Give Them Rest (Elder Kevin Young, 01/06/23)

Thank you so much, Caleb and Alaina, that was beautiful.

Always a healthy reminder, this is our Father's world.

And that's what we are here on the Sabbath to do.

Part of the point, Sabbath was set aside

so we could reflect on creation.

And so thank you, that pairs very nicely

with today's topic.

So this is gonna feel a little bit strange

because I feel like I'm introducing a speaker

and yet I'm speaking.

But it's actually building towards next Sabbath's

religious liberty Sabbath.

And I always found it a little strange we would

have an, what's the order of service?

We have an offering call and then somewhere down the line

we also have a message.

And so the message meant to compel

the religious liberty offering campaign,

giving comes after the giving's been, anyway.

So we're gonna build this here,

we're gonna build towards that.

We're gonna build towards the why of that campaign.

So yes, next Sabbath, and so I'm borrowing

some of those campaign resources with today's sermon

adapted from a manuscript.

So next Sabbath is January 13th,

that's religious liberty Sabbath.

And this special theme is near and dear to us

and it commonly includes that offering appeal.

I left the flyers at home but they will be here next Sabbath

for the actual religious liberty offering.

But if you want to,

you may have seen the link on the slide,

on the announcement slide for religious liberty campaign.

But also you can go to libertymagazine.org slash donate

for their concise description.

This is what we do, this is what this offering goes towards.

But in summary, you can,

the religious liberty department,

public affairs and religious liberty department

in the Seventh Day Adventist Church

is avid in religious liberty advocacy efforts.

And you can also see on the website

some of the ways to give or on the flyer

that we'll hand out next Sabbath.

You can see some of the more unique ways to give

than the offering in the plate.

But for today's message, turning to today's message

it's adapted from a sermon manuscript

provided by this year's speaker,

religious liberty Sabbath speaker chosen by the NAD,

John Ashmead Esquire.

John earned his law degree from Howard University

School of Law and he served as the assistant attorney general

for the state of Connecticut actually.

And he's also a senior assistant counsel for the,

oh excuse me, that's what he has done before.

He's currently senior assistant counsel

for the Yale New Haven Health System

and he's also serving as the associate public affairs

and religious liberty director

for the Atlantic Union Conference.

And so he's put his law degree to work

but he's also putting it to work

for religious liberty advocacy in the SDA Church.

And so he knows a thing or two more than I would

on the subject.

So starting off, there's the point about Apple.

Where sometimes there's the saying,

do you really wanna know how the sausage is made?

Well, do you really wanna know how your phone is made?

Oh boy, it's something we try not to think about.

But Apple is the most valuable company in the world.

And this economic juggernaut has enjoyed almost a monopoly

over the smartphone and tablet markets.

In the great controversy between smartphones,

you're either Apple or Android, yeah.

So we have the heavy hitters.

Each year, millions of consumers eagerly await

the next new model or software upgrade to their phones.

And few appreciate the work that actually goes

into those products.

Many are actually unaware that the iPhone and the iPad

are not manufactured stateside.

These products are generally manufactured to some degree

in factories in China, India, and Taiwan.

There have been ongoing reports that the work conditions

in these overseas factories for this brand in particular,

and I wanna be clear, this is a heavy hitter,

it's a juggernaut, it is by no means

an isolated case to them.

But they've had reports specific to them

where the work conditions in their overseas factories

would be troubling if we knew how the sausage was made.

Workers work six to seven days per week,

often forced to work up to 12 hours a day

to meet the insatiable consumer demand for these phones

and other devices.

Not only do the workers work long hours,

but they also do so for a pittance as far as wages go.

They're forced to live, in some cases,

forced to live on factory campuses

away from their families.

And from time to time, there've been reports

of high suicide rates among these workers as well.

So workers often complain of facilities

with poor ventilation, ongoing exposure

to hazardous chemicals, and being forced to work

for weeks without a day off.

These conditions leave them tired, exhausted,

and if they are complained though,

they are replaceable and so easily terminated.

Apple made the decision to manufacture its products

in China to take advantage of labor laws

that permit them to hire a cheap and skilled labor force

where workers can be compelled to work long hours

without dealing with labor unions

or the costs of healthcare, workers comp,

anti-discrimination laws, pregnancy leave requests,

family leave requirements, those things that, you know,

cut into the bottom line.

These benefits that protect American workers

from exploitation are not often extended there.

And so, but here, stateside, those benefits do protect us.

They give rest to the weary.

And when I think about the grueling work schedule

of these factory workers in China,

kind of makes me a little exhausted.

But have you ever been weary?

Have you ever been exhausted or tired from working hard,

maybe stressed, in need of rest?

You don't have to be an overseas factory worker

to feel this way.

It's something that maybe is, let's say,

a cultural observation,

why we're not strangers to weariness, to exhaustion.

We sometimes are cultured to feel,

oh, we need the next big thing, or we need,

we can have it all.

You can do all the work to get all the things,

but also build all that family and support that family.

Oh, get, supply all the things there.

And boy, while we're out doing all that work,

oh man, we, you know, all those hours are filled.

And then now we, by extension,

are trying to fill the kids' hours too,

so we're, to keep them busy and looked after

while we're doing our thing.

It's a cycle, it's a cycle.

I get tired thinking of that.

I don't have kids, but I feel the tired

from the rat race sometimes.

So have you ever needed rest from that hard work?

This is where God's people found themselves

in today's key text.

They'd been slaves in Egypt for 400 years,

and boy, were they tired, exhausted, needed rest.

Physical and spiritual rest had been taken from them.

We don't know, the Bible doesn't tell us

how many hours of day they worked,

but one can assume it was long work hours,

limited leisure time.

And they worked, the Hebrews worked seven days a week

with no rest.

This is implied by Moses' request to Pharaoh

to let the people go into the desert for three days

to rest and make sacrifices.

The Egyptian taskmasters employed physical force,

intimidation, and harsh treatments to compel work.

Slaves who failed to meet their daily quotas

experienced terrible punishments.

Indeed, it was due to Moses witnessing the harsh treatment

of a fellow Hebrew that he even intervened

in a more hands-on manner,

in the form of killing an Egyptian taskmaster.

We don't know the life expectancy of the Hebrews,

we don't know the life expectancy of the Hebrew slaves,

but we know that slaves in the United States,

in our history with slavery,

their average lifespan was 36 years

compared to the non-enslaved population

life expectancy of 50 years.

So quite a difference.

For the American slave, this shortened life expectancy

was attributed to poor work conditions,

or excuse me, living conditions, poor nutrition,

and of course those exhausting long work hours.

It's no wonder that Moses sought to bring the Hebrews rest

and to teach them to rest.

From the pen of inspiration, here's a word on this issue.

This is out of First Testimonies,

or Testimonies, Volume One, excuse me.

God reserved the seventh day as a period of rest for man,

for the good of man, as well as for God's own glory.

He saw that the wants of man required a day of rest

from toil and care, that his health and life

would be endangered without a period of relaxation

from the labor and anxiety of the six days.

But in the case of the enslaved Israelites,

Pharaoh bristled at the thought

that Moses taught people to rest.

Cuts into the bottom line, doesn't it?

This rest needed by the Hebrews was not just physical though.

They needed physical rest so that the Hebrews

could also offer sacrifices to God.

In other words, spiritual rest.

In confronting Pharaoh, Moses and Aaron were asserting

on behalf of the Hebrew people

the universal fundamental right that exists

for planet Earth.

If there was a heavenly bill of rights,

rest would be a principle and primary right, would it not?

There is in the universe, in God's universe,

a fundamental right to rest.

Yes, rest.

The Bible tells us that in the beginning,

God created the heavens and the Earth,

he created light out of darkness,

divided the light into day and night,

created the land and water, green grass,

fruit-bearing trees, created the sun to govern the day,

the stars and lesser lights to govern the night,

filled the waters with animals, littered the skies

with birds and spread animals across the Earth.

Then he decided to make a creature in his own image.

And so in doing so, he made man and woman in his image,

gave them dominion over the Earth,

not, importantly, not each other.

When God had finished the six days of labor,

working day and night, 24, six,

the account tells us that he blessed the seventh day,

sanctified it and rested.

God set in place a universal pattern for man to emulate.

Six days of work, one day sanctified and blessed rest.

Seventh day, he called the Sabbath.

This was given to the man and to the woman,

but it was not just given to them,

it was a gift for all creation,

a gift to the animals, a gift to the land,

a gift to the Earth itself.

Six days of work, then rest.

This is dotted across the Bible,

starting with God's own example in Genesis two.

And remember, as we read it,

was God really the one who needed the rest?

Think about that, our limitless, powerless, tireless God,

did he need the rest?

Who was it created for?

So in Genesis two,

thus the heavens and the Earth were completed

in all their vast array.

By the seventh day,

God had finished the work he had been doing.

So on the seventh day, he rested from all his work.

Then God blessed the seventh day, made it holy

because on it, he rested from all the work of creating

that he had done.

So as, then moving on,

we're reminded in the 10 commandments

to follow that example God set.

Because again, he didn't need to rest,

but he knew we would and that we should.

In Exodus 20, eight through 11,

remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

We can almost say this in our sleep, can't we?

Six days you shall labor and do all your work,

but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

On it, you shall not do any work,

neither you nor your son or daughter,

your male or female servant,

your animals or any foreigner residing in your towns.

For in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth,

the sea and all that's in them, but he rested.

He rested on that seventh day.

Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day

and made it holy.

And as if we needed the reminder

that the command was a blessing rather than just a,

do it because I said so.

In Mark two, Jesus reminded the Pharisees of his day,

but also to all of those hearing

and reading his words today,

the Sabbath was made for, for who?

Not man for the Sabbath.

This message is not itself an in-depth study

on the Sabbath fundamentals,

but I encourage you to talk to a friendly face in the pew,

church leader, et cetera,

if you wanna look more closely at that sometime.

But bringing it back into today's train of thought,

I'll refer to Testimonies Volume Four

where Ellen White asserts the following.

God claims one day, one day,

and gives it back, gives it right back to man

as a day in which he may rest from labor

and devote himself to worship

and the improvement of his spiritual condition.

What a flagrant outrage is it for man

to steal one sanctified day of Jehovah

and appropriate it to his own selfish purposes.

Even when sin emerged,

the Sabbath was an ordinance of rest

that bound all to yield control to the creator,

reflect on our relationship with him

and reflect on his creation.

Each Sabbath mankind is called to rest.

We were to rest from all our labors.

Sabbath is a great equalizer,

rich or poor, male, female,

all yield to the power and authority

of the creator of the universe.

That's the call.

When confronted with his defiance of the will of God,

Pharaoh doubled down and increased his harshness

towards the children of Israel.

His attack against God's rest

was both physical and spiritual.

I want you to understand the nature of Pharaoh's strategy

to defy God and deny his people their rest.

The Bible tells us that he increased the workload,

made the work longer and harder

and then scattered the people around Egypt more.

He then gathered the Hebrew leaders,

beat them up and told them

that the reason their work is harder

is because these troublemakers, Moses and Aaron,

demanding rest and sacrifice for them.

So Pharaoh knew that when God's people are divided,

they can be more readily conquered.

Pharaoh knew that when God's people are in fighting,

they can be controlled.

That time-honored strategy continues to today.

The Pharaohs of our day,

be it government, corporate or religious,

continue to divide us by our race, our gender,

our class, even nationality.

So God's effort though to give his people rest

resulted in the creation, you can say,

of the first labor union in the history of the world.

They advocated for rest, physical and spiritual.

I want you to understand that

this first resistance movement recorded in scripture

was about rest and the last will also be about rest.

So the path to rest though is not your work, of course.

Here's what God instructed Moses

to say to the children of Israel,

a word that resonates to all the oppressed

through all the ages.

And this comes out of Exodus six, verses six through eight.

Therefore say to the Israelites, I am the Lord

and I will bring you out from under the yoke

of the Egyptians.

I will free you from being slaves to them.

I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty

acts of judgment.

I will take you as my people and I will be your God.

Then you will know that I am the Lord your God

who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand

to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob.

I will give it to you as a possession.

I am your God.

I am your God and I will give it to you as a possession.

I am the Lord.

The Bible tells us there's a work that only God can do.

In the beginning, he created.

The world is not the product of random chance operating

by natural mutation, but life is the product

of the mind of our creator.

He spoke and it was done.

He was not the product of the military mind of man,

but by the mighty word of God who spoke and plagues fell,

who breathed and sees opened by his might alone

and empire fell.

And by his power alone, his people received rest.

All God wanted them to do is rest.

God's redeeming act brought Israel both physical

rest by taking his people out of Egypt.

God gave his people physical rest.

They're no longer slaves to the Egyptian empire.

By bringing them out of Egypt, God gave them spiritual rest.

The Sabbath, they could now worship God every seventh day.

In other words, the Sabbath is the great symbol

of God's rest given to mankind.

Every time we rest, it opens the door to worship God.

Every time we rest on Sabbath, we acknowledge God.

Every time we rest on Sabbath, we honor God.

It's an ongoing and perpetual reminder to all mankind

to remember God as creator.

This is why God reminded Israel of the following

in Deuteronomy five.

Remember that you were slaves in Egypt

and that the Lord your God brought you out of there

with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you

to observe the Sabbath day.

The Sabbath is a symbol of every slave, servant,

bondsman, day laborer, farm hand,

these days the blue collar worker

and everybody in between.

God can redeem you by his mighty hand.

If there's anything I want you to take from the rest,

take from this message, it's that rest precedes worship.

That's why Satan and Pharaoh, his workers,

put that under attack.

Rest precedes worship.

Before you worship God, you must rest.

If you don't rest, you can't worship.

When you come to worship, you need to lay aside

the labor of the week.

Ignore the worries of the week.

Forget the stress of living in a sin-sick world.

Put down the wars of the week.

Doesn't mean they disappear,

it means you're putting them at Jesus' feet

and take the shoes off your feet

so that you can worship the God whose presence

lit up a mountain and whose glory outshines the sun.

Far too often when we worship, we remain connected

to things that can't save us or redeem us.

Those stresses that we carried through the week,

the to-do lists that's still rattling around in our mind

when we try to sit down and be quiet

and know that he is God for a moment,

we need to set their distractions,

we need to set them aside.

We remain also distracted by these devices in our pockets

or other such.

The fruit of restless work.

We worship data and information rather than the God

who's the source of all knowledge.

In the passage for our meditation,

Moses pleads with Pharaoh to let the people rest

so that they may go into the wilderness

to offer sacrifices to God.

I want you to understand that God expects us

to exercise this right.

There it is.

He's calling us to rest.

In face of oppression, we need to rest.

In face of disenfranchisement, we need to rest.

When the powers that be seek to enslave us,

we need to rest.

And I know we can struggle with this concept sometimes.

Rest seems passive.

Rest is not resistance.

Or is it?

The stories told of a young woman

in Montgomery, Alabama.

After a long day of work as a seamstress,

she was sitting on a bus.

Law required her in those days though

to give up her seat to a white person

in accordance with segregation laws.

But she was tired.

She decided to rest.

She held her seat.

That led to her arrest.

Her arrest led to the Civil Rights Movement

that culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

I think we know who this is I'm talking about now.

Rosa Parks, yes.

Good job.

Rest can be resistance.

Her rest transformed America.

And God is calling us to rest.

Similarly, on October 24, 1975,

Icelandic women went on strike for the day to,

and this is out of some of their,

I guess some of the strike records of the day,

strike documents or news reports of the day.

They went on strike to demonstrate

the indispensable work of women

for Iceland's economy and society

as well as to protest wage discrepancy

and unfair employment practices.

It was publicized domestically as Women's Day Off.

Participants led by women's organizations

did not go to their paid jobs that day.

They did not do any housework or child rearing

for the full day.

90% of Iceland's female population participated.

It's incredible.

Iceland's parliament passed a law

guaranteeing equal pay the following year.

There's power in rest.

Last year, the Oakwood University basketball team

had to forfeit a playoff game

that was scheduled to begin during Sabbath hours.

Their petition to a local athletic organization

or athletic association to reschedule the game to a time

outside of Sabbath hours was denied.

These young men chose to rest.

Their stand for Sabbath rest resulted in an invitation

from the governor of Alabama and national publicity

for a group of young men who took a stand for their faith.

The public affairs and religious liberty department

for the general conference got involved,

filed suit, and the athletic association settled

with the promise to accommodate Sabbath rest going forward.

So God is calling us to rest.

And we can worship.

The Hebrews heeded God's call to rest.

They followed Moses out of bondage.

They left behind their slave masters.

They left behind the land of the Pharaoh,

left behind the gods of Egypt, and entered into rest.

They began their journey to the promised land.

But before they journeyed,

they met God at Sinai and rested,

physically and spiritually.

We need to understand if we're to worship God,

we must first rest.

When there's no rest, there can't be worship.

When there can't be worship,

deliverance can be hard to come by.

Now fast forwarding to these United States.

For 246 years, enslaved Africans had no rest.

In many instances, the enslaved Africans

worked six or seven days a week.

While slavery lasted, early Adventists advocated

the end of slavery by their voice, vote,

and defiance of the laws that sought to keep men and women

also made in God's image in perpetual bondage.

The war to end slavery and the ratification

of the 13th Amendment was the first step to freedom

for those excluded from rest.

But following the end of that slavery,

workers, whether black or white,

worked 12 hours a day, six days a week.

There was a time.

In other words, from sunup to sunset,

from sunup to sundown basically.

In many instances, even children found themselves

working these long hours in factories

and fields across the country.

So next, a bloody fight between organized labor

and corporate monopolies began.

Labor unions acted by any means necessary

to fight for laws that would benefit workers

and bring them rest.

Their tactics were so bad at times that Ellen White

warned Adventists not to join those movements,

while at the same time still condemning

those corporate monopolistic powers

that wouldn't allow their workers to rest.

So imagine being caught in this rock and hard place.

The unions would compel workers to strike

sometimes against their will,

and also the corporate monopolies would deny them rest

against their will.

It wasn't until 1930, late 1930,

when the Fair Labor Standard Act was passed,

limiting work hours to 40 hours a week,

that many employees finally started to get some rest.

But that rest didn't always lead to Sabbath worship.

It led to leisure.

Still, by 1950, life expectancy in the US

increased from 50 years to 68 years.

How about that?

Today, that's bumped more so into the mid-upper 70s.

But consider Loma Linda,

what we sometimes refer to as Adventist Mecca.

Not solely Adventists living there, but mostly.

It's recognized as a blue zone, a geographic area

with a high concentration of people

living over 100 years of age.

There, the average lifespan is more like

89 years for men and 91 for women.

It's incredible.

You can kinda see in these modern comparisons,

it pays to rest, and it turned that rest into worship.

Ironically, it was the advocacy of unions

and not the work of the church that finally brought rest

to an overworked entire nation.

Because the laws in the United States now protect rest,

a new form of unrest has been shipped overseas

by corporate giants like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon,

you probably have a few others

rolling around in your head right now as well.

Where workers are being exploited at factories

when they work from sunup to sundown,

six, seven days a week.

This year, in Religious Liberty Advocacy Efforts,

we celebrate Gerald Groff, an Evangelical Christian

who believes that Sunday should be devoted to rest

and worship, and Alan Ranick, an Adventist attorney

who has devoted his life to defending Adventists

who seek to rest on God's holy day, the Sabbath.

Together, they challenged the United States Postal Service

and their business partner's decision

to deny Groff's request to rest on the day he called holy,

a decision that was in violation

of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

So in that challenge to the USPS,

Mr. Groff upped the chance for rest

to thousands of Adventists who lose their jobs

on a yearly basis because employers across the nation

refuse to grant them rest.

This joint stand of a Sabbath keeper and a Sunday keeper

resulted in a unanimous decision, unanimous,

that's a big deal, unanimous decision by the Supreme Court

to affirm the power of rest in an age

where corporate pharaohs continue to increase the workload

on an exhausted nation and world.

The legacy of slavery continues to haunt our world today,

and rest remains the battle cry for the oppressed.

Our political divisions are largely driven

by the fight between these corporate giants and labor.

There's a concerted effort to destroy union power,

give massive tax cuts to corporate giants,

and deregulate government control over the actions

that work against the interests of the laborer, the people.

As Adventists though, we understand that the final battle

in Earth's history will be over rest and worship.

Our pioneers understood the role this country would play

in taking rest from the Earth.

They concluded that the United States was the land beast

of Revelation 13 because of slavery.

They understood that the final battle will be

over both physical and spiritual rest.

They knew that physical rest gives mankind the means

to prepare for spiritual rest.

They knew that physical rest must first be diminished,

and when that occurs, spiritual rest is under attack.

With divine insight, Ellen White connected the fight

for rest between laborers and corporate powers

as leading the societal divisions that would elevate

a few men at the expense of the dignity of the masses.

In other words, men would gain dominion over each other

to the detriment of the nation.

As a consequence, our church predicted that Christians

would seek to elevate Sunday as man's effort to give rest

while protecting corporate interests.

This forced rest will not lead men to worship,

but will in fact remove liberty of conscience.

Men cannot give what only God can ordain.

However, our pioneers knew that those faithful to God

will defy the man-made rest for the rest

that only God can give.

And a final generation will rise and honor God's Sabbath

and remember him as creator.

Martin Luther King offered these words

during the fight for civil rights.

I'm tired of fighting.

I'm tired of fighting for what should have been mine at birth.

I'm here today to tell you that now is the time to grow,

now is not the time to grow weary.

There's more rest to fight for.

So I want us to remember these seven things today.

First, we are made in the image of a creator

who made the world, made it in six days,

made the universe, but also made the world in six days,

and then rested.

He set the example for resting after working.

God created the Sabbath so that we can rest.

Next, because we're made in the image of our creator,

we don't have dominion over each other.

We're made in his image.

Each person is equal in God's sight.

We have dominion over nature.

Consequently, no person has the right or power

to take rest from us.

Third, God made rest for all mankind in nature.

It's the first fundamental right that supersedes

the claims of all governments and corporate interests.

Four, we must teach our children to rest,

and our families should rest together.

Family that rests together stays together.

Next, if you don't rest, you're a slave.

Don't be a slave.

Slavery destroys Sabbath rest and the image of God

and every human being.

Next, Sabbath rest is the great symbol of liberation

for all people who find themselves enslaved,

be it by old-fashioned slavery, ecclesiastical dominion,

or the modern corporate slavery.

God calls us to physical rest so that we can worship.

Our mission is to bring physical and spiritual rest

to the world.

This is why the early Adventist pioneers fought

against slavery and identified the United States

as the final beast power that would take rest

from the earth.

And last, the final battle in earth's history

will be over physical rest that will take away

from spiritual rest and worship.

In this final battle, God and those who are faithful to him

will be victorious.

So in closing, we can't preach the Sabbath

unless we're willing first to fight for that rest,

be it fighting to break away from the rat race

in our own lives and be willing to hit that pause button,

put the cares at Jesus' feet, they're his now,

turn our hearts and minds to him,

or be it fighting the more frank or sinister challenges

to our freedom of conscience,

or advocating for others who are oppressed.

Physical rest precedes spiritual rest,

and spiritual rest leads to worship.

You can't worship unless you are at rest.

If there's one consistent mission for our church,

it's to give rest to the world,

telling overworked and spiritually deficient world

that has forgotten its creator that there is a God

and he wants to give them rest and abide with them.

God is calling us to take a stand for rest,

to tell the world about rest, to fight for rest,

but most importantly, to rest.

When we rest, we remember that God's the one

who's really in charge.

God will defeat pharaohs of all kinds,

lead us from slavery to freedom,

redeem us from physical and spiritual bondage,

and we will enter in a communion with the God

who leads us to the promised land,

a city whose maker and builder is God.