Feast of Unleavened Bread

00:01 Amen. Let the church say amen this morning. Invite you to turn in your copies of the Scriptures to the book of Exodus. I'm going to read several passages of Scripture this morning. They're parallel passages. On the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Anita is going to come, and I'm going to have a little children's class. 00:21 So don't let that distract you from the reading of God's Word. I'm just not sure exactly when else to have her do this that needs to be done for this class. So, Exodus 12:14-21, and then we'll go to Exodus 13:3-10. "Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. 00:43 On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. On the first day there shall be a holy convocation, and on the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation for you. 01:03 No manner of work shall be done on them, but that which everyone must eat, that only may be prepared by you. So you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance. 01:24 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses. Since whoever eats what is leavened, that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a native of the land. 01:44 You shall eat nothing leavened. In all your dwellings you shall eat unleavened bread." Now turn over to chapter 13:3-10. Moses, having been given the instruction from God, now turns to the people and gives the instruction to the people. "And Moses said to the people, 02:04 'Remember this day in which you went out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. For by strength of hand the Lord brought you out of this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten. On this day you are going out in the month Abib. And this shall be when the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, 02:25 which He swore to your fathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, that you shall keep this service in this month. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. And on the seventh day there shall be a feast to the Lord. Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days, and no leavened bread shall be seen among you. 02:45 Nor shall leaven be seen among you in all your quarters. And you shall tell your son in that day, saying, 'This is done because of what the Lord did for me when I came up from Egypt.' It shall be as a sign to you on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes that the Lord's law may be in your mouth. 03:05 For with a strong hand the Lord has brought you out of Egypt. You shall therefore keep this ordinance in the season, in its season, from year to year." And now turn over to Leviticus 23:4-8. "These are the feasts of the Lord, 03:26 holy convocations, which you shall proclaim at their appointed times. On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the Lord's Passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord. Seven days you must eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall have a holy convocation. 03:48 You shall do no customary work on it. But you shall offer an offering made by fire to the Lord for seven days. The seventh day shall be a holy convocation. 03:59 You shall do no customary work on it." I'd like to illustrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread in modern terms, what happens in a Jewish home when they come to the Passover time and immediately, subsequently, right into unleavened bread. 04:15 Which, interestingly enough, we have an eight-day span here where there are two feasts back to back. You have the Feast of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread immediately following Passover. And so it has become, over the years, known as the eight days of Passover. And so there are different ways of referring to it, 04:36 but this is common in a Jewish family. Now I'm going to ask some children to come up with me this morning. And just because I need to draw a line somewhere, I'm going to ask the children from the age of five to eight if you'd come up and help me illustrate this Feast of Unleavened Bread. 04:56 Now I'm not as spontaneous as Daniel Pollard, okay? But I do like to have the children engaged in this. And so if you're five or eight or anywhere in between there, come on up and help me find the leaven in the house. We're going to find the leaven in the house. 05:13 Now in a Jewish family, the mother right at unleavened bread will go and she will sprinkle leaven all the way through the house. And leaven is what it takes to make bread. You know what yeast is? Yeast is what mama puts into bread when she makes it to help it rise. Have you seen it rise? 05:33 And so that's the yeast, or leaven it's called. In the Bible it is called leaven. And so the mother of the home, she would sprinkle leaven and bread crumbs all throughout the house. And then at the evening time, the dad of the home or grandpa would come and he would take and find the leaven. 05:55 And this is for us to get all of the leaven out of the house. Now I need somebody to carry the lantern, the candle, okay? So we can search through every part of the house and find the leaven. Who would like to do that? Okay? You'll have to stand right up by me so we can find the leaven. 06:15 And then somebody hold this sack so we can put all the leaven in here, okay? Okay? You can hold that. Her hand was up first. And so you just follow me and let's go around and see if we can find the leaven. So we're looking for leaven. Now leaven is bread, okay? 06:34 You guys come. All the children in the family did it. All the children. And they would have a great time trying to find the leaven. It's like hide and seek with bread. Yeah, that's what they do. And okay, there's some in the corner. And then no, no, no, no, we can't touch it. We dares not touch it because it's unclean now because it's leaven. 06:53 And so what we do is grandpa or dad would take the feather duster and put it on the wooden spoon so we don't touch it. And then. 07:08 Here. 07:09 Okay. Can I open it up and put it in there? Some right there? Okay. Boy, we got to get around there so we can get that leaven. The one and the other tree. I better come all the way around so I don't knock the plant down. Okay. 07:26 This feather duster wants to kind of keep the bread on it. Okay. 07:33 Oh, that looks like real bread. 07:35 It is. It's real bread. And that's what they would do. They would find one on the chair. Okay. Okay. Here's one. We need the basket. 07:45 Bag. 07:46 The bag. It's not a basket, is it? It's a bag. Okay. Oops. There we go. Got one in the tree back there. Okay. And when the children would find this, they'd get all excited and they would jump up and down and squeal. 08:05 You don't have to do that, but you can if you want to. Okay. Somebody open that up a little bit wider. Can we do that? There you go. Oh, perfect. Where's some more? In the corner. And they would go to all of the corners of the house. Where's my candle man? There he is. Okay. Go to all the corners. 08:28 Where is the one in the. Be 14. 08:30 Just a minute. Let's get that down in there. Careful not to touch it. Okay. Where at? In the pulpit? 08:35 Yeah. 08:36 Okay. 08:39 Now you didn't see Sister Anita hide this, did you? Okay. 08:47 Have you ever done an Easter egg hunt? 08:49 Yeah. 08:50 Well, this is a leavened bread hunt. Okay. Can you open it up a little bit more? There we go. Well, she put a lot of leaven out, didn't she? There's one. 09:04 Boy, I hope we're getting done with this quick. 09:07 How many is there? 09:09 How many is there? One more, you say? 09:13 One over there in the tree. 09:15 And one right here. Okay. You know, this is kind of like you know what? It's kind of like sin sometimes. Sin can hide in different places in our lives. And we have to have. 09:26 One in the tree. 09:28 And we have to have God take the candle of His Word and show us the sin in our life so we can get rid of it. There we go. 09:38 Some in the other tree too. 09:39 Oh, some in the other tree. Okay. Well, she did a good job. 09:44 Here. 09:46 Okay. Awesome. 09:51 Did it get in? Okay. Have we found it all? Is there any down here? Oh, here's one right here. Bring your candle man. Where are you at so we can see it real good? Oh, there he is. He's short enough I didn't see him. Okay. 10:13 There we go. Anybody know where there's any more? Oh, we got one over there too. Wow. This is taking more than what I thought it would. Okay. 10:26 I think that's about it. Is that it? Anybody know where there's any more? Okay. We're going to say that's all. 10:34 Now then dad or grandpa would take the bag and with a piece of string this is supposed to be just regular string here but he'd tie that bag up and then he would go out and we won't do this this morning but 10:52 he would go outside with the feather duster and the wooden spoon and the bag and the leavened bread and they would burn it outside. They would have a bonfire and everybody from all over the community would come and burn their bread. 11:09 Now the night before I think they'd keep this overnight but the night before they'd take all the bread out of the house. Anything that was leftover bread they would take and burn it. Then the next morning they would take the feather duster and the wooden spoon and the bread and the bag and burn it all up so that there was nothing left but just ashes. 11:32 And that's what they did at the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And then for okay. You okay? Okay. And then for seven more days, seven more days they could only eat pie crust. You know what pie crust is? That's the crust on the bottom or the top of mom's pies. 11:53 It doesn't have any leaven in it because they couldn't eat cinnamon rolls. They couldn't eat bread. They couldn't eat pizza dough. They couldn't eat hamburger buns. No hot dog buns. No kind of bread except just unleavened bread like pie crust dough for seven days. And that was well, 12:12 I'll tell you a little bit more of what that was for. But that was to help illustrate that sin is in our hearts, in our lives, in the different parts of our hearts. And God's Word, like the light, shines in our hearts and shows us where we have sinned. 12:26 And then when we confess our sins to God, He forgives us and then He gets rid of our sin completely and sacrifices it. Okay? So that's the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Okay? All right. Well, you remember that when you talk about Passover and unleavened bread. Okay. Thank you so much. You can go back to your moms and dads. 12:48 Let's give them a hand. 12:54 The Feast of Unleavened Bread. Following the Feast of Passover. We went through Passover at our communion service in October. Now we're ready for the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It marks the first month of the ancient calendar, marking the deliverance from Egypt. 13:10 The word feast here in the passages has a different kind of meaning than what we oftentimes think of peace. Somebody told me one time that gluttony is a sin but feasting is biblical. And because in the Old Testament times and even in the New Testament, they would have feast. And that word feast is the word mishtah in the Hebrew, 13:31 which means drink or drinking or a banquet feast like we would think about a regular feast, like a Thanksgiving feast or a Christmas feast or something like that. But this is not in that. This is in the sense of it being a festival. It can be an appointed time, an appointment, a fixed time or season, a yearly assembly. 13:53 It can also mean a solemn sacrifice or a sacred procession or dance. And so they would gather together with these feasts to celebrate nationally the move of God in Israeli history, in Jewish history. 14:11 And so everyone was to find its fulfillment in Christ and then its application in various things that apply to the Christian today. And so unleavened bread comes in connection with Passover and came to be known, as we said, the eight days of Passover. 14:28 And what we learn from putting these passages together is that it is a memorial of deliverance that applied to the native and to the stranger. So if you had strangers living among you, this also applied to them. And there was to be no eating of leaven or yeast. There was to be no yeast even found in the house. 14:51 In all of their quarters, the yeast was to have been purged out and destroyed. It signified their haste of their deliverance. You recall in the Passover supper or in the deliverance from Egypt that it happened quickly. They thought they were not leaving. 15:10 And then that death of the firstborn happened. And within a matter of hours, the Egyptians were piling on them all the years of wealth from their labors, piling on, piling on, piling on. It's just they'd take it and get out. And Pharaoh expelled them out of the country along with the blessing of all of the neighbors. 15:32 And so they didn't have time that morning to bake the bread or to knead the bread. They didn't have time that morning to provide for the day's provisions of regular bread. And so this was to picture the unleavened bread that started them on their journey. It was to take place for seven days, the 15th through the 21st. 15:52 No leaven was to be eaten or seen. And on the first day and on the last day was to be a holy convocation. So you would have Passover and then the holy convocation where people would gather together and do sacrifices and get rid of the leaven out of their lives, out of their homes and out of their quarters. 16:11 And then again on the seventh day, which was the eighth day including Passover, then that would be a holy convocation as well. Of the three annual there were three annual feasts where the men were required to gather together in Jerusalem for these feasts. It was the Feast of Passover and unleavened bread, 16:33 followed by the Feast of First Fruit or the Feast of Weeks, some people call it. And then in the fall, the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of Booths. Those were three national celebrations, festivals where they would come together and celebrate the work of God in our midst. 16:52 It was accompanied by special sacrifices and all the burnt offerings were to be without leaven. Not only the Passover offering, but if you see throughout the Old Testament, all of the scriptures that refer to the Old Testament sacrifices, the burnt offerings, the burnt offerings were to be without leaven. Now there were when we come to the Feast of Weeks, 17:12 the Feast of First Fruits, you will see or Pentecost, that that was baked with leaven and was held up before the Lord. It was not a burnt offering. But the burnt offering signifying our faith in Jesus Christ, signifying the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ was to be without leaven. 17:32 And it was to encompass a warning and an instruction. The instruction was to the children, to the children, "This is what the Lord has done for me." Interestingly enough, the passage in chapter 13 says that they were to say, "This is what the Lord has done for me, 17:52 for me," not just for the Israel, the nation, but a very personal thing, especially if you were a firstborn son. "This is what the Lord did for me personally." And so this is not just a national thing, but it's a personal thing of faith, a personal faith. 18:11 And the warning then was that you may be cut off from God's people if you eat and participate and partake of this leaven, which is a picture of sin. And so what do you do with sin as a Christian? What did Jesus do with sin as the sinless Son of God? 18:33 And what did the children of Israel do with sin? "This is what the Lord has done for me. And this is what He has done for the nation to deliver us from Egypt, deliver us from bondage, deliver us from the oppression of Pharaoh, to deliver us and make us a nation and put us into the land. 18:50 And this is to be a perpetual feast for all time," He said, "for a forever ordinance." It was to be remembered, an everlasting ordinance, a permanent statute, a statute forever, a statute from year to year to year to year, to keep alive right alongside Passover. This is going to be significant. 19:11 Right alongside Passover, unleavened bread to keep alive that we are a special people, that we are God's people, that He delivered us by His strong and mighty hand and that we belong to Him. Now that's a bit of the practice of the unleavened bread. 19:28 Now what about the person behind the unleavened bread? Let's think about that because I want to look at the practice, the person, and the practical, the practice, the person, and the practical. The person behind this fulfillment or the fulfillment of this feast was none other than the person of Christ. 19:50 He is the fulfillment. Now one of the things we want to do, and I've been guilty of this many times, is take the feast and run right from the feast to the application to the believer. And there is an application to the believer. But you have to go through Christ to get to the application because the purpose of the feast was to present Jesus Christ, 20:11 was to proclaim Christ, His person and His work. So in order for us to understand Christ in this passage of scripture, we have to understand that sin or leaven is a picture of sin throughout the scriptures, even in Matthew chapter 13 when he talks about the leaven leavening the whole lump. 20:31 That is not a picture of the kingdom taking over the world. That is a picture of the sin permeating the established church. But anyway, that's another time, another message for another time. The Christian encyclopedia says this, "Leaven is dough in the midst of fermentation." And so when you put yeast in bread, 20:53 it begins to ferment. And that's a process of breaking down. It's a process of corruption. The fermentation is corruption, the destruction of the natural condition. 21:07 Hence, from a symbolic point of view, all fermentation, being an alien of the form given to the material by the creative hand of God, is a representation of moral corruption and depravity. Now when you get that picture, that unleavened bread is a picture of sin. 21:28 It's a picture of hypocrisy. Even in the Gospels, Jesus said, "Beware of the leaven of the scribes and the Pharisees." What was He talking about? He was talking about the error of the scribes and the Pharisees, the doctrine of the scribes and the Pharisees. It was following the feeding of the 5,000 and the 4,000. 21:47 And the disciples thought that He was upset because they had forgotten to bring the bread along. He said, "Don't you realize that when I said, 'Beware of leaven,' I'm not talking about the bread, that you didn't bring the bread along because I could even make some more bread." But He said, "I'm talking about the doctrine of the Pharisees, the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, 22:06 the sin of the Pharisees." And of course, then when He comes into First Corinthians chapter 5, we remember in the case of the Corinthian church where there was moral sin in the church. It was celebrated. It was accepted. It was well known. 22:24 And He said, "You must purge the leaven out of the church." And we'll look at that a little bit later. But this is a picture of getting rid of sin. Now who is the one who qualifies to fulfill this prophecy or this prophetic feast? Is Jesus Christ Himself, none other than Jesus. 22:43 For none other than He is without sin. You couldn't fulfill it. I couldn't fulfill it. We're not the sinless ones. But Jesus, our Lord, was sinless. 22:54 In fact, in Exodus 34:25, "You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven, nor shall the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover be left until morning." That's a prophecy of Jesus. He had no sin in Him. And so therefore, He could be the sinless sacrifice for sinning souls. 23:15 And He was not left until morning when He was hanging on the cross. It was not overnight. He was taken down before nightfall and buried. And so our Lord was sinless. He said of this of Himself, "He that seeketh His glory, that sent Him," in other words, 23:34 Jesus seeking the Father's glory, "the same is true and no unrighteousness is in Him." Jesus, my friend, claimed Himself to be sinless. It was not just something that was tagged onto Him to make Him a superhero by His followers. He claimed to be the sinless sacrifice. In Acts chapter 3, 23:54 verse 14, the preacher said, "You denied the Holy One and the Just," speaking of Jesus. He was holy and just. Acts 7:52, Stephen in his message said, "They have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One," Jesus, the Just One. 24:15 Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 21, "For He hath made Him who knew no sin, sin to be made sin for us," for He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, "that we might be made the righteousness of God in Christ." First Peter, Peter testifying of Jesus Christ said, 24:35 "We have been redeemed with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." And if anybody should have known whether Jesus had blemish or spot, His three disciples, and particularly Peter, James, and John, and especially Peter, one of the closest of the disciples, 24:51 the disciple of disciples to whom Jesus gave special privilege to be in many, many of His meetings that the others were maybe excluded from, Peter, James, and John. And He said and testified in His Gospel, "He is without blemish and without spot." Peter also went on to say, 25:11 "Who did no sin neither was guile found in His mouth, who His own self bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins should live unto righteousness by whose stripes ye are healed." How could He heal us? How could His stripes be effectual for our healing, our spiritual healing? It was because of His sinlessness. 25:32 Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews says that in all points, He was tempted like as we are, yet without sin. 25:39 And in chapter 7 of Hebrews, "For such an high priest became us who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens." He did not need to offer a sacrifice for Himself like the earthly high priest did, but He Himself was the sacrifice like no other man could be. 25:59 Now so we get that leaven a type of sin, getting rid of the leaven, Jesus, a sinless sacrifice, having no sin within Him. 26:09 But there's one missing dimension that I was not aware of until studying this further, that the Feast of Unleavened Bread is sandwiched between the Feast of Passover and the Feast of First Fruits. Well, 26:29 Passover, we get that illustrates the sacrifice, the death of Jesus, the death of the sinless lamb. And we get the Feast of First Fruits, which was the First Fruits of Harvest, Christ being the First Fruits of them that slept. That'll be the next feast that we look at. 26:48 What happens between the death and the resurrection? Anybody? What do you do with a dead body? You bury it. You bury it. The Bible makes it clear that we are saved by the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 27:08 And we oftentimes miss the aspect of the burial. And I missed that as well until I began to study this further. The part of the story that is often missed is that Christ, as a buried body, did not suffer corruption. He did not begin to decay. 27:31 There was no fermentation. There was no decay in His body as the sinless one. And so the ancient rabbis also believed that leaven represented the evil impulse of the heart. Christ had no evil impulse in His heart. Leaven contaminates the dough, 27:52 souring it, fermenting it, swelling it to many times its original size without changing its weight. And it is the first stage of decay and illustrating the effect or operation of the curse of sin being decay and destruction on the human body. 28:13 Jesus was not allowed to experience that decay of His human body because He had no yeast in Him. He had no leaven in Him. And so this is a picture of the sinless sacrifice not being sinful Himself. Let me illustrate it like this. 28:35 Normally, a criminal receives a criminal's burial. I can take you to Indiana State Prison and show you white stones, just small stones, some of them unmarked, from bodies that have been unclaimed through the years since the institution began. And so when there's a body, the person dies in prison and he's unclaimed, 28:56 his body's unclaimed, nobody wants him, nobody wants to take the time or the money or the finances, they'll bury him sometimes in an unmarked grave with just a number on it in the criminal's cemetery. So a criminal gets a criminal's cemetery, a criminal's burial. But Jesus didn't get a criminal's burial. He died with the sinners, 29:18 but He was identified, Isaiah 53 says, with the rich in His death. And so again, here you have something extraordinary happening with Jesus, not being buried as a common criminal, but being buried and celebrated as a rich man. 29:36 And a sinner usually gets a sinner's burial. And a sinner's burial is that it decays. His body decays. 29:46 You take even Lazarus, who was dead for only four days, and his sister said, "Loe, he stinks." It doesn't take very long until the sinner's burial becomes a stench. But that didn't happen with Jesus. As the sinless Son of God, 30:06 His body was not allowed to see decay like dough soured by leaven because He was not a sinner under the curse of the death of death's decay. The scripture that bears this out in Psalm 16:10, "For you will not leave my soul in Sheol, 30:26 the place of the grave, nor will you allow your Holy One to see corruption." He's talking there about the resurrection, which is one of the few places in the Old Testament it talks about the resurrection. He said, "You will not allow your Holy One to see corruption. He'll only be dead overnight or two nights," three days, 30:46 three nights, whatever, "not corrupted." And so we have a picture here of the sinlessness of Jesus, the sinless body of our Lord Jesus. Did He bear in Himself the curse? Yes. But He Himself was not a curse. 31:03 He was glorified in His death and in His burial and in His resurrection. 31:10 But I love to think of that song that we sometimes sing, "Living, He loved me; dying, He saved me; buried, He carried my sins far away; rising, He justified freely forever; someday He's coming, O glorious day." That could be a theme song for the feast. So now what is the practical applications of this? 31:32 We've looked at the practice. We've looked at the person behind the practice. So what is the practical implications? What does this have to do with the believer? All of these have something to do with the ancient people, have something to do with Christ, and have something to do with us. What is it? 31:52 Well, leaven in the New Testament is still a picture of sin and a picture of error. One writer says it like this, "In the arrangements of the mosaic economy, leaven was always the symbol of corruption. 32:09 And its use in any offering laid upon the altar of God was prohibited with the utmost strictness. The unleavened bread eaten for seven days represented the separation of Israel as God's elect people from worldliness and sin. 32:23 They realized the holiness of the calling and devoting themselves to it, they began the year." Interestingly enough, immediately after celebrating Passover, the death of Christ and the sacrifice for sin, they now begin to purge their lives from the sin that they had been delivered from. 32:46 And so it is with us in the New Testament. What is the believer to do with sin? Now that he is a believer, what is he to do with it? He's to put it away because Christ has delivered us from it. And since we have been delivered from sin and its oppression and its bondage and its lordship in our lives, 33:06 now the believer is to do his part in getting rid of the leaven that he becomes aware of as the Holy Spirit, the light of the world, takes the light of the candle and searches throughout the house of the heart. When does he begin to get rid of sin? Immediately. Immediately. 33:27 It doesn't happen. I mean, it happens over time, yes. But immediately where there's true conversion, God begins to do a work, a work of holiness, a work of sanctification. 33:43 It is inconsistent, you see, with the new life in Christ to continue to walk in the oldness of the flesh. And so then we turn to First Corinthians chapter 5. Please do so. 34:02 First Corinthians chapter 5. This has been referred to recently in our congregation, and rightly so. But First Corinthians 5 has to do with the putting away of the flesh, the putting away of sin, both personally and corporately. And so what do we do with sin? 34:22 We put it away. Your glory is not good. I'm just going to lift the verse 6, 7, and 8 out because in the context of purging the church of sin, yes. Verse 6, "Your glory is not good." They were glorying in the sin. "Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 34:43 And so therefore, purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump since you truly are unleavened." Get it? Now that we're believers, we're unleavened. We are dealing with sin. We're putting it out of our lives, out of our midst. We're getting rid of it. 35:03 We're dealing with it since you are truly unleavened. You see, the point is that when we're in Jesus Christ, we are saved from sin. We are unleavened. We are made clean. We are made holy. We are made just. 35:17 We are made righteous instantaneously, justified by faith in the person and finished work of Christ. But then begins the process of dealing with practical sin, putting it away, putting it away. So he said, "Do that as a church and do that as individuals. 35:39 For Christ, indeed, Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast not with old leaven nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness." There you have another definition of leaven. It's malice, it's wickedness, it's sin, it's hypocrisy, it's unbelief, 35:59 it's disobedience, has many different forms, not with the old leaven nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, not hypocrisy, but sincerity. 36:18 And not sin and unbelief, but truth, allowing the Holy Spirit—I am not the Holy Spirit, by the way—but allowing the Holy Spirit to take this, the Word of God illuminated by His presence, 36:39 the presence and conviction of the Holy Spirit, to search out the leaven in our lives so that we can come along by His power and repent and confess, get rid of that, brush that old stuff out of our lives. It doesn't belong there anymore. We're clean. 36:59 We're clean. And burn it on the altar of sin offering with our Lord Jesus. A beautiful, beautiful picture. Put leaven out of the church? Yes. But that's only part of the picture. Put leaven out of our lives. That's the rest of the picture. 37:19 We cannot offer our lives as a living sacrifice with leaven. Second Corinthians 7 says, "Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." Second Timothy says, "If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel of honor, 37:38 sanctified in meat for the master's use and prepared unto every good work. Every man that hath this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners. Purify your hearts, ye double-minded. Be afflicted and mourn and weep. 37:58 Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. Follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. Because it is written, 'Be ye therefore holy as I am holy.' Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved," that is, 38:20 the world around us, "at the consummation of the age, what manner of persons ought you to be in all holy conversation and godliness?" In other words, we ought to strive to be what we are. We are holy in Christ. Now, on the practical level, we get rid of the leaven. 38:40 When we do, there is a blessed promise of cleansing. This is not just an exercise in morbidity, of being morbid about our lives. This is an exercise of cleansing, of cleansing, of being cleansed. "Come now and let us reason together," saith the Lord. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. 39:01 And though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." This is an exercise in hope. Ezekiel 36, "Then I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean." I mean, if you took a shower this morning, don't raise your hands. But maybe last night, before you come to church, 39:22 you clean, you clean, you wash, you wash away the dirt of the day and the filth of the season or whatever, how long it was before you had another shower or another bath, and you wash it away. "I sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean." You don't take a bath in dirty water. 39:41 You take it in clean water. "From all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you." Zechariah 13:1, "In that day, there shall be a fountain open to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness." Malachi 3:3, "And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver. 40:00 And he shall purify the sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness." Ephesians 5:26, "That he might sanctify her," that is, the church, 40:15 "and cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word." It is scandalous for a believer in Jesus who is walking in 40:33 holiness to also, at the same time, walk in sinfulness. I'll close with this illustration. There were a couple of men who were living in Israel or they were in Israel over Passover, the seven or eight days of unleavened bread. And I'm not sure if they were Jewish believers or not, 40:54 but at any rate, they enjoyed their freedom in Christ. And on the eighth day, they were hungry, and they were tired of salads and matzah, which is unleavened bread. And they were tired of not having a good sandwich or whatever. And so they decided, "We're going to go look for some good food." And they were living in Jerusalem. 41:14 And so in Jerusalem, over this feast, everything shuts down, especially on those two days, the first day and the eighth day, yeah, the seventh day. And you can't buy leaven. In fact, when we went to Israel one morning, they're very much regulated by the Jewish laws. And I remember one morning, I wanted some butter for my toast. 41:36 And so I went up and I said, "Could I have some butter?" "Oh, no. We don't serve butter on a morning when we have meat. You have meat here this morning." So they don't mix in a meal the dairy and the meat. And so it comes from the Old Testament about not—well, anyway, I won't go there. But anyway, they're very much governed by the Old Testament laws. 41:56 And so they were looking for something to eat, and they decided to go to the pizza shop and find some pizza. And there was pizza. There was no pizza shop because pizza requires a raising of the dough. And then they decided, "Well, maybe we'll get a hamburger." And they were served a hamburger with unleavened bread. And then they had the great idea, 42:16 "Well, let's go to the Arab section because they don't celebrate unleavened bread in the same way at the same time." So they went to the Arab section and bought a couple of loaves of bread and wrapped them in some kind of wrapping. But the wrapping wasn't big enough, and it had some of the loaves sticking out in the front and the back. 42:38 So they put it under their arms and get on the bus to go home. And they noticed as they walk across the open area there in the field, there were some students out there studying. And everybody started pointing at them and shouting at them. And they couldn't figure out what they wanted except that maybe you're not supposed to walk on the grass. So they got out of there. 42:58 And then they got on the bus, and they got separated. And it began to dawn on them why this disdain, why people were looking down on them. And they got separated in their seating. The one guy who didn't have the bread was okay, but the guy who did have the bread was a target. 43:18 And people began to sneer at him and began to just make faces at him and cause him to be—he sunk down under the seat, and he began to realize it was the bread that was sticking out from the front and the back of the wrapper. He was not supposed to have the bread. It was a feast of unleavened bread. 43:41 It was scandalous to have the bread on the feast. 43:49 They said it's a good thing they didn't stop in the old section of town or there might have been a riot or a murder. That's how serious they take that. Now, I don't think that we scowl at people, and we don't get angry at people, and we have a different ethic, the ethic of love. 44:10 But brothers and sisters, it's no less scandalous to have sin in our lives than it is to have leaven on a Jewish bus. And so what do we do with it? Get rid of it. 44:24 And God has given us a remedy, and he's given us a promise that whosoever purifies himself from these will be a vessel of honor, sanctified meat for the master's use. It's really very simple. But for some, it's not very easy. But it's very simple. 44:44 "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." Passover. 44:53 "And he that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as he is pure." Unleavened bread sandwiched together between the resurrection and the death of Christ. Let's pray. 45:09 Father, thank you for these pictures from the Old Testament that find their fulfillment in Christ who knew no sin, neither was any guile found in his mouth, who was sinless, who was perfect, 45:28 and who was buried but not allowed to suffer corruption and was in no way inferior as the Son of God for having been buried than he was for having been resurrected. And so, Lord, thank you for this picture this morning. 45:49 I pray, Lord, if there are sin in our lives that we need to get rid of, that we need to put away, that we need to confess, that we need to repent of, that we need to burn, 46:01 to take to the cross and let God search it out and let God burn it on the altar of a living sacrifice, then let us do that, Lord, 46:17 and do it thoroughly in Jesus' name. Amen.