America: God Shed His Grace On Thee Part 1 - History Talks

You're listening to the road.

It has to teach your steel home.

So maybe not for yet.

We have just come through an election cycle as we are praying for our president and our president alive.

As we have the freedom to gather here.

That freedom and the opportunity to vote.

That was one 400 years ago for the labor of a group of men and women that believe in something greater.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on The Road, visit the Road.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from pastor teacher Steve Holt.

We're going to do something different today.

And then I mentioned last week we weren't going to do Revelation today.

We're actually going to look at the history of the founding of our nation because we're coming into Thanksgiving.

So all of you that love history will enjoy this.

All of you that don't will love this too because I'll make it interesting.

But I think with revisionist historians around us and even what's happening in some cases in our educational system, you not you may not be aware anymore, maybe never knew a little bit about the history of the founding of our nation.

But I think coming off an election, like we just had, which was which was very combative, probably the most combative I can recall in my lifetime, it seems as though it has become the mode of normalcy to be angry and to demand your rights.

I think there had been 1,500 or 2,000 views as of last night.

I didn't even know it was up.

Isaac did it in uh in Oklahoma, and then he posted it on my website.

And so it had been shared some 30 times or something, and I hadn't even seen it yet.

So if you haven't seen it, you might look at that and share it if you feel like it's appropriate.

But long before you were born, long before your parents were born, long before your grandparents were born, long before your great-grandparents and even your great-great-grandparents were born, there was actually a group of people that became frustrated with their nation and frustrated with the inability to worship as God had called them to worship in a system that had been built very closely aligned with the federal government.

And that federal government dictated where you worshiped and how you worshiped, and it was done in a certain particular way that at that time created a lack of freedom.

And so there were two groups.

There were two groups that that began to rebel against this system.

And I want to talk about one of those groups here this morning, and they are called the Separatist.

And they founded our nation and came to the shores of Massachusetts, which we would call Cape Cod in that area, and we're going to talk about that this morning.

And there was also another group that came just before them to an area called Jamestown, Virginia.

The impetus of this was a freedom from oppressive government, freedom to worship any way they desired, freedom to work hard and achieve with their God-given talents whatever they had the ability to achieve, freedom to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ wherever and whenever they were so led.

They came with no guarantees that this experiment, and it really was an experiment, an expedition, would even work.

They came leaving fortune, everything that they owned, and everything they cared about, all of their lineage behind, and they came and founded America.

Men and women, with all of the problems of our country, America is still, I believe, considered a light on a hill to most nations.

Even with all of our shortcomings and faults, aliens and immigrants from all over the world still flock to America to show them how to find that universal dream called freedom?

Why do all the clear-thinking, freedom-loving nations of the world still look to America for vision, values, and purpose?

In spite of the opinion of many revisionist historians that occupy the academic chairs of our schools, is there historical evidence that America was founded to be a nation that took the gospel to other nations of the world?

Did God have a plan for America?

Christopher Columbus, which means Christopher means Christbearer, wrote these words on his first expedition to the Americas.

He actually landed in what is currently, it was back then called the West Indies, but is currently the Bahamas.

He wrote these words.

It was the Lord who put into my mind, I could feel his hand upon me, the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies.

All who heard of my project rejected it with laughter, ridiculing me.

There is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit, because he comforted me with rays of marvelous inspiration from the Holy Scriptures.

I am a most unworthy sinner, but I have cried out to the Lord for grace and mercy, and they have covered me completely.

I have found the sweetest consolation since I made it my whole purpose to enjoy his marvelous presence.

For the execution of the journey to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics, or maps.

It is simply the fulfillment of what Isaiah had prophesied.

No one should fear to undertake any task in the name of the Savior if it is just and if the intention is purely for his holy service.

Would you turn your Bibles to Genesis chapter 12?

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

I want to look at the calling of Abraham.

This was the seminal passage that the separatists and then later the Puritans used as foundational for them to experiment with this idea of what would later become the United States of America.

And I want to put this as front and center as we begin this study this morning.

Genesis 12, 1.

Now the Lord had said to Abram, Get out of your country from your family, and from your father's house to a land that I will show you.

I will make you a great nation.

I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

I believe God raised up America to be a light to other nations.

I believe God has raised up America with all of our faults and all of our mistakes, and we have a plenty, to be a model to the nations of a democracy in which there's a separation of powers and there's the opportunity to pursue happiness, to pursue a dream of your talents and your giftings and your anointings from God, sovereignly given to you, to be able to be entrepreneurial, to be able to make an impact, both with the gospel, but through business and through enterprise and through commerce and through free market systems that we have.

As you've heard me say many times, that this church is built on a free market system.

And so when people have approached me with vision for ministries that you have, my advice is for us to begin to pray if it fits under our vision of building whole-hearted disciples of Jesus.

If it seems to be a ministry that will equip the saints to be whole-hearted disciples of Jesus, if your passion is to build whole-hearted disciples of Jesus, then we make room for it.

And then we let the system of the church grow that ministry or not grow that ministry.

Because some people, and you know, and I've been just been, man, there's so many, there's so many failures in my life, it's unbelievable.

And uh, but you don't fail if you don't try, right?

And so America was built, and I believe that that foundation has affected even the church, that God places a vision, he places a mission in our hearts, and then as we walk that out, we're honoring God, men and women.

Matthew 25.

You know, Matthew 25 follows Matthew 24.

And we're in the book of Revelation, we've been in Matthew 24, kind of toggling back and forth.

How Matthew 24 is Jesus talks about the last days.

He talks about what I call the times of the signs.

But then Matthew 25 follows Matthew 24.

There were no chapters and verses when Matthew was written.

And in Matthew 25, he says, look, you've been given talents.

And he speaks of, he speaks of the uh of the virgins and the oil and their lamps, and then he speaks of these talents that are given, of five and three and one, and he comes back and he wants us to use those talents for the glory of God.

That's what largely America was founded on was this vision, not just for the propagation of the gospel through missionaries, but the propagation, the expansion of the kingdom of God through your work, through your talents, through what you do.

Some of you are accountants, some of you are doctors, some of you here are lawyers, some of you are mechanics, some of you are foremen of companies, some of you are looking for a job, right?

A lot of you are students.

And in the process of that, God has a purpose for that.

And America was founded to give you that kind of a vision and also the freedom to be able to experience that.

In April 1607, a fleet of three ships settled in the Chesapeake Bay.

The settlers sailed up a river they named James after the King of England.

And in May, they established a settlement they called Jamestown.

Jamestown had many problems, of which all were spiritual.

The settlers at Jamestown did not seek the Lord's direction or wisdom.

The location chosen was low-lying and malaria infested.

The river water was contaminated.

They treated the Indians with contempt and paid dearly with hostile attacks on a regular basis.

With little spiritual input or commitment, the people were either too lazy to work or too proud to do common labor.

But one of the biggest problems was the communal system by which each person had to give to a common store, meaning that the most industrious had to provide for the idle and lazy.

Jamestown was an abject failure.

How do you like this?

It took 19 years before Jamestown produced its first crop.

At the same time, as the Jamestown tobacco was occurring, there were two great spiritual movements happening in England.

In the 1700s, excuse me, in the 17th century, the 1600s, these two groups began to be touched by the Reformation movement of both Martin Luther and John Calvin.

These two movements, though, worked out their particular personal revivals in two different ways.

One group was the Puritans, and the Puritans believed that they could work within the Church of England and bring revival and awakening within the church, and so they were called the Puritans for the idea of purifying a desire to purify the Church of England.

This was most notably led by men of influence, often even in the political arena, and men of wealth.

Well, there was another group.

And they separated.

They felt like within the Church of England they could not truly worship the Lord, and so they separated from England, and they were called the Separatists, and they are what we've classically now called the pilgrims.

The separatists who escaped persecution and they were persecuted, many of them burned at the stake, some of them beheaded, many imprisoned as they broke away from the Church of England.

This congregation of separatists from the village of Scrooby, England, decided to move to Holland.

And Holland was a difficult place.

They lived there for 11 years, and then they began to feel through fasting and prayer that God was calling them to this new land, this area called the Americas.

Because don't forget, many different adventures as well as settlements had occurred along the eastern coast up to this point.

John Robinson, the pastor of the group, wrote at this time, now as the people of God in old time were called out of Babylon, civil, the place of their bodily bondage, and were to come to Jerusalem and there to build the Lord's temple or tabernacle, so are the people of God now to go out of Babylon, spiritual, Babylon spiritual, to a spiritual Jerusalem, and to build themselves a lively stones in a spiritual house or temple for the Lord to dwell in.

And in 1620, the first group of pilgrims boarded the Mayflower in Plymouth, England, and set sail for the New World.

Only thirty-five of the hundred and one passengers were separatists.

The day they left was declared a day of fasting and prayer, and again their leader, John Robinson, admonished them with these words Whereas you are to become a body politic, using amongst yourselves civil government, and are not furnished with any persons of special eminency above the rest.

So this was a common group from common blue-collar backgrounds.

Let your wisdom and godliness appear not only in choosing such persons as do entirely love and will promote the common good, but also in yielding unto them all due honor and obedience in their lawful administrations, for the image of the Lord's power and authority which the magistrate beareth is honorable in how men, persons soever.

Don't you like this language?

I mean, it's just uh very I mean, seriously, you have to read this like ten times sometimes to understand what they're saying.

So I'm sorry you're just having to hear it for the first time out there.

But you can get my notes later.

Edward Winslow, one of the leaders of the group, wrote this.

There being many in the congregation, very expert in music, and indeed it was the sweetest melody that ever mine ears have heard.

Well, they needed their prayers because it was six, it was seven weeks of hell on earth, a towering, ill-lighted, rolling, pitching, stinking inferno as the Mayflower made itself across the Atlantic Ocean.

They were made fun of by the other sailors.

One, I thought this was interesting, one obnoxious sailor said, of the pilgrims, their psalms singing puke stockings.

PG 13, you know, right here.

Um, and then he was found gravely ill and died in one of the storms.

Finally, on November 9th, the cry Land Ho was heard, and the place was identified later as Cape Cod.

And on November 11th, William Bradford wrote, Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed God of heaven who had brought them over this vast and furious ocean.

But there was a problem, and the problem for the pilgrims is they had been commissioned by the London Company, and they found themselves landed in an area outside the jurisdiction of the London Company.

So they knew that the Constitution and the particular rights, as it were, that came with the London Company, which came from the Church of England as well as the political aspects of the Parliament in England, they were outside that jurisdiction.

So 41 men, so not only the pilgrims, but some others joined them in putting together what is considered one of the greatest documents, milestone documents in American history, and that's the Mayflower Compact.

And let me read this to you.

It's very brief, but it's it's written the way they wrote it back then.

In the name of God, amen.

We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord King James, by the grace of God of Great Britain, France, Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, etc., having undertaken, and this is the part that I think is important, having undertaken for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid and by virtue hereof to enact.

The first winter was dreadful, food and shelter inadequate, and the pilgrims started dying.

Six dead in December, eight dead in January.

By February, they were dying at a rate of two a day, even three on Sundays.

At one point, only five men were well enough to care for the sick.

Forty-seven men, women, and children had died.

Thirteen out of the eighteen wives were dead.

But compared to Jamestown, where the mortality rate had been 90%, they felt blessed.

And gradually the light of Christ was winning the victory.

Even the non-believers were being touched by the witness of the pilgrims.

But the struggle for survival continued until one day a most remarkable thing happened.

An Indian walked into the settlement and said in perfect English, Welcome.

Do you have beer?

And the pilgrims brought out Akur's light.

Now, revisionist history here.

His name was Samoset.

He was a Sagamor, which means he was a chief of the Abenaki tribe.

It was then in conversation with Samoset that the pilgrims discovered how providential their location for the settlement had been, the opposite of what had happened at Jamestown.

This area had been the territory of the Patuxets, a large, hostile tribe that had murdered every white who it had ever met on those shores.

But just four years before the pilgrims arrived, a mysterious plague had broken out, killing every man, woman, and child in the tribe.

Hence, all the land had been cleared, perfectly prepared for the Plymouth settlement.

So the land literally belonged to Noah.

It didn't even belong to the Native Americans.

Samoset then returned with Massasoit, the Indian chief who had proved to be a great blessing to the pilgrims.

It was Mossasoit that signed the treaty with the pilgrims that lasted for over 40 years and would be a model for some future settlements in America.

Not enough, by the way.

After Massasoit and Samoset left, one Indian brave remained, and his name was Squanto.

All right.

Some of you know your history.

According to Governor Bradford, Squanto became, as he said later, a special instrument sent of God for our good beyond our expectations.

Squanto's whole story.

We don't have time to go into it.

It's an amazing story.

You might just look that up.

It almost sounds like the life of Joseph and how God prepared him for such a time as meeting the pilgrims when he did.

It's an amazing story.

But Squanto taught the new Americans, the pilgrims, the Indian way of planting corn in the climates of the Northeast.

That fall, through Squanto's help, the pilgrims harvested 20 acres of corn.

Squanto showed the pilgrims how to catch cod and eels.

He showed them how to hunt for turkey and deer.

He taught them how to harvest and refine maple syrup, how to plant pumpkins among the corn, how to discern herbs that could eat and herbs that could be used for medicinal purposes.

Squanto showed them how to trap for beaver, which was greatly desired in Europe.

By the summer of 1621, the pilgrims were brimming with thanksgiving.

There was now enough food for the coming winter.

So Governor Bradford called for a day of public thanksgiving to be held in actually October.

Masasoit, the peaceful Indian chief, came back, but he brought with him 90 Indian braves.

And so there was some consternation about food until they realized that the Indians did not come in empty-handed, and they brought five dressed deer and over a dozen turkeys.

And they introduced a new product line on that first Thanksgiving that you enjoy today.

And it's these little kernels that you actually throw in a pot that was over fire and they pop popcorn right there.

We should have a Massa Soit company out there for popcorn.

And the celebration of Thanksgiving lasted for three days.

Now it would be a mistake by me not to take us to the next winter.

So the next winter was actually more harsh than the last winter.

So Thanksgiving had occurred, but and he had 20 acres of corn that they had harvested, but the next winter was actually more severe, but not anyone in the group died of starvation.

So we come to the next winter now, and then we come out of the spring of 1623, and it's time to plant again the corn.

And there's a dispirited despondency, almost a depression over the colony about the work that needed to be done.

And the men came together and did something very radical.

They decided to do two plantings.

So the first planting would be for the common good, which they had done that before, and which Jamestown continued to do year after year, but there would be a second planting.

And the second planting was from your plot that you had been given that would be corn or pumpkin just for your family.

And suddenly new life infused in the pilgrims.

People weren't quite as sick as they had been before.

And so it was written, it made all hands very industrious when we made this change, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by and means the governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble with much better content.

The women now went willingly into the field and took their little ones with them to set the corn, which before would allege weakness and inability, whom to have compelled would have been thought to be great tyranny and oppression.

And so soon a great drought came, twelve weeks of no rain, and the Indians danced and prayed before their gods, and the pilgrims fasted and prayed, and did the rains ever come, and they produced the greatest crop they had ever known.

So here's a few foundational principles on the pilgrims or the separatists, and I'll close with these.

What we learn from the pilgrims that have been and are foundational for America.

Here's the first, number one.

Sent out to build a great nation that would in turn be a blessing to all other nations of the world.

In 1647, Governor Bradford wrote these words Last and not least, the pilgrims cherished a great hope and inward zeal of laying good foundations, or at least making some ways toward it for the propagation and advancement of the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in the remotest parts of the earth.

And men and women, for the past 200 years, America has led the world in missions and led the world in building hospitals and led the world in education and led the world in preaching the gospel and led the world in gospel literature and led the world in providing water for impoverished nations, for taking medicine and doctors and nurses into nations to provide healing.

When I was in Japan as a missionary years ago, most of the major universities in the Tokyo area had been founded by missionaries.

And the Japanese totally credited their educational system and then later, even their constitution after World War II to a Christian influence.

Second, number two, the pilgrims, now I'm not going to speak of Columbus anymore or others that came, but at least the pilgrims and then later the Puritans were committed to God more than gold.

They felt they were blessed to be a blessing.

And so, Genesis 12.

Now the Lord said to Abram, Get out of your country from your family and your father's house to a land that I will show you.

I'll make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

The sad part for us now is that largely we are a country of ambivalence.

Because we seem to be bringing a blessing and a cursing simultaneously.

Because not only are we are we proclaiming the gospel worldwide in amazing ways, amazing ways, but we're also proclaiming pornography, and we're also proclaiming greed, and we're also proclaiming drug addiction all over the world.

When I was in Uganda a number of years ago, and we were we were in this Jeep and we're going down this road and it's really bumpy, and we we were looking at these billboards on the sides of the road, and the bill, these huge billboards, were all speaking of abstinence.

So they so abstinence was the theme of the president of Uganda.

This would be, I'm gonna say, like six or seven years ago when I was there.

And I was talking to one of the leaders of this Christian movement that I was going to speak for.

He said, here's what's hard right now, and he was Ugandan, is that the United Nations being led by the United States of America is holding back funds to our nation because of our abstinence campaign.

In other words, we've recognized here in Uganda that AIDS comes through sexual contact.

And that if you don't have sexual contact with someone who doesn't have AIDS, or in a way that's pure and right with the one who's pure and right, you don't get AIDS.

That doesn't seem very difficult to understand.

But the United States of America is saying if if we're not pushing their agenda on AIDS, which is mainly through contraception and some other things that he mentioned at that time, we're not going to get any funds.

But he said, here's what's interesting, Steve.

We are the only nation in Africa that is conquering AIDS.

No other nation is actually going in the opposite direction.

We're having less and less AIDS victims every year.

It's exponential.

And we credit that to the campaign we've had for the last three years on abstinence.

So in that case, they were up against what the U.S.

was saying they had to say if they were going to get any aid from the UN because of a commitment they had to abstinence.

So it's a two-edged sword, isn't it?

It's sad.

I'm giving you foundations.

These are the foundations that we were built upon.

Number three, the pilgrims were willing to stand for and suffer hardship for their Christian beliefs.

They lost everything for the cause of Christ and God bless them.

Now, when we talk about the Puritans, we're talking about people who really had large fortunes that they lost.

The pilgrims had already paid a cost to go to Holland and then on, but both together, in the case of two-thirds, actually lost their lives to come to America.

Number four, the pilgrims were the first to experiment with true democracy and succeed.

No one was special.

Now in Jamestown, it was different, but with the pilgrims and the Puritans, no one was special.

There were no gentlemen on the Mayflower.

Everyone was equal, and everyone was treated with respect and honor according to their character rather than their ancestry.

The Mayflower Compact is still considered the finest precursor we have to our declaration of independence.

The pilgrim showed the world just how important it is for each man and woman to be able to have the freedom to work hard with free enterprise and entrepreneurship.

They especially saw its value in that second spring planting.

We now have today the longest constitutional democracy in the history of the world.

Number five, the pilgrims believed in the power of God.

They fasted.

I mean, when you read the original documents, men and women, how many times they fasted and prayed.

They were always fasting and praying about something.

They were fasting and praying about whether they should go to Holland, they go to Holland.

They were fasting and praying whether they should leave Holland, they leave Holland.

They were fasting and praying about the Mayflower.

And then the funds that they needed to get on the Mayflower.

They fasted and prayed when they came to Cape Cod.

They fasted and prayed for their first election.

They fasted and prayed over the Mayflower Compact.

They fasted and prayed for that first winter.

They fasted and prayed for the second winter.

They believed in the power of God.

They believed that when they fasted and prayed, God heard from heaven.

And here's what's interesting: they were Reformation believers.

So they believed in the sovereignty of God.

But they believed in the power of God through fasting and prayer.

You could arguably say that America was founded on fasting and prayer.

Governor Bradford always called for a day of fasting and prayer before any election.

Novel.

What a novel idea that we might fast and pray about something as important as a presidential election or a governorship or a mayor.

But that's what Governor Bradford instituted with the pilgrims.

And then, sixthly and lastly, the pilgrims were the first to give us the separation of powers.

Because of the persecution they had been under, they wanted to make sure that the civil government took care of civil matters, and that the church took care of spiritual matters, and that the civil government could not put pressure on the church to believe or to preach a certain way.

Elder Brewster, the minister of the Plymouth colony, was organizationally separate from the civil authority, Governor Bradford.

The church could pick its own pastors and elders without government interference.

So the pilgrims, men and women, were just a group of ragtag common people who believed in a road less traveled, that they would be light bearers to light a candle, that there would be a light on a hill that would affect the rest of the world.

William Bradford, the first governor of the colony, would later write these words as one small candle may light a thousand.

Of the light kindled here has shown unto many, yea, in some sort to our whole nation, we have noted these things so that you might see their worth and not negligently lose what your fathers have obtained with so much hardship.

So may we not forget, as we have just come through an election cycle, as we are praying for our president and our president-elect, as we have the freedom to gather here, that freedom and the opportunity to vote, and I know that most, if not almost everyone in this room did vote in our election, but that was won some 400 years ago through the labor of a group of men and women that believed in something greater.

And I say that to close with this the frontiers are not done yet.

I like to go and I've been in Alaska.

I spoke at a pastor's conference in Alaska a number of years and they call it the last frontier.

Alaska's the last frontier.

There's so many more frontiers, men and women.

What a great time to be alive.

There are things happening today, and we see it even in our political system as well as in our church that are really exciting.

God's doing new things.

I pray you'll be open to new things.

I pray you'll be open to the road less traveled in your own life.

That God may speak to many of you in this room to do things that have never been done before, to walk with courage and faith and strength and bravery.

Not to settle.

Not to settle for mediocrity in your Christian faith.

Not to settle for mediocrity in your prayer life.

Not to settle for mediocrity in just having a job.

But that God might mightily use you and me in powerful ways, ways that we can't even imagine right now.

But as we seek the Lord, as we as we pray and we we crowd to God, God's gonna plant stuff in your heart.

Don't be fearful.

Walk with the courageous faith that comes through claiming the promises of God and believing Him for those things.

Some of you have loved ones right now in your family that are unsaved, they don't know the Lord, they're in rebellion, they're struggling.

And God's called you to be that prayer warrior that will make a difference.

These neighborhoods all around this church are full of men and women who never understood, never been explained, never been guided into a personal, vital, dynamic, growing relationship with Jesus Christ.

And God has us here for such a time as this.

To fast, to pray, to seek the Lord.

You've got neighbors on both sides of your house, and you have the freedom, isn't that exciting?

We have the freedom to share our faith.

And look for those opportunities that God will give us.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

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Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.