason to be despondent about it. The end of Western civilization. In one way I say, who cares? God is controlling it. Yeah.

There's some things that ought to die in Western civilization as it exists today anyway, that's for sure. Another installment of US history. George Washington, October 3rd, 1789, so this is well after the Revolutionary War, George Washington's president. And Congress actually calls upon him to issue a Thanksgiving proclamation to the people and to call them to observe it on November 26, 1789. So this is when Thanksgiving became the last Thursday in November.

But again, the words that George Washington uses are explicitly Bible language, explicitly drawing on Christian phrases and calling out to the God of the Bible in thanksgiving for the abundance and the peace that they're enjoying at that time. Amen. Amen. Hey, let's just give some ideas. Let's throw some ideas out.

I've got a big long list and break in any time. Okay. First of all, there's a family in our church that does something really neat. They reenact different elements of the Mayflower, the personalities, and the scenes that happened at the first Thanksgiving. You've mentioned that gathering with Massasoit and the Indians, and they're shooting their guns, they're doing, they're having a great time, and they're, you know, they give speeches and things like that of the pilgrims.

They dress up and do that kind of thing. It's just, there's nothing like it. It's really neat. So maybe try that. Read Psalm 136.

We've done this a few times in our family. This is one of those Psalms where there's kind of a back and forth, you know, And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever." Now, and it says here that the people shouted. So you might, you know, read a verse and have somebody give thanks, and then read another verse and give thanks, and do it back and forth. Here's another idea. This is really a wonderful opportunity to teach the sufficiency of Jesus Christ, because you give thanks in everything.

And just to create a culture in your home of giving thanks, because Jesus Christ is a sufficient savior and he saves the whole man forever. And there's a lot to give thanks for his sufficiency. Here's another one, play some Pilgrim Games. I won't say much about that, Google it, Pilgrim Games. You can find it.

Exercise your guns. Now this comes from Edward Winslow who wrote, Amongst our recreations we exercised our arms, translation guns, many of the Indians coming among amongst us and amongst the rest their great king Massasoit was some 90 men whom for three days, we entertained and feasted. So they would play and then they would go out and hunt, bring back five deer, you know, and eat and have a great time. So exercise your guns. Well, here's one thing we do.

We have a hayride. We try to have a hayride. Okay. So that's really fun. And we've had some really hilarious times doing that.

Next read the First Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1777. There you go. Check the language. Yeah, it's just great. Read George Washington's proclamation on October 3rd, 1789.

It's beautiful. Really inspiring. You already mentioned Edward Winslow's description of the first Thanksgiving, and I just quoted a little piece of it. Yeah, right. So yeah, 1621.

You know, do a word search on Thanksgiving and read several of those verses to your family. You know, more than a hundred will come up for sure. Talk about how God deals with us in our sorrows, how God uses Thanksgiving to pull us out of our sorrows, and just the value of praising God for victories and for deliverance and all the things that God brings us out of, even the hard years. Well, that's what was happening in Plymouth in 1621. Read selections from a Plymouth plantation by William Bradford, especially chapter 4.

Reasons which led the congregation at Leiden to decide upon settlement in America. It's really interesting why they came. It's very clearly stated why they came. Here's another one. Seeing hymns that the pilgrims sang.

We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing. Okay, well there's several of them. And There's some really, really neat songs that they sang. The old 100th they sang, which is a back and forth, shout to Jehovah all the earth, shout to Jehovah all the earth, back and forth like that. It's really neat, very unusual.

Here's another one. Tell the story of the pilgrims. Here's another one. Make it really clear that in giving thanks, you're really preparing for all eternity. Get started now.

If Jesus Christ has saved you, He's already transported you into everlasting life. And so just make that continuity really consistent until that day that He takes you there. And just don't forget to remind everyone how much we just need to hope in God for everything. Place our hope in God. Nations come, nations go, political parties come and go, freedom comes and goes in the world, but there's one thing that never changes, God, and He carries you through all those things.

Amen. So There's a lot to do on Thanksgiving Day. I hope everybody just has a great time. Can I give you one last installment from US history here? Sure.

October 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued a Thanksgiving proclamation, regardless of what part of the country you live in and what you think of Abraham Lincoln, the proclamation itself is astonishing. Again, this is in the middle of the Civil War. And the population of the nation had grown, he says, in spite of the waste of the battlefield and the camp, meaning all the deaths that had been experienced, the population was still growing in the United States and Abraham Lincoln praises God for it, and the providences of God in continuing abundance in certain regions of the country. So anyway, I just wanna scroll through those again for dads. Edward Winslow and William Bradford in Thanksgiving, the first Thanksgiving.

Then the Continental Congress's Thanksgiving Proclamation. Google that, pull that down, it's a one-pager. So is the George Washington one from October 1789, and so is the Abraham Lincoln one from October 1863. You probably don't read all those this year. I actually have a file on my hard drive, just of things that I collect for different occasions.

And so it's there. I'll read one of these this year. I'm sure I'll read around the table, and next year it'll be a different one and I'll rotate them. But the language is striking and so appropriate for believers in God, in the Lord Jesus Christ, because that's who's being thanked. That's so great.

Well, let me close with Isaiah 51, 11. So the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, sorrow and sighing shall flee away." And God calls His people to do that now in this life, even in the midst of what's going on. Very sweet. Very sweet.

So, hey, we hope you have a great Thanksgiving. Give thanks. Be thankful for such a nation that calls her people to give thanks. And hey, some of these suggestions that we've given, we're going to put on a website online. You can get way more detail on some of the things that we shared.

But happy Thanksgiving, and We hope to see you next time on the Church and Family Life podcast.