We have much for which to be thankful on this Thanksgiving weekend. Our Thanksgiving dinner is a mere token of all the good things in life that God has given us. And the most essential gift for which we must give thanks is our salvation, for in this all other good gifts are made possible.

This week, two ideas merge for us at Valley Bible Church: the certainty of our salvation in Christ, and thanksgiving for all that God has given us.

Jesus’s words in John 10:27-30 have some of the most reassuring promises in all the Scripture. The Father and the Son work in concert to achieve and secure our eternal deliverance from our own sin, the corruption of this world, and even death itself.

We see the work of all members of the Trinity in our salvation. The Father gave us into the hands of the Good Shepherd, His Son. The Son then asks the Father to give us His Spirit, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth (John 14:16).” The work of our eternal salvation is the work of the Triune God.

Taken together, we are given a gift that can never be lost.

We are eternally grateful for this gift, or so we should be. We must never take for granted what God has done for us in procuring eternal life in His presence, for we are pilgrims who long for a better home.

The first Thanksgiving was celebrated by those who were seeking a new home as well. They longed for a country where they could exercise the right to freely practice their faith in Christ.

There are many parallels to our current struggles. Just as they were fleeing persecution and seeking a new home where they could practice religious freedoms, so we too are fighting to hold on to the religious liberties which find their beginnings in this band of faithful believers, the Pilgrims.

We associate Pilgrims with Thanksgiving. But their story begins long before the first Thanksgiving. The very reason they left England (and Holland) for the New World was to seek a better place in which they could freely practice their faith in Christ.

These were puritans who separated from the Church of England. They saw the church as falling short of the ideals of the Reformation. The entanglement of the Crown, doctrines that were not sufficiently reformed, interference with local church polity, and persecution even unto death, led them to “seek a better country” (Heb 11:6).

William Bradford led a group of puritans to Holland to escape persecution in England. When that proved futile, they decided to leave for the Colony of Virginia. This group left Leiden, bound for Plymouth, England, to set sail on the Mayflower in 1620. Before they left Holland, they gathered with other believers to pray and say their goodbyes.

This account captures how they came to be known as Pilgrims and why we share that designation.

“Bradford explained that despite their sorrow at leaving, “they knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lift[ed] up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits.” The words alluded to the eleventh chapter of the New Testament epistle to the Hebrews, which lauds exemplars of faith as “strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” Among them is Abraham, who in obedience to God’s call “went out, not knowing whither he went” and reached “the land of promise.” These Pilgrims also did not know their precise destination, nor did they have any assurance of earthly success. They went by faith, secure in the knowledge that even should their earthly pilgrimage end in prisons or wildernesses, they would reach their eternal home.” (They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty, Yale University Press).

And so for us, on this Thanksgiving weekend, two ideas and two verses merge in perfect harmony: the certainty of our salvation in Christ, and thanksgiving for all that God has given us.

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth (Heb 11:13 NKJV).”

“Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” (2 Cor 9:15).