By Michael A. Milton
Yesterday
in the Wall Street Journal, there was a great op-ed piece which reminded everyone
of just how politically incorrect is this holiday. The Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving
was about honoring Jesus Christ the Son of God and Savior of the World, who
is the full manifestation of the one, true God of the universe, the God of the
Bible. As the writer put it, the first Thanksgiving was by a bunch of Fundamentalists.
He did not mean to say that to be demeaning to Bible-believing Christians, but
to be factual. They believed in a certain set of ideas about God and Man and
they didn’t believe other ideas. Their beliefs had consequences and in large
part, this nation is here because of their belief about Jesus of Nazareth. Their
Thanksgiving, like Naaman’s, was about God’s glory.
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In
Revelation 11.17 we read this:
“We
give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken
your great power and begun to reign.”
What
we do today in our homes is not to thank “each other,” or thank “goodness” or
to have a national day of congratulations that we made it through another year,
but to thank God. And in doing so, to confess the glory of God in our lives.
Lesson
Number Three: Thanksgiving is not to repay God but to rejoice in Him.
Elisha
would not be beholden to Naaman and his money. The renewed Naaman needed to
learn that the God of the Bible does not need Naaman’s money or his power or
his influence. He needs nothing from Naaman. And Naaman needs everything from
this God.
In
the Book Acts, Chapter 8, we see something similar:
“Now
when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’
hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me this power also, so that anyone
on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” But Peter said to him,
“May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift
of God with money!”
God’s
grace is not cause and effect, it is unconditional. God’s grace is not contractual,
it is covenantal. God’s grace is not about making a deal, but about entering
into God’s deal—His offer of new life for those who turn to His way of salvation
by faith. And that way is to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, to die
to yourself and your ways, and to follow Him.
What
is most interesting to me in this passage is this: what ignited the act of thanksgiving
which was a response to God’s grace and a confession of God’s glory in the life
of Naaman? It was, of course, a little servant girl. The second most powerful
man in Syria was helpless in his disease. When he got his healing, he would
have to say, “I wouldn’t be clean, and I wouldn’t know God except for the power
of the testimony of that little girl.”