Dennis Tuuri

through verse 38. And our theme is thanksgiving aboard a shipwreck.

Acts 27, beginning in verse 27. When the 14th night was come, as we were driven up and down in Adria, about midnight, the shipmen deemed that they drew near to some country. They sounded and found it 20 fathoms. And when they had gone a little further, they sounded again and found it 15 fathoms. Then fearing lest they should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern and wished for the day.

And as the shipmen were about to flee out of the ship, when they had let down the boat into the sea under color, as though they would have cast anchors out of the foreship, Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, “Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved.” Then the soldiers cut off the ropes of the boat and let her fall off.

And while the day was coming on, Paul besought them all to take meat, saying, “This day is the 14th day that ye have tarried,” and continued fasting, having taken nothing. Wherefore I pray you to take some meat, for this is for your health, for there shall not a hair fall from the head of any of you.” And when he had thus spoken, he took bread, and he gave thanks to God in the presence of them all. And when he had broken it, he began to eat. Then were they all of good cheer, and they also took some meat.

And we were in all in the ship 276 souls. And when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship and cast out the wheat into the sea.

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Let us pray. Father, we thank you for telling us over and over again in your scriptures that this book, the scriptures, the Bible is unlike any other book. It must be spiritually discerned and understood. And Father, we confess before you a complete inability in and of ourselves to understand your word. Indeed, our nature while fallen is that nature which rebels against the word and seeks to confuse it so that we might walk in our own way.

Help us, Lord God, not to fall to that temptation during this next hour. Help us, Lord God, to attend to your word. Give us your spirit that he may teach us this word, may write it upon our hearts and prepare us, Lord God, for a life filled with service and thanksgiving to you. We ask it in the name of our glorious Savior and for the sake of his blessed kingdom. Amen.

May be seated. And the younger children whose parents desire it for them may be dismissed to their Sabbath schools.

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Man aboard this ship. There really were kind of four groups of men. There was Paul and his company. There were the centurion and his company, the soldiers. There was the shipmaster and his company, the group of prisoners. Indications are that all except for Paul and his companions Luke and Aristarchus—these rest of these prisoners were bound for execution. That was the normal reason why men were being taken to Rome is for execution.

So we really have four groups aboard this ship. And it’s been a tough trip. As we know, we’ve spent three or four weeks here now talking about this very difficult time aboard the seas in this ship. Imagine where these men have come to by this evening in which we find them.

In verse 27, we have the time indicated that it’s the 14th night that was come as our text begins. In verse 27 for this week’s sermon, they’re driven up and down. Well, that’s been their chorus for two weeks. They’d sailed out of Fair Havens, supposing themselves to have obtained their purpose, a short voyage of three or four hours down the coast to a more commodious port that would hold the ship in which they were in. But lo and behold, as soon as they shipped out up from Fair Havens, the great tempest comes upon them.

Remember, they did so in rejection of Paul’s authoritative advice. We can call it that because of the way Paul describes it in the text of which we’ve read the last few weeks. They sailed out in rejection of his advice and didn’t follow God’s messenger. And they soon found themselves, as all people do, who reject God’s counsel upon stormy seas.

And so, they’ve been bobbing up and down. They’ve been stopped in their forward progress. They’ve come to a halt. They’ve frapped the ship. They’ve lowered the sail. They’ve tied that lifeboat, the dinghy that would take them over to an island close to the ship so it wouldn’t bust it all up. They’ve tried to at least stay in one place, but no. The wind kept driving them back. The waves were blowing them toward these quicksands off the North Africa coast and they were fearful and frightened.

They were able to avoid those quicksands and stay close to their original course, but they were completely unable to prevent themselves from being driven by the wind off that original course as it lay. And so God has taken them through very rough and tumultuous seas. They’ve had difficult times. They’ve gone up and down in the water. They’ve gone round about and finally at the end of trying to do what they were supposed to do, they lose even the ability to navigate.

They lose the sun at day, they lose the stars at night. The powers in the heaven that guide men’s lives and are a picture of God’s authority and his secondary means of authority on earth, rulers and authorities are taken away from them. And so they lose all hope. They don’t think they’re going to make it at all. The ship is continuing against a strong, strong wind. The wind has not abated. It’s probably gotten worse over the course of the 14 days. Navigation is gone. They’re in a frightening isolated situation. They can’t see anything day or night.

And every indication is the ship was already starting to take on water. So they’ve lost all hope.

And Paul came to them as we spoke about last week with a word of encouragement. First, a word of evaluation, a word of discernment as to why they were in the difficulties they were in for rejecting the counsel of God. And then he gives them a word of encouragement which implies with it the command to obey God.

And indeed, when Paul tells them to be of good cheer, that was we read in our last week’s text, it is the same authoritative word used for a command to them to be of good cheer as it was that they shouldn’t have gone out from the port. So Paul as a picture, the prophetic voice of Christians as individuals and the prophetic voice of the church at large speaks into a tumultuous judgment-filled situation with a two-fold message. A message of interpretation and explanation as to what’s going on and a message of command to worship God and to actually find themselves encouraged in that submission to the ruler of the winds and the seas and of all creation.

And so that’s where we’ve come. They’ve come through all these difficulties. Paul has come back with a word of encouragement to them, but there’s no indication from the text that they heard that word. And now we come to the next phase of this particular narrative, this long narrative which I believe serves as an appendix to the book of Acts that sort of describes what’s been going on throughout the ministries of Peter in the land of Jerusalem and Paul to be extended to the uttermost parts of the earth.

Chapter one said that’s what would happen. They would receive the power and authority from on high. The gospel would go out starting at Jerusalem, then going outward. We’ve seen that through a double ministry of Peter and Paul throughout the rest of the book of Acts. And now we have this nice summary, this encapsulation really of what’s going on as the message of God goes into a troubled world, a world that is troubled because of judgment.

And in this summation, in this encapsulation of the entire book of Acts, I believe this picture for us—we now come to this biblical historical account filled with meaning for us—that tells us of thanksgiving aboard this ship.

It tells us that as night comes on, then it’s been 14 days, 14—a double week, a fullness of time. Seven days in the scripture it’s a double fullness of time. They’ve been out there a long time and it’s night time and night’s coming on. And the text tells us that they had a country approaching them. In the Greek, the word actually doesn’t mean that they were getting close to land. It means the land was getting close to them.

Now what that means I think is that the sound of breakers upon the shore begins to come to their ears and they get very concerned. Unless they come upon some land they don’t know what it is and they get broken up on a reef. They don’t know what kind of topography is in front of them. They can’t see. And if they just let the ship go to this land, as much as they want to reach land, if they just let it drive onto the land, they could bust up totally and all get killed.

So they sound. By that it means they let over a line with a weight on the end to determine how deep the water was. And the first time they sound it, it’s 20 fathoms deep. A fathom is from the tips of your fingers as your hands are outstretched. And so 20 fathoms deep is about the depth of this water, 120 feet roughly. And they sound again after a little while. And now it’s only 90 feet. And they know they’re getting close to shore.

So what are they going to do? They can’t see. They want to stop the ship. So they throw four anchors off the stern of the ship to steady it and hold it until they could have day come in which they could see what was going to happen. So night is come and this is all in the context of night and they’re wishing for the day as men do when they’re in terror at night.

Well, in the context of all of that, an escape is attempted by one of these groups of men. Remember I said four groups—Paul and his company, Centurion and the soldiers, the shipmaster and the men that sailed the ship, and then the prisoners.

Well, the shipmaster and the men that sailed the ship decide they’re going to, under pretense of letting down more weights from that dinghy that’s attached to the side of the ship, they’re going to get in that thing and take off. They’re making an escape.

But once again, Paul is the one who is in command of this vessel ultimately. And that’s becoming more and more recognizable as the events unfurl. The prisoner is really the captain of the ship. And Paul sees him doing this. And he knows that they’re lying about, “Oh, we’re just going to let down some anchors.” And he tells the centurion, the soldiers, “Hey, if these guys escape, you’re going to be killed.”

He’s told them, God has promised. He told them in the word of encouragement we talked about last week, that God has given him to all the men in the ship. He doesn’t save you for your sake. He saves you for the church’s sake and for God’s glory. He’s given all the men in the ship to me and you’ll reach land safely. Albeit, Paul had told them, we’re going to be cast upon an island. They’re close to being cast upon the island.

And obviously, the men in the ship haven’t believed Paul. Okay. At least the sailors haven’t. They’re all going to jump ship and try to make it on their own and divide up. United we stand. Divided we fall. Well, they think if they divide themselves, they will stand. Well, Paul sees this. He warns the soldiers about this attempt. They then cut the ropes and the dinghy is gone now. So that’s the end of the dinghy as a means of escape for all the crew. All the crew couldn’t have fit in there anyway, but anyway, they cut off the dinghy.

And then the scriptures tell us in verse 33 that the day was coming on. And so there’s this transition in the text. All this confusion and conspiracy and division and deceit and terror and anxiety and despair has happened in the nighttime. And as we move from night to day, we have this significant event pictured for us of thanksgiving aboard this ship that will be shipwrecked.

And this is where we meet Paul and these different groups of men this Lord’s day as we anticipate a national holiday of thanksgiving this Thursday.

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And so as we see then this climactic portion of this text, we see Paul as day comes on begin to speak to the men and he tells them, “Hey, don’t be giving up here. Don’t faint. Says he, you have tried and continued fasting for 14 days. Okay, he—and this doesn’t mean they had eaten absolutely nothing. This means they had not eaten their normal course of food. They had kind of given up on food through the difficulties of the sailing through just a despair and an emptiness.

And Paul tells them that he prays you take some meat for this is for your health. The word health there is the word that we usually trend or usually is translated salvation. It doesn’t just refer to physical health. It refers to a whole spectrum of health that we see in terms of salvation.

Well, anyway, he said, “This is for your health. There shall not a hair fall from the head of any of you.” So, again, he gives them encouragement from God. And after Paul gives these words of encouragement to these men, he then does what any good pastor should do. He gives them example. Actions speak louder than words.

And Paul, after encouraging them to take food, himself then in verse 35 takes bread and he gives thanks to God in the presence of them all. And when he had broken it, he begins to eat. And now for the first time that I can discern in the text, we actually see where everybody aboard the ship do what he tells them to do in verse 36.

Then they were all of good cheer. Paul had turned them by now. Now they’re all of good cheer. Now they’re not wishing to escape anymore. And they also took some meat. They did what Paul told them to do. And then we’re told we were all on the ship, 276 souls. We have the numbering of these people given.

The numbering of these people occurs in the context of their eating. We’re not told there were 276 men aboard the ship before we get to this portion of the text. We’re not told there were 276 men when they all get saved. We’re—the people are numbered and receive their significance as a group, so to speak, in connection to the eating of meat and this giving of thanks by Paul on board this ship as the transition has come from night to day.

Or the word 14 is used twice here. The first time it says this is the 14th night and then the text tells us now this is the 14th day. And there’s a transition then again from night to day. The scene is from night to day. The literary structure is from the 14th night to day. There’s a transition going on here.

Now I want to use this text to talk about thanksgiving. And you’ve been given a blank outline, not so you can draw pictures. As I suggested to one person earlier this morning, you can draw pictures actually, and pictures aren’t bad if you want to help you remember what these five points I’m going to give you are, but this is make an outline day, I guess.

And here’s the five words. I’ll probably give you six or seven actually, but these are the five points of the outline.

I want to talk about thanksgiving using this text as the basis.

And the first thing I want to talk about is unnatural thanksgiving. Unnatural is the word you should put on there. Thanksgiving aboard this sinking ship is unnatural. Thanksgiving aboard this sinking ship is secondly historic. And you might want to put instead of historic, transitional. It’s transitional. There’s a movement from night to day that this thanksgiving on this sinking ship is placed there in the context of.

Third, this thanksgiving is central. It’s central to what’s going on in the text. It’s central. Fourth, it is communal. The thanksgiving in the meal taken is communal. It’s in the context of a group. It’s not in isolation or individualized. And then the fifth word I want you to write down is it is culinary. It’s probably not a good word. It’s of food. It’s a thanksgiving for food. So it’s culinary.

So, those five words should be: unnatural thanksgiving, historic or transitional thanksgiving, central thanksgiving, communal thanksgiving, and culinary thanksgiving.

Now, the text tells us specifically here that there is a great significance to the giving of thanks in verse 35. If you look at verse 35 there in your text and to eat—now, in this particular text, the main verb, the verbal form here, as opposed to a participle listed for us, the main stress, forget what I just said, that the main stress of the grammar here of this verse places the primary action in the giving of thanks to God.

Okay. So he gave thanks to God is the point of the text and in association with giving thanks to God, he had done some speaking. He was taking some bread. He did this in the presence of all of them. He was going to break the bread and he began to eat the bread. But the central thrust of that verse grammatically, God wants us to focus upon the fact of his giving of thanks.

That’s why I’m using this text to talk about thanksgiving because it’s central to the entire text. And indeed, we could say that in a very real sense, it’s central to this entire appendix narrative to the book of Acts.

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Let’s talk about these five kinds of thanksgivings that occur in the context of this ship.

First, let’s talk about unnatural thanksgiving. Now, it’s kind of obvious, isn’t it? This first point, I don’t need to dwell on it much because it’s real obvious that as Paul begins to give thanks for the bread in the context of this group of men, he is doing it in an unnatural way.

There’s not a whole lot to give thanks for. They’re in difficult times. They’ve been going through 14 days of hell on board ship. Okay? It’s been tough for them. Manifestations of judgment. It’s what hell is all about. And they’ve been undergoing manifestation of God’s judgment aboard this ship. And it’s been hard, hard times. But they come to a position just before they reached this island where God is going to deliver them of giving thanks to God in an unnatural sense.

This wasn’t a natural thing for them to do. They were giving thanks in the context of great difficulties. And let me just say that I think that one of the doctrinal truths that this stresses to us is the sovereignty of God. Now, you either can be a fool. You can just smile through difficulties because you’re just trying to be an optimist and you’re sort of Rebecca of Sunny Brook Farm. You just always smile, you know, because you’re supposed to always smile. That’s foolish thanksgiving. That’s not what Paul’s doing here. He doesn’t, you know, he’s not whistling through past the graveyard.

Paul is basing his thanksgiving in a difficult unnatural sense based upon the sovereignty of God. He knows that whatsoever comes to pass is ordained of God and is for the well-being of his people. But more importantly than that to Paul, it’s for the glory of God. Paul says that if he dies, if he’s poured out as a drink offering to the church for the sake of the church’s benefit. In other words, if he’s killed and comes apart, as it were, and poured out as a drink offering, he’ll write later in his epistles, praise be to God.

His primary concern is the glory of God. And secondly, the well-being of God’s people. And he knows that whatsoever comes to pass is going to manifest glory to God. And so Paul’s giving of unnatural thanks is a reminder to us at Thanksgiving for us this week of the sovereignty of God. His hand is upon everything.

We have in the past, there actually a number of years back, I heard a tape by Greg Bahnsen. It was entitled unnatural thanksgiving and the entire talk was upon just this first point and he uses an illustration that song “It Is Well With My Soul.” You know that song? “Sorrows like sea billows roll, you have taught me to say it is well with my soul.” Beautiful song.

And what probably more a lot of people in this congregation know but others don’t is that song was penned by a man aboard another ship and aboard amongst great difficulties. The ship he was in—well, actually he wasn’t aboard ship, was he? He was on shore. It was his wife and daughter I believe were on the ship that sank. That’s right. So it was in the context of a maritime disaster, but the point was that he had lost wife and child in a storm and they had died.

I’m just not sure of the story now but the point, important point to remember is that he wrote that song in the context of it being well with his soul in spite of the fact that God had taken away his wife and his dear sweet child. And so he gave unnatural thanksgiving to God through penning that song that’s been used for hundred years by people to praise God in the midst of difficulties.

Unnatural thanksgiving.

And now you’re going to say, “Well, we don’t have to worry too much about that point, Dennis, because here in America, we’ve got a lot of natural reasons to give thanks. Hey, we’re going to be filled. We’re not on board a sinking ship. We’re not having these difficulties. We haven’t for the most part experienced the unexpected death of loved ones. It’s not well, you know, understand that’s Paul’s state, but it’s not our state.”

Well, let me just suggest that’s not quite true. Let me suggest that we also in this church, in your families, in this country, are aboard a ship that is greatly, greatly troubled by manifestations of judgment. You say, “Dennis, how can that be? We’ve got the internet. We got the worldwide web. We’ve got beautiful big homes. We’ve got great food. We’ve got a lot of people that we can come get in contact with all over the world.”

But ask yourself a few questions. How many people here, and don’t raise your hand, I don’t want to embarrass you—how many people here are freeholders? How many own property outright? And the answer to that question is zero. You may not owe the bank money for your home. Most of you do, either through rent or through purchase. But if you don’t owe the bank money for your home, you owe taxes, property taxes, every year.

The property tax is an assertion of ownership by the civil state. It is a permanent lien upon the property that you think you own. In addition to property taxes, the civil government has a little thing they call eminent domain. And if they want to put light rail through your property, they’re going to put light rail through your property because it isn’t your property. The civil state claims ownership over all land.

And so, nobody in this church is a freeholder in the biblical sense of the term. “Well, you own your property free and clear. Can do than what you will.” You can’t do it. Nobody. Now, that’s not normal, folks. In the history of the world, men are supposed to be able to own property and not be in perpetual debt like most people are for their homes and then not have to wait for the state to take them away whenever they want to or raise your taxes whenever they want to.

I know people whose property taxes are higher than their monthly payments were when they first bought their homes. Perpetual debt. That’s a troubled situation.

What about your money? Yeah, you can buy things, but for the most part, you buy things on credit, right? “No, Dennis, we don’t use credit cards in this church.” Well, some of us do. They’re not bad in of themselves. “We pay off the bills, don’t we?” No, some of us don’t.

But even if you do, even if you’re able to pay off all your debt, what are you paying off the debt with? You’re paying off the debt with paper money. And in fact, it isn’t even paper money anymore. It’s electronic blips. God’s word says that money is supposed to reflect the substance, value, and glory of God, the weightiness of God, the shining of his countenance. Gold and silver is what God says should be money.

And so what do you pay off your debts with? You pay it off with confidence. The confidence of the American people that people will continue to exchange these pieces of paper as they exchange goods and services is a picture of that exchange. But you’re not really paying off the debt with biblical money. And you’re paying off debt with money that the federal government can change at will.

The federal government can tomorrow change your money if they want to. Now, they might play heck trying to do it, but they can change it whenever they can print out more money. They can reduce the circulation of money. They can manipulate supposedly the value of money, and your money can be washed away with the tide of inflation in a year.

If you’ve got money sitting in a box like some of my kids do, that they’ve had in savings for a number of years, when you take that dollar out, if it’s a dollar bill, you’re not going to be able to buy today what you could have bought 10 years ago with that. You’re going to be able to buy a lot less. Not so with gold and silver.

So, we are in a position where both our land and our money is prone to and is actually subject to manipulation by the civil state. What about your children? “Well, Dennis, you know, we in the church where, you know, if we stop spanking our kids because of fear of the government, you know, the elders going to come talk to us.” Well, that’s true, but let’s think through that a little bit.

The fact is that the civil government right now and even people in the context of our church will gladly take in any child who leaves their home not just because of spanking but for virtually any reason and they will listen to them and frequently you’ll go through a long process of trying to get them back. Yes, our children have been placed in the stewardship of us as families and yes most of the time we get to maintain them but the fact is just like your property and your money the state exerts more and more control and authority over your children and probably none of us really are raising our children the way we really ought to according to the scriptures.

And if we did, if we did treat our children in their early years with the kind of discipline, and I don’t mean just the rod, but I mean the kinds of discipline the scriptures talk about, well, in all likelihood, they’d be removed from us. In spite of our great protestations that we’re good biblical Christians, we’re not let the civil government scare us. Fact is, they’re there. It’s real. And you cannot ignore that fact. You cannot pretend it isn’t true.

Now, if you think about it, folks, property, money, children—what else is there? I mean, there’s the worship of God obviously, but in terms of the manifestation of our blessedness in the context of our land or the removal of that in terms of manifestations of judgment from God, those things are central to a culture. And one by one, the civil government has locked those off from us or at least exerted more and more control.

See, we may not, you know, believe it, but we’re in a position of unnatural thanksgiving as we come to our Thanksgiving tables this Thursday. And you know, the saddest fact of all is that we don’t even know it. That we come to that table thinking everything is great, we’ve reached paradise, we can buy stuff on credit till our hearts for our hearts desire, you know? We have this illusion of all these great blessings but ultimately, you know, it is an illusion. No, it’s not totally an illusion. I don’t want it, you know? Please don’t think I want to get you not to be thankful for the things God has given you—for your children and your property and your money. It could be a lot worse obviously.

But if you measure it according to the biblical standard of what a culture should look like where most the normal condition is freeholding, and the normal condition is being able to work with your children to bring them up respectful of authority, and the normal condition is the exchange of money using gold currency as a fixed standard medium of exchange reminding us all of the substance and permanence of our God in heaven rather than the flimsy electronic blips that represent currency today—if you compare it to that, folks, yes, we give thanks this Thanksgiving day, this Thursday, but we do it in an unnatural sense.

I could go on. These men had thanksgiving in community. What is our community like today? Our community is increasingly one of isolation. I don’t mean us as a church, but as a culture. It’s isolation. The breakdown of cultures, the breakdown of all the intermediary authorities between the individual and the civil state. Families have become more transitory. Divorce is more common. Churches become transitory. People pick up and leave whenever they want to leave. No big deal. No sense of covenantal commitment.

And if you try to develop a little bit of that in the context of a local church, then you know those of you who have been with us for a while, difficulties lie ahead for that kind of a church. You can get through it. You got to do what’s right. It’s not easy to break the ties, the strong bonds of individuals that this country gives us.

So if we look at all these things, we should recognize that we are also in a position of unnatural thanksgiving. It’s not a thanksgiving we want though. This first point is a look back as we contemplate where we’re at and what has happened. Paul gave unnatural thanksgiving and as we look back to what this country once was and what the scriptures point out as the model for our families and our governments etc., then we have a position of unnatural thanksgiving.

But let’s look forward as well. This thanksgiving aboard the ship was historic. It was transitional. What do I mean by that? We’ve talked about the transition of authority the last three weeks. But really Paul the prisoner becomes Paul the captain of the ship. But here in the providence of God and the way this story is recorded for us in the historical events, this is when that transition seems to be most permanized, most established for us in the context of the text.

You see, Paul had given them courage. He had spoken to them all to bring them out of their despair. But the end result of that was shortly thereafter, a large group of men, the ship runners, the sailors and everything we’re going to take off. There’s no response of obedience pictured for us in the historical narrative that accompanies this text until this particular place. After Paul gives thanks and takes meat, then the sailors are of good cheer.

And then they take food and then they go about their necessary work to meet the day that’s come upon them and to get to that harbor. Transition of authority is what we’ve talked about. The prophetic voice—what happens in a culture? God’s judgments come upon it and there’s a transition of authority as problems are properly diagnosed and then the command imperative is given to worship God in the context of your culture.

I wore this tie today as a picture of this. It’s a stupid picture I suppose but it help me a little visual illustration. This is an old-fashioned tie. I believe this might be one that I got from Judge Beers. There’s an old-fashioned tie. I usually wear these little bright flowery ones. Those bright flowery ones are now the current ones. That’s the standard tie now. So this tie, I was telling people earlier when I came to church, this tie says subvert the dominant paradigm.

That’s what this tie says because it’s not your normal flashy tie. It’s that old-fashioned traditional tie. Now we hear that “subvert the dominant paradigm” and we don’t like that. There’s part of us that properly thinks bad of that idea because we know that one of the reasons we’re in the place we’re in is because the rebellion particularly coming to its fruition and great culmination of the 1960s against authority and to rebel against authority is to rebel against God’s secondary means of carrying out his will.

But let’s remember that we are now in the context of a paradigm and authority that is explicitly secular in which God cannot be referred to in the halls of education in the public schools, the elementary and secondary schools. See, we’ve come to a completely secularized state. And that dominant paradigm—that secularism is okay and acceptable and that pluralism is the way to go—must need to be subverted by the church.

And as God shakes this country, we don’t shake it. God shakes it. We’re there to point out to people, “You’re being shaken. OBBE represents the shaking of the educational establishment. It represents a further devolution of public schools. And the reason is ’cause you have rejected God.” We need to express an analysis of the culture and then as we do that we talk to the need for men to submit themselves to God.

And as we do that in the context of thanksgiving to God in spite of all the difficulties, I believe God establishes a change, a transition of authority. So thanksgiving in the context of difficulties—understand where we’re at, where we’ve been at, understanding where in the providence of God, he is taking the culture to the establishment of all things that cannot be shaken, the kingdom of our Savior. We give thanks in the context of that and God blesses that with a visible manifestation of a transition of authority.

Now, this involves—that the first point stresses the sovereignty of God, the second point stresses the doctrine of secondary means. Yes, God is sovereign, but God decides to work in his sovereignty through the secondary means that in his sovereignty he has established. We don’t have free will in the ultimate sense but we do have wills. We do have choices and while they are determined from God before the beginning of time, nothing happens that God is not aware of and hasn’t ordained rather to come to pass.

Nonetheless, God has in his ordination of the universe decreed secondary means and he’s decreed that the secondary means for the church to achieve a movement from one apostate fallen culture to a new one is the prophetic voice of interpretation and command in the context of thanksgiving on the part of our people. So when we come together every Lord’s day and give thanks to God at the Eucharist and when we meet this Thursday in our homes and give thanks to God, it is a picture. That is when that is God’s chosen secondary means to achieve a transition of authority from those shipmasters and the soldiers to God’s people—Paul now is in charge—and that has been happening gradually but it’s in the context of thanksgiving that God wants us to think of that transition of authority.

So it stresses secondary means and let me say also that in terms of secondary means, why does this come to pass? Well, it comes to pass because God is sovereign. God blesses his people who are thankful because our root sin is bitterness and prideful arrogance against God. Not wanting what he wants for us, wanting our own way, determining for ourselves good and evil. And when we have to submit ourselves to God in thanksgiving, that’s really the cure to our most deadly sin. Okay.

But as we do that, how does the transition of authority occur? God and his secondary means has his people be the steady, calm, courageous influence in the context of great difficulties. Paul and no doubt the company that was with him, the two men that were with him stood out like you know, not sore thumbs but a good thumb in the context of a withered hand. They stood out as men of courage, men of vision, men who could have courage and not just have courage and comfort in themselves but could as a result of their proper demonstration of biblical character produce then comfort and encouragement to the culture in which they lived on board that ship.

You see what I’m saying? If we are aware of the difficulties, don’t close our eyes to them and have a pasted smile on our face, but we’re aware of the difficulties, give thanks in the context of them, and encourage our culture to move on in the worship of God, then God says that’s his chosen means for affecting cultural transition in terms of authority.

And I’m telling you, when difficult times happen, and then these facades of peace and calm are taken away from this society, it is the men and women of this congregation and other such congregations who have stood fast and who give thanks to God even when things begin to break down that people will start turning to and looking to for leadership and authority. Now they won’t do it if we become unthankful, if we become bitter, if we become fearful and become paralyzed through a failure to comprehend and submit to the sovereignty of God.

But in terms of God’s secondary means, it is thanksgiving that is transitional here in the text and the change of authorities from the apostate authority to godly authority. Okay.

Now third, this thanksgiving is central. By that I simply mean that thanksgiving is central to the actions of the particular verse in which it’s found. It’s unnatural. It involves a transition of authority. And it’s central to the text. It’s central to the actions of Paul. The text itself grammatically points it out as central to everything else that’s going on.

And I want to just briefly remind us here of the five-fold liturgy that other writers have talked about for some time. And that is there’s a description of what we do at communion. Actually, some have talked about as a five-fold pattern, a six-fold pattern. But it’s real useful to us to remind ourselves of this.

I know some of you can think of it real clearly. When we go to the Lord’s table, what do we do? We take a hold of bread. Okay? And as we take a hold of that bread, we then give thanks to God for the bread. We break the bread up. We distribute it to the congregation. And then we all eat it and taste of it. And there is a picture for this of everything that we do in life.

No matter what you do, you’re going to go to work tomorrow. The men, you’re going to go to work and the wives are going to go to work in the context of their homes, their homeschools. And what you’re going to do at the beginning of the day is you’re going to grab a hold of your family. You’re going to grab a hold of the curriculum. Then you’re going to grab a hold of your computer terminal. You’re going to grab a hold of a tool. You’re going to grab a hold of your vocational task for that day.

And then you’re going to start changing where you’re at. You’re going to rearrange things. You’re going to break up the curriculum. Take out certain things to distribute to your children. Leave other things in. You’re going to break up your time. Men are going to take programs to break up reports, produce more data. They’re going to make changes. They’re going to order things. They’re going to receive things. They’re going to fix things. They’re going to change things. They’re going to break the bread, so to speak. They’re going to work and that work will be distributed out to the culture.

In the context of homeschool, it’s directly to your children and then through them eventually the impact will go out to the culture. Your work is distributed, your effort, personal effort to change things is then distributed to the culture and then the culture evaluates that your work and either says, “Well, this bread tastes good or this bread tastes terrible.” You know, you did a real good job of, you know, hanging this door frame in this house or boy, it’s crooked and it’s no good.

There’s an evaluation process as we go along. See, everybody does that on this ship. Paul does that with the bread. On this ship, the sailors do that with their job, too. The difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is in that four-fold step of taking a hold of your work, doing your work, distributing your work, and evaluating your work. Okay? There’s another step stuck right here after you take hold of it and that is the giving of thanks.

The giving of thanks is what distinguishes Christian men and women, boys and girls, from non-Christian men and women, boys and girls. What does Romans 1 describe for us as the central sin of men who become apostate and then turned over to various lusts and difficulties which we all know about? Their sin is a failure to acknowledge God and give him thanks.

Thankfulness involves putting aside our own wishes and desires and submitting ourselves to God in a thankful spirit. Thanksgiving, what you do this Thursday—said, only do it once a year. It’s no good for you. We’ll turn to turkey will turn to terrible stuff in your mouth, so to speak. But if it characterizes your attitude daily, then we’re doing what we’re acting as Christian men and women, and then we’ll achieve the kind of transition of authority and blessing we want in the world around about us.

So as we go today to communion, let’s think about what we’re doing and let’s put that in the context of what we do every day. When you get up every morning, the first thing you should do when you get up as you wake up is to give thanks to God for the day. What does it do when you give thanks to God for the day? It’s a means of consecrating what happens in that day for the purposes of Christ’s kingdom.

We give God thanks, acknowledging his gift to us. And when somebody gives you something, you’re just going to use it the way they want you to use it. It immediately puts ourselves off of center stage. It puts God and his sovereignty on center stage in submission to him. And it changes the way we work. And what it says is if you’re going to be thankful for the work you do today, you’re not going to go to work then and break the commandment against theft or against false witness or against murder by hurting somebody as you perform your task. Is you consecrated that task to God and you said this task is going to be used in the context of the service of God and I’m going to use it then not as I see fit.

I’m not going to determine for myself what’s good and evil. I’m going to let God’s word, God’s law determine what I do today. So I’m not going to be dishonest in a transaction and I’m not going to speak behind somebody else’s back and kill them through slander at work. See, so thanksgiving is central to how we live our lives and this pattern we go through this little ritual this liturgy every Lord’s day when we, at the center of our worship service, really the culmination of worship service, thanksgiving to God—when we do that we perform an action that’s a model for everything that you do in life, whether it’s recreation, vocation, whatever it is. Thanksgiving is at the center and heart of it.

Fourth, notice here that thanksgiving is in the context of community. Paul isn’t off by himself. He’s in community as he give thanks to God. It’s in the presence of the people that he’s called together to encourage to eat. And you know, by way of application, we don’t want to hide our thanksgiving to God because we’re ashamed.

You know, remember interviews, they replay it fairly frequently. Bill Buckley interviewed Malcolm Muggeridge, who converted to the faith and then he eventually became a Roman Catholic. I don’t know what that means but I do know that Muggeridge talked about the fact he was a well-known journalist and a thinker and when he became a Christian he talked to Buckley about you know, they were talking about witnessing for Christ and professing Christianity in the context of their upscale culture, so to speak. And you know, they were saying that you go to these parties in New York City and you if you start talking about Jesus Christ you become known as a—”Christ, you know, somebody’s always talking about Christ.” He’s a “Christ-monger” and there’s a reluctance on the part of people.

Buckley couldn’t understand how Muggeridge could be so forthright about his faith. He was sort of ashamed about bringing up Christ in the context of cultural setting. And unfortunately, all too often that’s the way we are. But as we live in community, we live in the society the place God has placed us. Our thanksgiving should be done in the context of the watching world. We shouldn’t be reluctant to give thanks, for instance, when we go out to eat because we don’t want people staring at us.

I mean, in a way, we do want people staring at it in a way. We do want people acknowledging the need to give thanks to God. Now, you don’t want to slip over to the sin of doing this instead of giving thanks to God, putting on a demonstration or show for those people watching. But the fact is that as you give thanks to God in the context of difficulties particularly or in the context of blessings from God, in the context of dining establishments etc., as you do that, you fulfill the command to witness for Christ. Really.

And you—it’s a reminder to our culture that everyone should be giving thanks to God for their food. For instance, when you do it in the context of an eating establishment, I pray for the day when every eating establishment we go into will be filled with people who before they eat visibly and without shame, without showing off, without shame, give thanks to God in the context of other people where it’s normal.

It won’t ever be normal if we all stop doing it. We all get embarrassed about it. We all don’t want to do it. We all just pray by ourselves now, you know? You know, I understand you don’t want to be, you know, prideful and all that stuff and you want to avoid that sin, but we certainly want to avoid the sin of hiding our thanksgiving and as a result blunting our witness in the world. So thanksgiving is in community.

I also want to say here as I said earlier that this is an indictment against our culture and society that is so much stresses the individual as opposed to the community. Thanksgiving, every Lord’s day, we don’t go home and have our communion service by ourselves. We come together corporately as a community when we engage ourselves in thanksgiving. And it’s a reminder that while the individual is important, the group is important too.

The equal ultimacy we talk about of the one and the many, the individual and then the group. And so in the context here, thanksgiving happens in the context of community.

And then finally, thanksgiving is for food. It’s for food. You know, it seems obvious, I suppose, but it’s important to say. We’ve talked about the application of this text and all kinds of wide implications of it. But let’s not forget what Paul is actually literally doing in the first application of it. He’s giving thanks for stuff he’s going to eat.

This is important. I was listening to a great tape by James B. Jordan yesterday and he said, you know, the problem we’ve got is we got these Old Testaments and we got these New Testaments. Instead of having one Bible, God never called one part the Old Testament, one part the New Testament. It’s one Bible from God. You understand? And what we call the New Testament is built upon the foundation of the Old Testament.

And it is obvious when you read much of the New Testament, you cannot understand it apart from some kind of relationship to some base or foundation. And when we toss out the Old Testament as the base or foundation, we’re going to lay a different foundation. And for 2,000 years, much of the Christian church has laid a foundation of Greek philosophy. Okay? And Greek philosophy said that what salvation is all about is transcending earthly pleasures and delights, transcending the body.

You know, it’s like these science fiction shows. We all want to be eventually pure energy and pure thought. Hate our bodies. And so, Christians have been taught that, you know, dancing with your body is bad and drinking alcohol is bad. The scriptures say wine is good. Drunkenness is bad. And Christians have…