Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, I'd like us to reach back into history and ponder the understanding of Thanksgiving that we have back into colonial America. We have a Christian background to our American Constitution, and it all began, at least on this continent, with the colonial period.

And as Thanksgiving approaches, and perhaps it'll be the Sunday after Thanksgiving, but nevertheless, close enough for us to ponder the constitutional background of our American Constitution that began on this continent, anyway, during the colonial period. That is when our founding fathers came and established the 13 colonies on this continent, and has given us the great, rich Christian tradition of the founding of our republic, and most importantly, the composing and the hammering out under the fire and angst of the Revolutionary War, the American Constitution. Oh, what a rich tradition we have been given as Americans.

And Thanksgiving is a proper time for us to go to God, who is sovereign over all, who is providential over the fates and states of mankind, and who has given us this constitutional republic, and we owe him a great Thanksgiving. Dear listener, I want to impress this upon you as nothing else here today. If you get nothing else from this, I want you to come on Thanksgiving morning to give thanks to God for what he has done for us, for what he has given us here in the United States of America. I find that Americans in general, and I hope it's not you, but we have, to a great extent, a thankless population on the American continent.

Everybody thinks they're owed more. Everybody thinks what they have, they deserve. Everybody thinks that God owes them a measure of something rather than giving thanks for what God has graciously given us. And what I like to tell people around this time of year, during the period of Thanksgiving, is that a thankful heart is full of grace, while a thankless heart is holy base. I hope you remember that.

I find this has helped me, humbled me many times when I understand indeed, that as the Bible seems to reflect to us, a thankful heart is full of grace, but a thankless heart is holy base. And so I hope that during this period of Thanksgiving, this Thanksgiving holiday that we celebrate, the genuinely American religious holiday, Thanksgiving, that you celebrate Thanksgiving as indeed more than family, food, and football. I love all three of those, family, food, and football. And they're all abundant on Thanksgiving day, aren't they? But where is faith in all of this?

Faith, family, food, and football. Indeed, are we prepared to give thanks to the living God of the Bible, who has indeed bestowed upon us all of these things, in particular, our American Constitution, because it does have a Christian background to it, and it all began in colonial America. So let's launch into this understanding of the Christian background to the American Constitution, which began during the colonial period in America. Now, prior to the convening of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, our founding fathers studied and absorbed the constitutions of the respective colonies of the new nation.

Those 13 colonies had each been founded on unique individual charters and principles. Massachusetts and Connecticut were their Puritan and Yankee ingenuity. Maryland, established by the Calverts as a haven for Roman Catholics. Pennsylvania, chartered to openness and toleration. Pennsylvania, chartered to William Penn, who was a Quaker.

Rhode Island, which became a haven for heretic and outcast alike. And then, in short, while each colony was founded upon unique individual charters and principles, they all had this one thing in common. They expressly, overtly acknowledged the Christian religion and the Christian God of the Bible as the source and goal of their respective colonies' principles and structure.

The first charter of Virginia, for example, said this, and I quote, We, greatly commending and graciously accepting of their desires for furtherance of so noble a work, which may, by the providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the glory of His divine majesty in propagating of the Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God. Indeed, Virginia was chartered as a colony, not only to prosper the colonists and the kingdom of England, but also to spread the gospel.

The Constitution of Connecticut, as well, held forth several articles which would be controversial in today's political climate. For example, article number one from the Constitution of Connecticut said this, that the Scriptures hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men in all duties which they are to perform to God and men, as well in families and commonwealth as in matters of the church.

Article 2, that as in matters which concern the gathering and ordering of a church, so likewise in all public offices which concern civil order, as the choice of magistrates and officers, making and repealing laws, dividing allotments of inheritance, and all things of like nature, they would all be governed by those rules which the Scriptures hold forth to them. Oh, can we get by with that today? It must be questioned whether the courts of modern Connecticut would put up with what colonial Connecticut incorporated into the orders of the general court of the commonwealth of Connecticut.

That is, that God's word should be the only rule for ordering the matters of government in this commonwealth. Unquote. Oh, dear listener, would any court or federal or state or order such a thing today? Well, of course not. Instead of genuine humility and gratitude before Almighty God for having given such a rich resource for self-governance and Republican principles, as is found in the Bible and the centuries of Christian tradition, modern socialist courts are filled with shame and arrogance towards the Bible, isn't it?

And towards our rich heritage in Christianity. There is a conscious effort to expunge as swiftly as possible all reference to and reliance upon that text and tradition of the Bible. So, do not be distracted from the real issue in this struggle, dear listener. The Ten Commandments will begin to reappear in our courthouses when the law of God is written upon the hearts of the men and women who serve there. So, do not despair because a few symbols, that is, granite monuments and pledges and mottos, are being challenged.

These are all faith symbols, which every culture fashions to express the source and foundation upon which rests the law which governs them. The more pagan and degenerate our land becomes, the more pagan and degenerate will become our symbols. Our culture is in the process of cleansing the land of our Christian symbols precisely because this land has already substantially cleansed her soul of her Christian principles. Dear listener, understand that first comes the reality in the soul and the symbol follows. The symbols are seen as a threat and embarrassment today because they no longer represent what we are in our national soul.

The cross, the creche, the scriptures are all a shame and a threat to a secular culture because they are a visible reminder of the biblical Christian values and principles that we have abandoned in a mad pursuit of an ugly, death-dealing secularism or paganism even. But it was not so with our founding fathers. In the colonial period, as we celebrate Thanksgiving here this year, in the colonial period, we remember, we see the substantial effects of the First Great Awakening upon the Thirteen Colonies. For example, as the gospel swept through the young nation, she experienced the truth that in Christ, all men are brothers.

As Peter Marshall and David Manuel put it in their book, The Light and the Glory, a book I highly recommend to you, The Light and the Glory. And when they talk about this period, they say, and I quote, Now, dear listener, this message of egalitarianism, true biblical egalitarianism, This message found its way into the fabric of the church's makeup. It was adopted and practiced there.

And then again, as Marshall and Manuel say in their book, The Light and the Glory, and I quote, Here then was the seed of democracy, which would be embodied in the Constitution of the United States, of the political understanding that all men were equally entitled to vote, and that, in the sight of God, a farmer was as good as King George. For God was no respecter of persons. His laws applied equally to all men, unquote. Here we begin to see, in the colonial period, in America, as we celebrate Thanksgiving this week, we begin to see a profound distinction beginning to emerge upon the distant shores of the American continent.

Despite the long tradition of English rights, and there was a long tradition here, there was still an entrenched class system of royalty and nobles commoner that was centuries old. And although the commoner had his rights, he knew his place and station, and only rarely did he have opportunity to improve that station. But in America, due to the power of Christianity in leveling the playing field for all men, that same commoner had every chance to succeed as the noble, only limited by his skills, intelligence, and energy. And additionally, his vote in the meeting house counted every bit as much as the highborn or the Richmonds.

He could stand in that same meeting house, and as long as he did it decently and in order, his voice and opinion could express itself freely on any subject at hand. So, not only did a great ocean and time and distance separate England from her child, America, but increasingly so did that child's institutions and colonial constitutions separate her. Every colonial considered himself a good English subject, but slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, that colonist became conscious of the fact that he was far more independent of England than England ever suspected she was of him.

This intuitive, implicit liberty was strengthened in the first generation born in the colonies, most of whom had never known anything but Republican democracy in its purest town-meeting form. Oh, what a day. The American colonist knew to his toenails several liberties, of which his continental counterpart was unaware. Things like, for example, complete freedom of movement. Yes, in England, you were restricted oftentimes by the class system from moving from shire to shire, from county to county in England, because you were bound to your lord, perhaps, or to your manor.

There was a class system in place that restricted your movement. The colonists also knew freedom of expression through the town hall. There was a place in London in the parks where you could speak freely, but mostly you were censored in your particular village or shire from speaking as freely as the American could across the pond. There was also direct representation in the colonies, in colonial legislatures. Direct representation, not indirect representation.

Later would come the House of Commons, in which the commoner would have a voice in electing his representative. But for now, in America, in the colonial legislatures, he had a representative directly elected by him and his fellow townsmen. And also, in America, there was a freedom of religion with no established religion, except for Virginia. That was the one great exception. But of course, the Church of England.

Anglicanism was the established religion in England, whereas in the American colonies, there was a freedom of religion unseen and unknown all over the continent of Europe. And this would be endemic to our founding, endemic to the establishment of our constitution, constitution in the First Amendment, most notably. And then also, one other distinction that you had here was a trial by jury, a trial by your peers you were judged by, rather than in England by a judge.

A judge held your fate in his hands, heard the evidence, made his decisions based upon what he heard, and he was always partial to the crown, always partial to the parliament, and not to the defendant, in most cases, but not so in America. In fact, the founding fathers made a point of, and you find this in the first of 10 amendments to the constitution, that a trial by jury, a jury of your peers, and a final decision by juries, too, was established. So, this was a strong point in the colonies, unseen in England.

Well, imagine, then, the Englishman's consternation, when British policy began to shift towards laying an increasing burden upon this prosperous offspring of Mother England. And imagine the colonist's consternation, too, because he had all these liberties he'd grown up with, and suddenly they were being restricted. It began to happen in the mid-18th century, when the tyrant King George III asserted his authority over what he saw as a cow ready for the milking. That is, the American colonies. And he did.

And so did Parliament. And so, the outrage, for example, of the Townsend Acts of 1767, which imposed duties on glass and tea and paper and so on, everything the colonists used, right on down to the smallest farmer and workman. And they were all passed. The Townsend Acts were all passed without the consent or vote of a single colonist.

And so, also, we see the outrage of the Stamp Act of 1765 that required a stamp of the British Crown to be placed on every legal document produced in America, despite the fact that the British Crown had little or nothing to do with the day-to-day life of the colonist and his economic and local legislature, and who, in turn, had no representative across the wide sea to speak for him in Parliament, where all of these tyrannies were being perpetrated.

And so, dear listener, the outrage of the rough and arrogant British troopers, too, regularly quartered in colonial homes, and they were given to taking whatever they wanted, including colonial horse, silver, and maiden. And so, the outrage of redress for these and other monstrous grievances were routinely ignored and scoffed at by the ministers and judges of the Crown. What were the colonists to do?

Justice became as much an orphan as many of the children of the colonies were orphans whose fathers were in jail, maybe impressed into British Navy far at sea, or maybe these colonial fathers who were in their graves because of preemptory sentences passed down by judges accountable only to the king and not to the commoner. What were the colonists to do, dear listener? Was not a Christian to be obedient to proper authority? Oh, this was exhorted upon them constantly.

This verse from the Bible, for example, George III and all of his ministers and the Parliament as well reminded people of Romans 13, 1 and 2, Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment." Now, if this were the only Scripture that spoke to proper rule and authority of the magistrate and government, then we would be consigned to bear tyranny no matter what our circumstances and opportunities.

It would be fallen, sinful man who would dictate government. It's often the case anyway. And then it would be the Christian would never be able to speak to issues like justice and mercy, the proper limits of power, and the duties and qualities of both prince and subject. Instead, our founding fathers were completely familiar with the body of material that bore upon these and other topics developed over centuries of thought and practice, and we Americans should be too. It's time to go back to the books.

Burn the midnight oil. Understand these things because our founders were intimately familiar with not only their Bibles, but also with other deeply Christian men and philosophers who had bent their talents to reflecting on these subjects. They were men like Montesquieu, Samuel Wutherford, Algernon Sidney, and of course, Mr. John Locke, considered the philosopher of the Revolution. These men developed the idea that not only was there explicit obedience expected of the subject, but also an implied contract existed between magistrate and subject. Locke called it the social contract.

This social contract implied implicit in every relationship in government. This social contract existed between him and those who exercised rule. Consequently, king, legislature, and judge must follow the commandment of the scriptures, one of which stated in 2 Samuel 23, he that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God, unquote. Oh, listen, oh, modern magistrates, those in federal and state governments today, he that ruleth over man must be just, ruling in the fear of God, none of which exist, I submit to you, with most of those in government today.

It is widely acknowledged that the ruler who violated this contract, implicit social contract, between magistrates and subject, those who violated this contract, forfeited their right to the obedience and loyalty of the subject. Even good King James I, who was no friend to democracy, he noted, and I quote him, a king ceases to be a king and degenerates to a tyrant as soon as he leaves off to rule according to his laws, unquote. Oh, if only George III had listened to his predecessor, King James.

But instead, George III added, as Thomas Jefferson articulated in the Declaration of Independence, a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism. It is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security, unquote, from the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson did not pen this in an intellectual and biblical vacuum. His readers knew precisely whence his thought. Resistance to tyrants, for example, was a well-established doctrine in civil philosophy.

Understand that today, those of you who cow in the face of tyranny, resistance to tyrants was a well-established doctrine in civil philosophy at the time of the Revolution. Samuel Rutherford, for example, in his book, Lex Rex, observes, and I quote him, he who resisteth the man who is the king, commanding that which is against God, killing the innocent, resisteth no ordinance of God, but an ordinance of Satan. For a man commanding unjustly and ruling tyrannically hath in that no power from God, unquote.

Now, King George III amply fit this description, and Jefferson made this clear in his Bill of Particulars in the Declaration of Independence, didn't he? The catalog of wrongs is daunting and takes up the large bulk of the Declaration when you read it, even though the opening paragraphs are usually quoted and not much else. Now, Jefferson does this because the candid world to which he addressed the Declaration would have expected a biblical and philosophical rationale for the serious matter of rebellion.

If it could be demonstrated that King George III was not ruling over men justly, but rather ruling, I'm sorry, if the Declaration could demonstrate that George III was not ruling over men justly, ruling in the fear of God, that America's case was made. And so, besides providing posterity with a set of inspirational prose, the Declaration accomplishes its goal of making the argument for separation from the mother country.

And so, Jefferson could look to God for his justification of America's cause, as he put it, appealing to the supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the name and by authority of the good people of these colonies solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be, free and independent states. Unquote. From the Declaration of Independence.

And so, we discover that in everything from the colonial charters and constitutions to the very Declaration of Independence itself, penned on the eve of the revolution, the Christian religion suffused the thought and souls of the men who made them. So, dear listener, to divorce God from our institutions today, as is being done apace, and to expunge the memory of God and his book is only to pull out from underneath our collective feet the very foundation that causes us to stand as a country. In fact, what we hope to demonstrate indeed is that there is a close connection between biblical principles and preceding charters with our Constitution.

To say, God is nowhere mentioned in the text of the Constitution, blah, blah, blah, is really only a canard. The Constitution itself is intimately connected with the atmosphere in which it was created and it was not made in a vacuum. Oh, dear listener, as you celebrate Thanksgiving this year, I hope that you do indeed give thanks not only for the food and the family and the football that you enjoy on Thanksgiving Day, but also for the faith that you enjoy and the freedom you have to exercise that faith and indeed the foundation upon which our constitutional republic was made and that is the Bible and the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We are located in Idaho Falls and we celebrate our Holy Sabbath worship at 10 a.m. on Sunday. We're located at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard and you can call us for further information at area code 208-523-0196 and you can give me some feedback perhaps on this message or find out further information about our Bible studies, our websites, all these kinds of great things at area code 208-523-0196. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.