Thanksgiving In Canaan Series

Many people think of Thanksgiving as a wonderful time of enjoying a long weekend, spending quality time with friends and family, and eating a great home-cooked meal with all the “fixings.” Perhaps some people view it as the start of the Christmas “holiday” season, with an opportunity to shop for those amazing Black Friday deals. While these aspects may describe the Thanksgiving weekend, they don’t even come close to the real meaning behind this special holiday.

The American tradition of Thanksgiving can be traced to the year 1623. Having gathered the harvest in November of 1623, the governor of the Plymouth Colony, William Bradford, made the following proclamation: “All ye Pilgrims with your wives and little ones, do gather at the Meeting House, on the hill . . . there to listen to the pastor, and render thanksgiving to the Almighty God for all His blessings.”

The Pilgrims were expected to demonstrate their gratitude to God for their survival. They had undergone many hardships in their migration to their new home. After sailing nine weeks on the open seas, the one hundred two puritans arrived in America on November 9, 1620. That first winter was very challenging and they weren’t really prepared for the hardships they were to endure. It was difficult to care for the sick, because the sick out-numbered those who were healthy.

Over one hundred fifty years later, on November 1, 1777, by order of Congress, the first national Thanksgiving was proclaimed and signed by Henry Laurens, the President of the Continental Congress; and the third Thursday of November 1777 was designated as follows:

For solemn thanksgiving and praise. That with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their Divine Benefactor . . . and their humble and earnest supplication, that it may please God through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot [their manifold sins] out of remembrance . . . That it may please Him . . . to take schools and seminaries of education, so necessary for cultivating the principles of true liberty, virtue and piety under His nurturing hand, and to prosper the means of religion for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.(1)

Thanksgiving to the Pilgrims was a time of praise and thankfulness for the many blessings that the Lord had bestowed on them in their journey to America and during the first winter.

This morning we are going to look at two thanksgiving feasts that the Israelites were commanded to observe each year, in remembrance of God bringing them through their hardships in Egypt and the wilderness wanderings. Their yearly feasts, in a sense, represented the first Thanksgiving.

The Feast of Weeks (vv. 9-10)

9 You shall count seven weeks for yourself; begin to count the seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the grain. 10 Then you shall keep the Feast of Weeks to the Lord your God with the tribute of a freewill offering from your hand, which you shall give as the Lord your God blesses you.

So, what is the Feast of Weeks? It is an early harvest festival taking place around June and July. It is a festival of joy with mandatory and voluntary offerings, including the first fruits of the wheat harvest.(2) During this time people would “show joy and thankfulness for the Lord’s blessing of harvest.”(3)

Today this feast is called Pentecost. This was an important occasion for the Jews, as we see from the apostle Paul’s haste to attend the celebration of Pentecost. Acts 20:15-16 says, “The next day we came to Miletus. For Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus, so that he would not have to spend time in Asia; for he was hurrying to be at Jerusalem, if possible, on the Day of Pentecost” (cf. 1 Corinthians 16:8). Can you imagine a celebration so amazing that Paul would have delayed his “mission efforts” in order to be in Jerusalem at Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks?

Maybe some of you farmers can understand this type of enthusiasm. Think about how you feel when you begin to harvest your first crop. I remember when I would help my dad on the farm cutting tobacco, how I would feel a sense of excitement and relief about the long, hard summer being almost over. It made me feel good to think that things would soon be slowing down a little; however, we would soon begin the tedious process of stripping tobacco. I reckon this is how the Israelites felt when they “put the sickle to the grain,” as verse 9 says; they anticipated rest and were thankful for it.