Sermon by Pastor Dale Wolcott

February 22, 2003

(Scriptures quoted are from the New King James Version unless noted)

Imagine a shack in the land of Goshen in Egypt. A little barefoot girl in a raggedy dress is standing in the doorway. It’s almost dark outside, and the little girl turns to her mother: "Why doesn’t daddy come home?"

Wearily, mother says, "I don’t know, honey. Maybe the taskmaster is making him work all night again." Across the valley they can see the fabulous palaces of the Egyptian taskmasters, but the little family sits down to a scanty meal on the dirt floor, without their daddy. The little girl’s tears drip from her cheeks onto the crust of bread in her hand.

Or imagine another doorway in Goshen. A pregnant woman stands in the doorway at dusk and watches as the men come up the road from the work project. Behind her, a ten-month-old baby plays in the dirt. One of the men turns into the path toward her doorway. His bare shoulders look raw; there’s blood on his face. The taskmaster was in a bad mood again today. But before she can turn to find a basin of water and a towel, he shoves her aside: "Get out of my way, woman; can’t you see I had a bad day?" She stumbles over the baby, falls to ground and cries out in pain.

Exodus 1 and 2 tell the story of the children of Israel in slavery in Egypt. Note 1:13, 14: "So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage – in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was with rigor." Chapter 2:23 says, "Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out."

There’s something very tragic in what this verse does not say. We expect it to say, "They cried to the Lord," but no. They just cried. The greatest tragedy of the Egyptian slavery was not the hard work or the scanty rations or even the resulting family dysfunction. The tragedy was that Israel nearly forgot everything they had known about God. Being forced to work seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, there was no time for fathers to tell the stories of Genesis to their children; there was no time to gather as God’s people to celebrate His greatness, to worship the One who made them, to find renewed strength for another week, another month or year.

What does this story say to Midland, to 2003? Satan is using different kinds of bondage today, but some of us are finding we still don’t have time for God, for family, for eternity. Families are hurting in Midland in 2003.

Dr. Richard Swenson is a Christian physician and author of the book and video series Margin: Prescription for the Pain of Overloaded Lives. According to Dr. Swenson, overload – time pressure – is the dominant disease of Century 21. Back in 1967, testimony before a Senate subcommittee predicted that by 1985, thanks to automation and increases in productivity, people would have a choice to work 22 hours a week; or work 27 weeks a year; or retire at age 38. Instead, the opposite has occurred. We work longer hours, are further in debt, and send more of our young mothers out of the home to help make ends meet, than ever before. The bondage of Century 21 is the bondage of time pressure, bondage of the clock, the schedule, the deadline. And the idolatry of Century 21 is the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar.

When God freed the slaves from Egypt, He restored to them a gift as old as creation, a gift that provides a rhythm for living: It was called the Sabbath. The Sabbath gives life a rhythm that frees us from the endless pursuit of getting and spending, of building palaces and empires as the slaves of Egypt did. The Sabbath frees us to build, instead, relationships for eternity – with God, with God’s people, with our families.

Let’s take a look at the story of how God restored the Sabbath to the slaves in Egypt. Turn to Exodus, chapter 4. God called Moses from 40 years of sheepherding in the desert, and sent him to Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Note ch. 4:22: "Say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD: "Israel is My son, My firstborn. So I say to you, let My son go that he may serve Me," ’ " or as many translations say, "that he may worship Me." Seven times in the next few chapters, God tells Moses to repeat these words to Pharaoh: "Let my people go, that they may worship Me."

So Moses headed for Egypt. He met his brother Aaron, and the first thing they did was to invite the people to begin keeping the Sabbath again. Note verses 29 to 31:

"Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel. And Aaron spoke all the words which the LORD had spoken to Moses. Then he did the signs in the sight of the people. So the people believed; and when they heard that the LORD had visited the children of Israel and that He had looked on their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshiped."

Note that the purpose of the Sabbath is worship. Sabbath is not merely a holiday, a day for catching up on shopping or home improvement projects or football; it’s a holy day, a day for worship.

Now: How do we know this was on a Sabbath? Go down to chapter five, verse one. After this worship experience, Moses and Aaron enter the palace and say to Pharaoh, "Thus says the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go." In verse 2 Pharaoh says, No way, and in verse 3 Moses and Aaron say, Yes, please, we insist. Notice Pharaoh’s response in verses 4 and 5: " ‘Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people from their work? Get back to your labor.’ And Pharaoh said, ‘Look, the people of the land are many now, and you make them rest from their labor!’ "

When Moses recorded this conversation with Pharoah, of course he wrote it in Hebrew, although the conversation took place in Egyptian. I don’t know what Egyptian word Pharaoh used when he accused Moses and Aaron of making the people "rest" from their labors. But when Moses puts Pharaoh’s meaning into Hebrew, he has two Hebrew words for "rest" to choose from. He chose not to use the more common, everyday word (nuach). Instead, he chose the less common word, shabath – the verb from which the word "Sabbath" comes; the same word he had used in Genesis 2 when he wrote that "on the seventh day God rested" from His work of creation.

Pharaoh was upset because the people hadn’t showed up for work on Saturday! This Sabbath keeping would put a serious dent in the Egyptian economy. And folks, when we claim our God-given freedom to rest and worship every seventh day, it’s going to put us at odds with the dollar-worshiping world around us! Do you recall how Pharaoh reacted? He increased the work load, and their Sabbath-keeping got them in big trouble! You can read the story in the rest of chapter 5. Have you noticed that even today, when people start keeping the Sabbath, things sometimes seem to get worse?

But God was at work – He set them free, "by a mighty hand and by a stretched-out arm" (Deut. 4:34). That first Sabbath, when they believed and bowed down and worshiped, was like a foretaste of the day they would march out through the Red Sea, and be free forever! God wants our Sabbaths to be that way too.

Now a question: Did they escape from Egypt because they started keeping the Fourth Commandment? No! The only reason they got out of Egypt alive was that a lamb shed its blood in their place on that final night of deliverance. And the only way you or I will ever reach the heavenly Promised Land is because we have placed the blood of Jesus, shed on the cross, on the doorposts of our hearts.

So God led Israel out of that house of bondage, out into the wilderness, and headed them toward Mt. Sinai. They got thirsty and God gave them water to drink. They got hungry and God sent manna every morning. In chapter 16 is the story of how they gathered the manna; if they weren’t out there at daybreak gathering their breakfast, it melted and they went hungry. If they slept in, planning to eat yesterday’s leftovers, they discovered the leftovers were spoiled. Freedom from slavery did not mean freedom to be lazy. Freedom in Jesus is not freedom from responsibility. There is a rhythm of freedom that they needed to learn, and we do too.

Note vs. 23: "This is what the LORD has said: ‘Tomorrow is a Sabbath rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. Bake what you will bake today, and boil what you will boil; and lay up for yourselves all that remains, to be kept until morning.’ "

So here’s the rhythm of freedom: First, we work six days. (There was daily worship too – a morning and evening sacrifice every day – but there was also work to do.) During the "six working days" (Ezekiel 46:1), God will provide what you need for the seventh day. Then, when the Sabbath comes, we rejoice in the rhythm of freedom – a weekly celebration of God’s goodness, a time when we’re free to fellowship with Him, to concentrate on building relationships for eternity.

But there was a problem. The people weren’t used to this new weekly rhythm, this rhythm of freedom. Note vs. 27: "Now it happened that some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather, but they found none."

Have you ever tried to go to sleep at night and somewhere down the street, or in the next room, somebody has their rock music turned up, and all you can hear is the relentless, unceasing bass rhythm of a rock band? That’s the devil’s rhythm – a constant pounding, never any letup, like an Egyptian taskmaster, driving us to earn a little more, push a little harder, pursue the ever-receding American dream, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

But we get used to it. In fact, we take pride in it. We become addicted to it. Like those Israelites coming out of Egypt, it’s hard to rest when you’re used to working 24/7! It takes discipline and preparation, and some practice to get into this new rhythm of Sabbath-keeping. But it’s well worth the effort!

This coming fall, all across North America, Seventh-day Adventists will be participating in a series of "Sabbath Conferences" — reaffirming the blessings of Sabbath, refreshing our awareness of how to enjoy Sabbath, encouraging a revival of true, Jesus-centered Sabbath-keeping. We’ll have one here – either in Midland or somewhere nearby as a District-wide event. The year 2003 will be in a sense "The Year of the Sabbath" for our church. We will discover new dimensions of God’s rhythm of freedom!

Now notice vs. 30. Moses had a "Sabbath Conference" with the people there in the wilderness. He mentored them, he instructed them, and as a result, it says, "The people rested on the seventh day."

That’s God’s plan for your life as well. This morning I’m going to invite you to make a new commitment to God’s rhythm of freedom in your life. But before I close, let me tell you a story.

When Nancy and I moved from California to Monument Valley, Utah, in 1990, and began our work with the Native American people there on the Navajo Nation, we got acquainted with a young man who lived over the back fence in our trailer park. Gerry (not his real name) worked in maintenance at the mission hospital. He’d grown up Adventist, but his wife wasn’t a church member. They attended church sporadically, with his two little boys. I used to have some good discussions with Gerry. He was a serious thinker.

But then he got a job in Flagstaff, and they moved off the Reservation, and I mostly lost touch. Once, he told me they’d been to church a time or two, but not often. Then I heard his wife had left him; eventually he remarried.

Then one Sabbath, there was Gerry in church with his boys. The boys were bigger now. We spoke after the service. They’d moved back, Gerry told me; he was home again. He’d been living with the devil’s rhythm for too long. He wanted to break the bondage, get back into Bible study and be re-baptized. And he said, "You know what, pastor? Yesterday when the sun was going down, I felt the peace again. It had been a long time since I felt the Sabbath peace. It felt good."

Have you ever felt the Sabbath peace? I thank God for the Sabbath every single week! Last night, a few of us began the Sabbath in ministry, at the Breathe Free Plan. It wasn’t a typical way to open the Sabbath, but it was wonderful.

And yesterday afternoon, before Nancy and I left the house, before the sun went down, I went around the house and gathered up our household trash and took it to the transfer station. (That’s one of my Sabbath preparation jobs). Then I showered and put on clean clothes. (People may debate whether bathing is a necessary part of Sabbath preparation. The issue isn’t bathing. The issue is finding the peace. For me, when I shower before dark, and put on clean clothes while the late afternoon sun is still streaming in the window, I start feeling the peace.) So we came here to the church, and I saw the Sabbath glow on the faces of the rest of the team. Before the people began coming, we stood in a circle there in the Activity Center, and we prayed together. It was Sabbath, and we felt the peace.

Will you make a new commitment today to experiencing God’s rhythm of freedom? Maybe you’ve never felt that Sabbath peace, and you’d like to learn. Please come forward during our closing song. We want to help you discover the joy of Sabbath-keeping!

Maybe you have memories of Sabbath peace, but lately you’ve been caught up with the things of the world and not really resting on Sabbath – not preparing for it, not prioritizing it – and you need heaven’s help to renew your experience of Sabbath rest. Come forward and pray with us.

Maybe you have been outwardly keeping Sabbath – going through the motions – but not experiencing Jesus’ presence in your Sabbaths, and you want to seek a renewed restfulness in a closer walk with Him. Come forward as we sing.