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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Talking Points, 3rd Quarter 2021: Rest in Christ

Kameron DeVasher

Mark Howard

01 Living in a 24/7 Society

I'm Cameron DeVasier and I'm Mark Howard and this is Talking Points.

Pastor Howard, we have entered into another quarter.

We are at the halfway mark and headed downhill.

Now, maybe it's a little bit ironic, but we're talking about, man, this 2021 is just really racing by and everything, but this quarter is intentionally going to try to slow us down a little bit with the topic being rest in Christ, which of course spiritual rest is only found in Christ.

So our mission territory is North American Division this quarter.

And a number of projects listed on the back of your quarterly.

Don't forget that each time we have a new quarter, we have a new mission emphasis.

And so every week you take up mission offerings, please continue to give generously, sacrificially to the mission work and those 13 Sabbath offering projects make a special attempt to help out with.

The word topic is probably the right word because sometimes when you have a quarterly it goes through a book of the Bible or it goes through a fundamental belief of the church like the sanctuary or the second coming.

This time it is a topic and the topic is rest and in the Seventh-day Adventist mind, often we'd go, oh, that means the Sabbath, that's code for Sabbath rest.

Exactly, we're definitely gonna touch on that.

But what the, it appears now, I haven't read every word of the Quarterly yet, but in reviewing it and looking over it, it seems to be trying to broaden our understanding of what rest entails.

So we're going to be looking at a lot of biblical examples of rest, looking at some of the, well, especially in this week, we're going to even look at the various words that are used for rest and try to expand our understanding of it.

Incidentally, when we teach the Bible principles of health, if we use the old New Start acronym, and there are variations of it, 1 of those principles is rest.

So clearly this is, I mean, and we look at, I mean, some of the things we're gonna see about God and the creation, He intends for us to be a rested people physically, emotionally, and of course most importantly spiritually.

All of those aspects of rest are going to be touched on in this quarter.

1 of the challenges I think we're seeing, and you're going to see it probably in this lesson and I'll kind of walk you through, especially when we get into how we made the talking points this week, that when you have a topic, especially a broader topic that could be addressed in so many different ways that you might not have like you would going through a narrative section of scripture or a particular passage, A leads to B, therefore C.

It can kind of get, it can kind of come across as convoluted or scattered a little bit all over the place.

And so we're going to still try to do our talking points.

We're going to do our talking points, but we're trying to make them clear like, okay, there's a reason this one's here and there's a reason these go together.

Well, we typically, if you've been with us for any period of time, we try on our talking points to follow a progressive flow of thought.

And at least in the first 2 lessons of this quarter, it's a little bit more difficult.

But the Lord's going to bless regardless.

And we're saying that because we're figuring that if we're seeing that, maybe you as a teacher are thinking, man, I don't know what to do with this.

Well, also, don't be afraid to, as you read through it, say like, you know, I might have put it in a little different terms or I might have addressed it this way first or something.

And as the teacher, you have the prerogative, I would even say the responsibility, not just to go through as it's listed, but as you understand it best to teach it in that way.

You know, Cameron and I think that way and we present that way very linear, you know.

It's like a logical progression of things.

And so we're like, well, you know, this is a little challenge.

And I can't, I'm sure that there are some Sabbath school programs I don't know if Tope TV or Amazing Facts 1 of the others is like this is a phenomenal quarterly this is just it follows along it makes so much sense and yada yada and so we're like.

Exactly maybe other people are drinking this in like it's a fountain, maybe it's great, but I think that for our way of approaching things, this 1 might lend itself to a little bit more challenge.

So before we do anything, of course, Pastor Howard, Can you give us a word of prayer and then we'll walk through our lesson for this week?

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the rest that you provide for us in your creation plan and especially the spiritual rest we can find in Jesus.

We pray that as we study this lesson for this week and in the coming weeks.

You would give us a clear understanding of how we can have the physical and the spiritual rest that would help us to be the faithful people you designed that we should be.

We ask and pray these things in Jesus' name.

Alright, now what we typically do at this point is say, all right, our first talking point is this, our second 1 is this.

What I'd like to do today is a little bit differently.

I would like to get to the talking points, but I wanna show how- This is new to me, folks.

I'd like to walk through the lesson as it's day by day.

We're not going to read through it or anything, but just talk about what the topics were and then see how it became these 3 talking points to give an example of what we're looking at.

So for instance, Sabbath afternoon starts with an introductory kind of illustration about the busyness and hectic pace of life, right?

And the whole quarter, I mean the whole week's lesson is living in a 24-7 society.

It's about busyness and our need for rest.

And 1 thing we can note immediately from last quarter is the way different contributors lay things out.

Like last quarter had a, this week we're gonna look at this.

Right, and then they'd have a summary at the end of the day, this week we looked at this.

Yes, at the end of this lesson there was a summary and we don't have that.

So anyway, there's this illustration to talk about the busyness of life that's Sabbath afternoon.

I'm not exactly sure why it got that title because it's talking about God's rest in creation and maybe...

But he wasn't worn and weary, needing a physical rest and man hadn't fallen into sin when God gave him say nighttime rest and the Sabbath day.

Darrell Bock And his labor is of a different nature.

I'm not sure why it's called that but it's talking about basically God's rest and his Eden ideal before the fall.

But then on Monday is titled Running on Empty and it looks at Jeremiah chapter 45, which is a very short chapter but it's all about Baruch's, the scribe of Jeremiah and his stress and emotional weariness or emotional emptiness, as it talks about, and how he needed to be refreshed.

Tuesday, we get into a basically two-day block of looking at the definitions of terms that are translated for rest, both in the Hebrew and the Greek.

So, on Tuesday it's the Old Testament words, which are Hebrew words, a number of them, a good number of them, they're translated in some capacity to rest.

On Wednesday, it's the New Testament terms for rest and the example of the disciples who needed to rest.

Thursday then it jumps back to the Old Testament to Genesis 4 and it looks at Cain who is a restless wanderer as the NIV tells us in Genesis 4 And it talks about how his separation from God made him a restless wanderer.

And then Friday it closes with a quote from the Desire of Ages about how the rabbis in the days of Jesus wanted to demonstrate their spirituality by how busy they were and how they were continual.

And so to me, that was a little bit of a challenge because it's a little, I mean, they're all good topics, but it's kind of more of a potpourri covering of it.

Yeah, what are our talking points, Pastor Cameron?

Number 1, coming from Tuesday and Wednesday, those terms, the Old and New Testament terms, I said rest, quote, is a broad term with many meanings.

Okay, so there's a lot of different words that can be translated to rest, And we're going to review some of those both in the Old and the New Testament, again from Tuesday and Wednesday.

Talking point number 2, rest was and is part of God's plan for humanity.

So we're going to look at that creation story that was illustrated there in Sunday and in Monday and Wednesday.

So Sunday, Monday and Wednesday is going to talk about this.

How both before the fall and particularly after the fall, we need rest physically, emotionally and spiritually.

And finally, number 3, no true rest is found apart from God.

We're gonna hone in on Thursday's story about Cain.

So that's where we kind of went from the lesson to the talking points.

04 The Cost of Rest

We are now in the fourth lesson of the third quarter all about rest in Christ The title of this week is the cost of rest Pastor Howard you were putting together the talking points for this week and Apparently it was a very seamless easy process was it not?

We will say that as you and I were discussing it the lesson I don't think the lesson ever clearly defines the cost of rest.

Or, as we were talking, not only define what the cost is but to whom it costs.

So in other words I made an assumption, you know, if our quarterly is written, and this may be the right or the wrong assumption, but if our quarterly is rest in Christ, rest in Christ really is talking about our salvation and our assurance that comes from salvation.

To me, the cost was Calvary, and so that's going to come into our talking points.

But you were conjecturing that it could be talking about repentance, the lesson goes into repentance, Dave's repentance, is it saying repentance is a cost?

I don't like that concept because scripture says that repentance itself is a gift from God.

So to say that I'm paying the price for my salvation is kind of.

Oh, you certainly don't want to go there.

So there might be some cost to you, but the real cost is to Christ, and that's what we're headed this week.

But I didn't find in the lesson where it said, like, the lesson opens on Sabbath afternoon and says there is a cost.

True rest has a cost, but it doesn't necessarily spell out, or I'm just looking right over it.

So, okay, having said all So, having said all that, why don't we pray And then I will go into our talking points for this week.

Heavenly Father, again, thank you for another week of life.

Thank you for the opportunity to study these important themes.

Bless us now as in this few minutes together, we go over these lessons and help the Sabbath school classes to be blessed by our preparations.

Well, we've brought it before and I'll bring it up.

Maybe this is belaboring it, but I can imagine that some of our teachers are having trouble getting, you know, putting, drawing out the talking points.

Again, it feels like this whole week's lesson is about David's sin with Bathsheba and the aftermath.

And so part of me is like, well, why don't we just talk about that?

And we're going to talk about rest and restlessness and we're going to take this concept and then we're going to try to back in and wedge into this story It feels like so just to your point though It is at least this week is a singular story for the most it's the story of this and so in it though It's under the umbrella of this rest motif.

You can essentially I just want to be clear that it may not flow with my thinking as well as I'd like.

For some of you, maybe this is like, oh no, it goes great, so I'm not trying to trash talk anybody, but our purpose for Talking Points is to help especially Sabbath school teachers to know what to do with the lesson.

And I want to revert back to what we've said before, that the Scripture is always the lesson book for Sabbath school.

And that's maybe why I have been challenged a little bit this quarter because the concept of rest and restlessness, while the concepts may be scriptural, it's not an exegesis of scripture where you're drawing it out and here's the concept and We've defined it this way.

It's more of a, this is how I read it and I'm going to put it back into the story.

So having said all that, this is what I came away with, with talking points based on this story of David and his experience.

Number 1, the cost of sin is exorbitant and unbearable.

Now I know the lesson is the cost of rest.

I'm starting out with the cost of sin and contrasting.

The cost of sin is exorbitant and unbearable.

So there's a cost of sin and then there's the cost of rest.

And again reading that rest is that rest in Christ, salvation rest, the assurance that comes from that rest.

I don't know if we mentioned it but Number 1 came from Sunday and Monday.

Number 2 then comes from Tuesday and Friday.

And then number 3 is after creation we rest.

And that will take a little explanation, but you'll see where I got it from.

And That comes from Wednesday and Thursday's lesson.

Let's go walking through our talking points.

Okay, well again our story is on David and his fall into sin with Bathsheba, the adultery, and then the subsequent murder of her husband Uriah on the front lines.

And of course when we think about sin, we think about, or restlessness, however we're going to frame it, we think about the cost, the wages of sin is death.

But beyond that, we think of David's sin, and I guess even before I dive into it, 1 thing that struck me in this lesson, because we're talking about rest, rest in Christ, is that the reason David fell into sin is because he was resting in Jerusalem.

So he was resting, but not the resting Christ that was being invited.

Because the Bible says it was a time, I mean it starts the story with it was a time when the kings go out to war.

And so because David was resting in Jerusalem It got him into all this trouble So I made a note that there's a difference between resting from Christ and resting in Christ Okay So he was resting from duties he should have been doing and following Christ the way he should have, and in his own resting, he actually experienced the restlessness that sin is going to get into that.

Incidentally, this was a time when David should have been working.

Resting in the wrong way leads to restlessness.

A lot of people like to talk about rest today, but are we resting the way God intended?

Is it possible you could even take time off of work, go on a vacation, seek after your own ways and still be restless?

You're digging into last week's lesson, right?

The core of all restlessness, sin, selfishness, and if I'm just living for myself in my rest.

Like, look at me, I bought a boat, I'm out on the boat, I'm out on the lake, and this and that.

Not that those things are inherently evil, but if I'm just living for me, and everything's about me, and my rest is all about me, it's never going to truly satisfy the deep longing.

Take my yoke upon you and you'll find rest, Jesus says.

So anyway, kind of going into the story now, David's sin, When you think about the cost of sin, I'm talking about the cost of sin being exorbitant and unbearable.

And that was Jesus, as we're getting into.

But beyond the wages of sin is death, think about what David's sin cost.

First himself, in just his reputation, his resolve.

Look at the effect, if you read the story of David, literally to the fourth generation, when you look at what God had said the sin would lead to, the effect it had on how he disciplined or didn't discipline his children and everything, the cost again to his own thought processes, his reputation, his resolve, the cost to Bathsheba and her reputation, the cost of the loss of her child, the loss of her husband, think about the aftermath of that.

Then there's the cost of Uriah, there's the cost of the soldiers in the field, that David's reputation as a leader to the whole kingdom.

I mean, the ripple effects of this aren't just David and Bathsheba and Uriah.

We talk about in the church today, you know, we try to reach this generation of the 30-somethings and the 20, you know, in this black hole of church attendance, the young adult group.

But I think, and I think we should, but there's a reason I think we see more older people and that's because, you know, the people in the church come in later years because the costs of sin become more evident to them.

03 The Root of Restlessness

We are now on the third lesson of this third quarter all about rest in Christ.

And this week's title is the roots of restlessness.

And Pastor Howard, I'm going to tell you, I'm seeing this word rest or restless or restful.

A lot of, there's so many references to rest and restlessness and what not and different manifestations, iterations of this term.

You would think the Bible would be just soaked through with this word and we're really taking, but it comes across, well, you and I were discussing this before we even started today, that this word restlessness is kind of a broad, squishy, vague term that's, It's hard to find it exactly so specifically defined in scripture.

What was the word you were using, eisegesis?

It comes across or could come across in such a way.

It's not that it's not a scriptural concept, but then again, it's used so nebulously.

Even in our first lesson, we looked at the Bible uses the word rest in many different ways.

And then we come away with restlessness that we never really defined which 1 of those definitions.

And then we try to back that into every Bible story.

So it's like I feel like we're driving down the freeway in reverse, trying to back into everything and then taking that concept of rest or restlessness and putting it into the stories.

And not that there isn't an element in there, but I can imagine where some of our Sabbath school teachers would just...

They're either going to do 1 of 2 things.

They're going to have a real problem trying to figure out how to get any kind of linear thought.

Or it lends itself to what we've constantly talked about against in the Sabbath school.

And that is just like, OK, Sunday's lesson, Monday's lesson.

And everything is kind of a whole new topic anyway.

And so you don't really have to have connected thought.

It's like, here's going to be our open-ended discussion on Sunday, and here's going to be our open-ended discussion on Monday.

But if you're a teacher who's really trying to come through with a linear thought and come away with a conclusion, it could be a challenge.

Yes, but challenge accepted and at least for you and I we like to think in these A leads to B therefore C kind of lines.

And if you totally love love like this is the best quarterly we ever have ever, A.

But as we go through our talking points, we're trying to do that more linear like drawing out a continuous thought.

So having said that, I want to go through this week's lesson and then our talking points that go with it.

But why don't you start us with a word of prayer and then we'll dive in.

Heavenly Father, we are so thankful for the privilege we have of knowing you and Jesus Christ whom you have sent and being able to have that rest that comes only through that relationship.

We just pray now you would guide our talking points presentation, that it would be a benefit to those Sabbath school teachers and students, Lord, as we're all students of the word, to help us grow closer to Christ.

Okay, let me very quickly walk through what I saw in this week's lesson and I'll show you how we got the talking points out of it.

First of all, Sabbath Afternoon has a great illustration about the aspen trees that you see on the surface are actually the smaller part of the organism which the network of roots underneath is much longer and much older.

And similarly in our lives we see surface restlessness and symptoms but there's a deeper underlying thing.

Kind of like an iceberg only the roots they spread out.

Exactly, it's a whole bigger thing underneath.

And that's what we're, the purpose of this week's lesson titled The Roots of Restlessness is to try to get to underlying causes.

Well, Sunday then said Jesus brings division, and then Thursday says uprooting restlessness, and it says overcoming restlessness always begins with Jesus.

So the cure and the addressing of the problem is found really on Sunday and Thursday.

And then it's only Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday that you get the actual underlying causes, which are selfishness, ambition, and hypocrisy.

So with all that being said, how I've reorganized it, at least in my mind.

Yeah, let's hear our talking points this week.

Well, the introduction says, this week our lesson examines some underlying causes of spiritual restlessness, namely selfishness, ambition, and hypocrisy.

It's going to sound a lot like sin as we go on.

Furthermore, we'll see that the cure for those afflictions is found only in Jesus.

Okay, so number 1, restlessness is a symptom of deeper disease.

And that, again, primarily from Sabbath afternoon, where it gives us that illustration.

That's a first kind of, I think, a primary point from Sabbath afternoon.

Now we did add a text in there that we'll get to in a minute, but restlessness number 1.

We had 4 talking points in our last presentation and now Sabbath afternoon and yet you came away with a talking point from Sabbath afternoon and kept it to 3 talking points.

Selfishness is the root cause of restlessness.

The root cause of restlessness is selfishness.

That is going to come from Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

We look at selfishness, ambition, and hypocrisy.

Finally, talking point number 3, only Christ can treat our true spiritual disease, those root causes, those resolutions, anything else we do is gonna be putting a bandaid on things, but not healing the problem.

Restlessness is a symptom of deeper disease.

Now, in the church and probably in our lives, even apart from the church, we tend to have this thing, we have a problem.

We might have a headache or we might have some other symptom physically or emotionally or socially, and we try to put our finger right on that when the real issue might be some much larger, like some disease process or tumor or something underneath, right?

And So I've written here that we often treat restlessness or similarly negative conditions like anxiety, fear, or discouragement as a problem to be addressed itself when there are merely symptoms of greater spiritual problems beneath.

And the analogy given here in the lesson there is about the Aspen tree.

And it was interesting, it talks about how in the second paragraph there, individual Aspen trees can live up to 150 years, but the larger organism below the ground can live for thousands of years.

So it's very large, it's very long, and likewise in our lives we might have little symptoms of sin, like restlessness or whatever, pop up and be an agitation in our life.

But there's a significant problem underneath.

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Talking Points, 3rd Quarter 2021: Rest in Christ

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