Sermon Transcript — March 28, 2002
Good afternoon everyone, a very happy Sabbath to you on this high day of Unleavened Bread. We’re off and running to a very wonderful festival season and this first holy day we need to explore something that God certainly wants us to rehearse, it’s part of the importance of this season of the year, the spring festivals. It’s a message that God does not want us to forget and it’s too easy for us to do so because, first of all, as human beings, we tend to forget things. Secondarily, in this country, the land of Manasseh, America, the very name itself means forgetful. So as a people we tend to forget sometimes-strategic things that should be brought to mind. When it comes to the holy days of God, God completely brings forth the instruction that this is not a time for taking the things of God for granted. This is a very special time in God’s eyes, a time when we are suppose to reflect and think about what has transpired, such as the Passover, the first festival, which we’ve all recently partaken of and now we’ve entered into the second festival of the mighty plan of God and that is the Days of Unleavened Bread.
I have right here some unleavened bread and what it pictures is basically, it’s unique characteristic of being flat, I mean it is flat as flat can be and the name "unleavened bread" is significant with regard to what God wants us to remember about these days and that this unleavened bread which we ingest during this time frame is to constantly remind us of something that God does not want us to forget and that is part and parcel of where the ministry comes into play on these holy days to remind us all so that we do not forget that we crystallize, that we come into focus once again into a sharp clear image of what it is that God wants us to remember about these holy days. Now these are the spring holy days that commence in the spring of the year, starting with Passover, Days of Unleavened Bread, followed by ultimately the Feast of Pentecost which will be the next festival and holy day that we will address in the process of time. But there is something we need to look at with regard to these Days of Unleavened Bread that the scripture is designed to make us mindful of.
It’s too easy today in a world where we are seeing the bible being undermined from every conceivable point of view, where if you try to launch any type of logic or any type of argument based on the word of God, people, the first thing, they will look at you and they’ll say, Now wait a second, get your nose out of the bible and come back to reality. In other words, the bible is like a book of myth and foolishness. I understand one large denomination recently paid $3,000 for a minister to come and talk to them and what he ended up doing was saying the bible was a bunch of myths and unreliable information that you should not take seriously. They paid $3000 to have this man do this! Now what has happened to the faith and confidence in the word of God? I submit it’s been eroded and undermined and is now collapsing in the minds of many people. This I believe is going to be one of the catalytic ingredients in why the scripture says, "The love of many shall wax cold." Because the bible shows us how to acquire the love of God, it instructs us in the love of God, it shows us how, through the spirit of God, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts so that we learn to emulate the Christ, the Son of the living God. Without the knowledge of God’s word, you and I are in darkness. The world may think it’s light outside, but it’s dark and when Jesus Christ came in the flesh, personified in the flesh, please remember, it was referenced in the book of John, the gospel account, it says that when He came, He was the light of the world. And what happened? When the light came on the scene? It says the men ran, they wanted darkness because their deeds are evil. You know the same as I do that we look better, how? In darkness instead of light, don’t we? Because you see when you look in the sunlight at yourself, you see the real you and you’re not impressed with the real you, are you? You look at yourself and you say, Oh man, I can see all the little flaws...but when you knock the light out and it’s a little more subdued and it’s a little dark, you can stand there and kid yourself and say, Hey, I don’t look too bad, do I? And you get a false distortion. Please keep this in mind because it’s going to tie into what we’re going to talk about today. In the world today we live in a distorted world, a world that is distorted because of sin, a world that has ingested pride, a lust of the eyes, a lust of the flesh and the pride of life.
All this is not of the Father, the scripture tells us. And so we’re being reminded during His special holy days that are designed to put forth the plan of God and what He is doing, Leviticus 23 makes it clear in the codified form of the holy days, that we are to do what? We are to come before God because this is His time; it’s not the Feast of the Jews, not the Feast of you or me or anyone else, these are God’s festivals, specially designed to transmit some very important information that humankind needs to understand and we are the first ones being given the opportunity to come online, to come on the page with God and understand. And so He has ordained seven days in which we’re going to have to eat unleavened bread. Now this is not to say that individuals should take the approach that was sometimes expounded in the past that whenever bread is to be eaten, it should be unleavened, because that was transmitted as a understanding in the past that is not correct. The bible says, "You shall eat unleavened bread for seven days." If you don’t do that because...there are some people who frankly, they don’t like bread, so they could go a whole seven days without eating anything, because they don’t eat leavened bread, so why should they eat the unleavened bread? They could rationalize that way, so to say that whenever bread is eaten it should be unleavened, no, God says, how are you going to learn the lesson if you don’t take the symbol of what you are to become – a unleavened individual that is always reminded about this, during this time, every time you eat of this unleavened bread. Very important principle.
Let me go through a few scriptures just as a basic reminder, I’m not going to turn there, just to reiterate some of these scriptures to you and then we’re going to get into the gist of our message today, which I think you’ll find very helpful as a reminder of why these days are not to be taken for granted in the plan and purpose of God. In Exodus 12:17-19 in the RSV version, it says:
Ex. 12:17 – You shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread...it talks about how the Israelites were brought out of the land of Egypt, how that this is to be kept throughout your generations forever. And that’s exactly what God intended. In chapter 13:3 He makes reference to the fact, He says:
Ex. 13:3 – Remember this day in which you came out of Egypt...
Well they didn’t come out on the 14th like some people commonly have assumed today because of misinformation floating around out there. They have got the idea that, you know, sometimes the 15th is the Passover. Well God made it clear, the 14th is the Passover, midnight is when He passed over and then they had to be ready to roll the next day and get their things all together so that they could, on the morrow after the Passover, after the 14th, on the 15th, they could enter into the Days of Unleavened Bread and begin to come out of Egypt. And He said, it is something you have to remember that it was by the hand of the Lord that you got out of there, you didn’t get out of there on your power and no leavened bread must be eaten, is the reminder. Then in Exodus 13:7-8 of the RSV it says:
Ex. 13:7 – Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days.
Now why seven days? Seven is a recognized number of completeness. For example, you have seven days in a week, it makes a complete week and in that cycle, seven is recognized by many in the so-called theological circles that seven is the number of completeness. There is something here that God wants to complete in our lives. What is it? He wants us to become de-leavened, like unleavened bread because every one of us has been leavened as individuals, we have lived in a leavened society, a leavened world and we have been, unknowingly, in some cases and sometimes knowingly, puffed up, lifted up and doing things that do not fulfill the will of God. So God has brought us to a reminder of this very thing and He says, in Deuteronomy 16:3-4 of the RSV, He says:
Deut. 16:3 – You shall eat no leavened bread with it (meaning the Passover period) and then the seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, the bread of affliction...
You and I are being told the following – we’re being told that as we look back and see what the Israelites did and all those things that happened to them did what? Happened to them for our admonition, for our learning, upon whom the ends of the age are come. So as we look to them and see that they were delivered from a terrible affliction, a terrible bondage under Pharaoh and under the Egyptian rule at that time, in slavery. God says in the New Testament, spiritual Israel, the Church of God is pictured as also acknowledging that we are coming out of a world of bondage, a world of affliction. Now someone might say, Yeah but we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Well, as far as nations go, that is an element that is better than any other nation on the face of the earth; we do live in the greatest nation on the face of the earth. But when it comes to spiritual matters of understanding, the bible is saying, everyone in this world has come under a cloak of darkness because they don’t realize that an adversary has been behind the scenes, working to deceive the whole world. (Rev. 12:9) You and I have been illuminated to see this now. We see where the influence is coming from, we see how it affects our fellow human beings, we look at ourselves as we have done introspection during the days of Unleavened Bread in preparation, we see how it has affected us, how we have been leavened. We have come to God and asked Him to de-leaven us, to forgive us our sins, to blot out our transgressions and then to do what? To help us to walk humbly with our God all the days of our life that we might receive His blessing and ultimately that crown of righteousness that the apostle Paul talked about.
So the Feast of Unleavened Bread is a memorialization of Israel’s deliverance from a terrible slavery. Well, as human beings ourselves, while we may not have lived under the punishment of a terrible slavery that way, yet every one of us have been slaves to something.
We’ve been slaves to lust, we’ve been slaves to passions, we’ve had all kinds of things that maybe the desire to get overwhelmed us at times, we have been in violation of the law of God and that’s why it says, If a person says he has no sin, he’s a liar and the truth isn’t in him. We all have this leaven in our members, it’s there, but we have to work to overcome that leaven from affecting the whole lump - in other words, taking over. That’s why the bible uses the term "consider yourselves dead and alive in Christ" that you don’t cater to the needs of the flesh any longer in terms of fulfilling those desires that were in the past.
So we see now that Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God is the one who delivered us, as pictured in the New Testament Passover, just like He delivered ancient Israel on the night of the Passover in the Old Testament. There’s nothing wrong with eating yeast products at other times, but during the days of Unleavened Bread, you definitely don’t want any part of it. For what reason? Because it symbolizes something God is teaching us, it symbolizes sin; it takes us back to the fact that there was an originator of sin and God deals with him in another specific holy day at a later time called the Day of Atonement in which He brands the originator of sin and shows how he had got in there and muddied the water among the angelic realm and how he muddied the water in the human realm. And so these are important things for us to keep in mind. Spring holy days symbolize the events of the first coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to this world. At Passover that we have just recently completed, we see in Exodus 12:13, the Old Testament Passover, we see in the New Testament, John 1:29 that Christ is the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world. So this is a very important rehearsal that God wants us to remember and the Days of Unleavened Bread is the removal of sin. Just like we get rid of these leavened products out of our home, it’s a reminder that we want to be de-leavened, we want sin out of our lives, that is our express desire to God the Father and Jesus Christ, that we understand what Jesus went through and as I mentioned to you, most of us I believe, have never, until maybe this year, really come to grasp and comprehend the severity of what Jesus Christ went through on our behalf as humankind and what the Father had to endure, to give His only begotten Son on our behalf. When you see the terrible things, when you read those scriptures in John about the terrible scourging that Jesus Christ went through and then you realize, you’re talking about a professional hardened man who that was his job and he would take this particular weapon that was specifically designed for the scourging process and he knew how to wield that thing with a ruthlessness like you wouldn’t believe. It would have leather elements coming out, glass and metal and when he would come back as a strong...he was no wimp...and this guy would come out and boy when he would let loose with that thing, it would just tear into the flesh in an unbelievable way and Jesus Christ was literally torn to pieces with that cat-o-nine tails and that’s what you’re told, it says, his visage, meaning his visual image, was so marred, more than other men, they beat the daylights out of Him.
So here He is going through that and then after all that, Pilate thought that was going to be sufficient, but it wasn’t and they started yelling, "Crucify Him" and then you figure the most humiliating and agonizing death ever, to be put on a stake, a cross, 9:00 in the morning and hang there for six long agonizing hours, to feel the full wrath and fury of man’s sins placed upon Him. How do you comprehend that? I don’t think any of us can fully comprehend it in terms of the love of God that was shed for all of us in that sacrifice. That’s why it becomes so important when God says, after we’ve accepted that and understand that, now we’ve got to really be committed to coming out of sin, God wants to see some very definite action. "All right, I want you to get up and I want you to start moving now in a positive direction to kill this leaven, to get rid of this stuff out of your life, whatever it is that’s haunting you, causing you problems, has brought you into bondage, that has kept you down." Because God has called us to freedom – true freedom that is in Jesus Christ His Son, and through the power of spirit of God we begin to see that in a very powerful way.
Well in the time remaining, what I want to do this afternoon, I want to address an area in conjunction with what this little bit of rehearsal that we’ve over and to maybe show you why it is so important to keep this in mind, this unleavened bread and why God wants us to eat it, to remind you that you are living in a world of bondage and you’ve been in that bondage, you’re living in a world of suffering and pain and agony like the ancient Israelites and it took God’s intervention to get them out of that and it’s taking God’s intervention to get you and me out of that same situation. Somewhat different in the sense, as I say, we’re using a figurative comparison here, is what God is showing. We can be mighty thankful to God we have blessed to live our lives in the United States of America, the greatest country on the face of the earth, but it’s still a country filled with sin, like every other country and God knows that mankind needs to be delivered from sin and so He has called us as a small beginning force in the great plan and purpose of God. He’s called us to come out of sin so that we can be part of His great reformation that is going to take place, when He’s going to bring the restitution of all things to mankind and change this earth forever and that’s something you and I want to be a part of. Definitely want to be a part of that and you’ve got to taste that, you know folks? You’ve got to taste that; you’ve got to want that.
If you read just some of the success stories of individuals who maybe have tried to accomplish certain things in their life, if they had not been driven by a desire to accomplish this feat, whatever it might have been that they were trying to do and if they did not have this burning passion and desire to achieve it, they never would have made it – you know why? There were so many people standing in the way saying, "You’re stupid, you’re dumb, you’ll never make it." And if you get tuned into that enough, you know what you begin to start thinking? "I’m stupid, I’m dumb, what good is it, I’m wasting my time, I’m never going to make it." But boy, when you read the success stories of individuals, who on a physical level, going after a crown, a physical crown, not a spiritual crown, but a physical crown and they accomplish their mission in life, what they wanted. It’s thrilling to listen to and it shows they overcame on a purely physical level.
And now here we’ve got the devil and his evil minions out there all saying, "Give up, quit, what’s the use, you can’t rely on the bible. You’re stupid for believing in that." And so what does God show? He says, Look, He that is in you is greater than he that is in this world. You can make it, you will make it if you stay the course and you stay with Me. That’s why these holy days are so important, because they give us structure and purpose to life, they remind us of what our regular every day mission must be and that is to never allow ourselves to inflate and become filled with pride like the evil one. We’ve got to realize that the tendency is there for any of us, but God has told us we have to fight the good fight of faith, we can with the spirit of God and with Christ in us we can overcome these things and God says, I have a crown of righteousness for you. Paul knew it and he said what? It’s there for anyone else who follows through and endures to the end. Revelation warns us – in the third chapter it says, Don’t let anybody take your crown. Showing that there could be opposition, there could be people that would try to take your crown – not that they would want it, but they would muddy the water in such a way that you can’t achieve it and they’d take it away from you. There might be some others who get it by default but basically speaking, what the scripture is showing us is that we’ve got to be on guard as never before.
So today what I want to do this afternoon now is to address an aspect of the Days of Unleavened Bread to help us all understand something that maybe we have forgotten about the world we live in. I’ve entitled this message "The Deceitfulness of Sin" because you and I have fallen prey to the deceitfulness of sin – and not just us, everyone has and this is something we have to be mindful of and we’ve got to really work at attuned to if we are going to be the overcomers that God has called us to be. If you’ll turn with me please to the book of Jeremiah 17. In Jeremiah 17:7 it says:
Jere. 17:7 – "Blessed is the man that trusts in the Lord and whose hope the Lord is."
That’s why we’re here today on this Day of Unleavened Bread because that’s what we trust in and that’s what our hope is, to be ultimately delivered from this situation of sin that operates in our lives. We want to be decontaminated, you know, just like somebody who has gotten exposed to something, they run you through a decontamination chamber. Well we want to be decontaminated and it takes the spirit of God to do that, working in our lives. Well it goes on to say...but here’s something that we have to keep in mind, even though we have our hope and trust in God. It says:
V. 9 – "The heart is...notice...deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?"
Now the prophet was given this inspiration of God’s spirit saying that all of our hearts have been tainted in such a way that deceitfulness creeps in if we’re not careful and that deceitfulness comes in ways that further the production of leaven in our lives. It sends us in a direction that we ultimately don’t really want to go, but you get fooled because of the deceitfulness of sin and we’re going to see some of this. God goes on to say:
V. 10 – I, the Lord, search the heart...
Remember when He searched the heart of Lucifer – what did He find? He found something in there didn’t He? He said "iniquity was in your heart" but it wasn’t in there the day God created him, but God found it. Now interesting, none of the other angels could look into Lucifer’s heart and spot it, but God could spot it and God said this isn’t right and you know, you can’t look into anyone else’s heart either and see what is going on in there, only God can and only God can give us the information as He so does here, He says, look, the leaven that is in the hearts of human beings by virtue of Satan’s presence in this world has created a deceitful condition, a deceitful condition above all things and it can spread in ways that can turn a human being into doing things that are desperately wicked, things you wouldn’t believe. People can’t understand, why did Andrea Yates kill her little children. Desperately wicked thing, terrible thing. Where did that come out of her heart? What did the apostle Paul and Peter and some of these men, when they ran into certain things...it says, Peter, he says, Satan has put this into your heart Ananias and Sapphira, why have you lied to the spirit of God? The spirit of God can discern these things, can see what is in the heart and He says:
V. 10 – I, the Lord God, search the heart...so every human being is on a situation where God evaluates and searches our hearts, our innermost thoughts...and I try the reigns, even to give every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doing.
In other words, what God is saying is that I see something in here, I don’t know if I like what I see and if it’s what I think it is, what I’ll do is I’ll allow a circumstance to come along to see if this leaven that I perceive it to be will bubble up into that and if this leaven is there, it will come out, because it says, Be sure your sin will find you out. If you’re flirting with sins, God says, you’re playing with great danger.
And so we have this admonition here, that God is the one who is constantly evaluating a man and a woman’s heart and you and I are told that we must be very very careful about the spiritual condition of our innermost being, the heart, where it says, out of the heart comes fornications, adulteries and all these terrible things, murders and what have you, that’s what’s in the world all around us. But God has proposed something different to come out of our hearts – love and joy and peace, things, against such there is no law. In other words, He wants to see the spirit of God working and flowing in our lives but we have to be mindful that there is a deceitful quality of even our own hearts, our own innermost mind that sometimes will play games with us.
You know there was a song some years back written by a performer named Joe South and he entitled it, "The Games People Play Now...every night and every day now, never saying what they mean now, never meaning what they say. So they wile away the hours, in their ivory towers, till they’re covered up with flowers in the back of a black Cadillac." Interesting huh? The games people play. "People walking up to you, saying ‘Glory Hallelujah then they sock it to you in the name of the Lord." Yeah, you get it – then they say, I was just joking. No, that’s not joking, I wouldn’t be hurting if you were joking, I wouldn’t be feeling like I’m feeling. You see, we write songs about it because people know they haven’t been treated right, there is sin in the world and it is a very terrible thing to watch it and how it impacts on people’s lives.
Well in this sermon this afternoon, what I want to do is I want to cover four basic area to help us understand this deceitfulness of sin and give you something to think about as you eat this unleavened bread and be mindful of how deceitful sin can be, how it can slip up on you in ways that you wouldn’t think about.
The very first one we want to look at: When sin comes a calling, it will come as a friend. It will come as a friend, not an enemy. Sin will always approach you as a friend, or in other words, it will seem like the right thing to do. Now why would it seem like the right thing to do? Because Proverbs 14, if you’ll turn with me to Prov. 14:12 you will see why. Because we have a particular inclination as men and women.
Prov. 14:12 – There is a way...notice, it is a prescribed way that has come upon us because of the presence of leaven in our life, of pride and of vanity and all the things that the bible addresses...that seems right to a man (as well as a woman) but if left in the long run...but the ends thereof are the ways of death.
In other words, if this isn’t turned around, if this isn’t changed, this behavior pattern, once you start moving in a wrong direction but you think it’s right, if you can’t spot that, the end result can be very catastrophic, it can bring literal death at the end of the road, it can bring the end of wonderful friendships between people because of sinful things that happen and it destroys relationships and friendships that maybe have been for years and that’s truly a shame, God hates to see that. For double emphasis, in Prov. 16:25, he mentions it again – double emphasis. And anytime God emphasizes something with a double hit, that means take note, take special note that when you launch into something, it’s going to seem right to you at the time.
Now let’s go back into the pages of time to a place called the Garden of Eden and in the Garden of Eden there’s this wonderful, beautiful garden that has been created according to the affirmation of the bible, God created it. He creates this very very awesome man called Adam from the dust of the ground. In conjunction with that, since he didn’t have a helpmate, God did a wonderful thing, He created from his own bone and flesh, created a beautiful woman as a counterpart and so life has been male and female from that very beginning. Now God gave instructions and He said, Look, I want you to go out there, you’ve got access to anything and everything, even the Tree of Life, I give you access to that. One tree I don’t want you to mess with, the one in the midst of the Garden. Mother Eve has a strange fascination come over her, remember like the song, "It was fascination..." She was fascinated by something that was involving that tree. She went to check it out and what did she see? Ooooh, a monster, I’m going to go run and hide? No, she didn’t run and she didn’t hide, whatever it was didn’t spook her, in fact, whatever it was seemed friendly, seemed like a friend, came to her as a friend and asked her a very civilized question, "Hasn’t God said you could have access to everything?" "Oh yes, yes" was her response, "We can have access to anything we want except that one tree in the middle, God has said that one we’ve got to stay away from, we don’t even want to touch it or we’re going to die." But this "friend" informed her, "But Eve, you’ll not surely die, that can’t be right, has to be that God knows in the day that you take of that tree, you’re going to be like gods and you’re going to know good from evil, there’s nothing wrong with that." So what happened? He put out the false premise, he put it in the context of friendly, and sin, who Satan was the epitome of, came in the cloak of friendliness and seduced mother Eve and Adam went along with it and he was guilty as well and here we are, a leavened race of human beings, subject to that ugly serpent in this world. Until God called us out of this world and broke the back of Satan’s hold upon our lives. That’s the wonderful calling of God, that’s why these holy days are so important as we come to give thanks to God for that intervention.
But back to Mother Eve – she thought this was wonderful at first, because as the scripture says, she looked, yeah, the tree looks fine and boy, desire to make one wise? Uh-oh, it’s playing on desire again now and she’s beginning to start to lust for something. It was an inordinate desire because she was told, No, this desire, you can have anything you want, but not that desire. Now she wants it and boy, to make one wise, so ye shall be like gods? Well maybe God’s not telling me the truth, like my friend over is telling me, see the serpent is the friend. Interesting that a lot of the cultures portray the serpent god in their Indian lore, go up to Wisconsin Dells for example, Indian lore up there says that the great serpent that fell from the heavens and landed in the rivers came to mankind and brought knowledge to man. That’s our friend...interesting isn’t it? It’s there, just like the bible said it was.
So here was Mother Eve, she succumbs, Adam succumbs and what you have is the very thing that John records in chapter 8:44, this is where Jesus looked at those individuals that He was encountering in His day and here is what He said:
John 8:44 – "You are of your father the devil..." That’s who you are. He says you want to do the desires, notice...the desires of your father.
So it was Satan’s desire to reach out and want to take the throne of God, something he couldn’t have. So what did he do? Seduce Mother Eve to reach out and take of a tree she was told she couldn’t have. And so what is it that humankind does today? Little children, they might not even be able to hardly speak, but you tell a little child, You can have this, this, this, this and say, But leave this alone over there –and guess what happens – the little child can hardly even speak and they’ll crawl over to that thing you said they couldn’t have and they want it because desire is in them. You said I couldn’t have it – I want it! You see leaven is in all humankind and so a child has to be taught, has to learn, just the way God is teaching us as His children, how to learn to spot these things.
The point you want to keep in mind is that Satan has created this seduction, this deceitfulness process and it works in today in the regular world we live in every day, police have to deal with this in law enforcement – they’re called the bunco squad where they have to crack the scam artists. And guess what they do? Do they come at you and say, Hey you, I want to steal your money from you? No, they don’t do that, they come and say, Oh, Mr. So and So, Miss So and So, I have a absolutely wonderful deal for you, I discovered something and I want to share it with you out of the goodness of my heart. They come as your friend. I know you’re on a fixed income and you would probably really like to earn maybe about 12-14% interest on what monies you’ve got. Well if you’ll invest those with me in this particular manner, I can get you that. All bald-faced lies, it’s a scam. People go ahead, and you hear them say it all the time, they get taken, they get interviewed, they lose all their life savings and they’ll say, But he was such a nice man. Do you think he would come at you as an ugly mean man and be able to accomplish what he wanted? That’s why I say, the deceitfulness of sin comes friendly, that’s what you have to be alert to. It’s not, Judge not according to appearance, Jesus said your judgment must be righteous judgment, based on the word of God and His commandments, coupled with what? The fruit and the behavior of what is being produced, not what is being said, this is very very important.
So here, you’re never going to see, any time, a simple temptation comes your way, you’re never going to hear in small print under there it saying, Think twice before you do this. You know, Satan never telegraphs and tells you, Think twice before you do that and the consequences that might follow, he’s going to cover that up. That’s like the small print in the world today, you know, they give you this glory picture and then they say, But..... they say it fast – what is that? It’s the small print, that’s the stuff that’s going to stick you if you don’t read the small print. That’s why the banks, they put in bold letters up in front on their little flyers the things they want you to read and then they put in this terrible little print, that you need a microscope or magnifying glass to read it. You say, Oh I don’t want to read that and you throw it away and they’ve got you! Because you didn’t read that in that small print, how they fix finance charges is what it’s all about.
So this again, is how they operate. One thing that we need to keep in mind then is that anytime simple temptation raises it’s ugly head, it will always come under the guise of Mr. Friendly.
Number two – Sin, in it’s deceitfulness can overpower a person because sin is pleasurable. Please keep that in mind – sin is pleasurable, however temporary. It’s only short-lived and the reason we have to be mindful of that is because if there was no benefit, no pleasure to be derived you see, Satan would be emasculated. What he has done, he has taken the wonderful things of God, that He has created, and he uses it in a wrong manner and seduces mankind to use it in a wrong manner.
For example, look how wonderful God is and how He has thought about everything. The other night we celebrated the Night Much to be Observed, a night to be remembered. We gathered and we had our meals and our friendship and our fellowship together and isn’t it terrible if someone would say, Go ahead and bring the food on the table and here’s this beautiful looking steak and you can’t smell anything...then you cut a piece of it and put it in your mouth, and you can’t taste anything! You see what kind of a problem?
If any of your physical senses are disrupted, it reduces the quality of pleasure. There is a pleasure of beautiful music to listen to and you have discernment in that hearing capability, that when it’s bad music, you can shut it off, you don’t want to listen to it. You can look at beautiful things, but if it’s bad things, you can shut it off. If it’s good food you can eat it, if it’s bad food you can reject it. And isn’t it, as we say, take time to smell the roses? Isn’t it nice that God put a beautiful smell to each flower He created and then He gave us a little sniffer so that we could smell? Each one is unique and this is all temporary, what God created. God is offering beyond temporary, He is offering eternity and eternal life. But the adversary cannot do that, all he can do is take that which God has created and try to cause humankind to misuse it and so what we end up having is as Hebrews 11:25 talks about, how Moses could discern this and he said he would rather suffer the affliction with the people of Israel than to do what? To partake of the pleasure of sin for a season. He knew it was temporary. Oh yes, people today will sell their soul to the devil for the pleasure of the now rather than realizing the future.
Now everyone has made mistakes as human beings because of sin, but God can forgive those sins so you can have a rebirth, so to speak, of a new direction in life, but the ultimate birth comes via the change at the resurrection. What God does, He brings about a spiritual change of the way we think, it’s called repentance and conversion and what we learn then is that there is a time and a place for all things. Now the bible talks about many different areas but it focuses on one in the book of Proverbs, which we’re going to look at, to show you the great danger of this deceitfulness of sin and how it works, but how it is only temporary and how that God in His wisdom has created a need for you and I to choose, when are you going to do this?
Now today we live in a world that is filled with a problem growing as never before and it’s the problem of immorality. Immorality is running rampant, in fact it is so rampant now today that it seems like it’s whatever people want to do, it’s literally flooding the marketplace, nobody is saying, Hey, that’s wrong and if you say it’s wrong according to the bible, they’ll tell you, as one man who wrote ABC, protesting a program on television because of the wrong moral character being displayed and he based it on the bible. ABC sent him a letter back and said, "Shame on you, get your nose out of the Bible and join the real world." Wow! You see, again, if you’re trying to launch an understanding based on the bible, they’re going to try and cut it out from underneath you because out there there’s nothing to stand on. When we stand on the word of God, you’ve got something that cuts like a two-edged sword and they don’t like hearing that. Now when the subject of immorality comes up, God addresses this in a very interesting manner. Let’s go back to Proverbs 6:27 & 28 to gain the principles in the context of immorality. Now he cites here the example of a woman of ill repute and a man getting involved with a woman of ill repute or what we would call a prostitute or whorish woman, but remember a woman can get involved with a whorish man the same way, or what we would call a whoremonger actually because there are men who are unscrupulous who take advantage of women and they’re just as guilty as the reverse equation. But in the general context, since the bible is written from a male point of view at this juncture, it is addressing what a man might encounter and in the subject of immorality, notice what is addressed here:
Prov. 6:27 – Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned?
What it is saying loud and clear is that, look, if you start getting involved with someone you shouldn’t be getting involved with, it’s going to backfire on you, it’s going to have some very very bad repercussions just like taking fire would burn you – you could get first, second, third degree burns depending on how close you got that fire close to you. Then it goes on to say:
V. 28 – Can one walk upon hot coals and his feet not be burned?
Well in India they would say, Yes, we can and God says, Yes, but you’ve got some help and it’s not from Me, it’s either trickery or it’s from the fallen spirit world that people do stuff like that, but it’s not from the standpoint of individuals having a natural proclivity to be able to walk on hot coals. God says that’s not what is going to happen; you’re going to get your foot burned on that one. Well here’s the thing in question: Sex today is exploited in a very very powerful way because sex sells, plain and simple and God knows sex is a very powerful force in male and female, He made it that way. He intended it to be a wonderful element to be celebrated in the context of marriage, that’s why we call it holy matrimony. He did not want it to be celebrated outside of that simply because it would create too many harmful side affects, let alone all the diseases and the problems and difficulties that go with that. So God could have made that real easy for us, couldn’t He? What if, for example, He had said, All right, if you engage in marital type of relations, well in this case it wouldn’t be marital because you’re outside of marriage, and you got involved male, female, prior to marriage. And there are human beings who have done this and suffered many consequences as a result of that, but they can be forgiven by the blood of Christ and a person can start fresh, thank God, or otherwise there would be no hope. That’s why it says, Blessed are you if your hope is in God and your trust is in Him. But if you were over here for example, and God had made us...now what is it He made us? He made us pleasurable beings, He made us so we could be pleasurized and enjoy life. Life was intended to...you pick up a rose and that’s a beautiful rose, you go to a cherry blossom festival, look at those gorgeous cherry blossoms, they’d knock your eyeballs out, they’re beautiful. Go to Holland, tulip festival, look at the beautiful tulips and so many of them, it’s incredible. And you can have the pleasure of sight, of smell, things of taste, of hearing; you can be pleasurized by these things. Now God would have been very spiteful if He had stripped all these basic pleasurable senses away from us, we would be very much restricted.
Now what if God had done it this way, He had said, All right, to help you people out I’m going to put it in very very frank language. Over here, you’re not married; you want to have sex because everyone else is having sex. You hear everyone saying, "everybody’s doing it" – all right, everybody’s doing it? All right, what if God had made it this way; outside of marriage, every time a man and a woman tried some hanky panky stuff, it was like ground glass in the flesh. Painful experience, no pleasure whatsoever. Come over here in marriage, Wow Lord, this is great, this is absolutely wonderful that a man and a woman can share something so wonderful, of this nature. You see how easy that would be? Ouch...wonderful...we’d learn the lesson in a hurry wouldn’t we? But you see, God says, I’m not going to do it that way, I made you a pleasurable being, to experience pleasure and what I want you to do is learn when to do it and when not to do it.
You don’t do it over here, you deny yourself that pleasure and you come over here and in the context of faithful holy matrimony, you reserve yourself faithful to your mate so that neither of you have to worry about planters warts, HIV and all the other terrible things, let alone the psychological, emotional and physical things that can go wrong in a marriage when infidelity takes place. Boy, you begin to see in a hurry why God says you take fire in your bosom, you get burned.
So this is why we need help and without the help of God’s word you see, and a little reminder, got to eat that unleavened bread. But the world around us likes leavened bread and they say there’s nothing wrong with it – you know, if it feels good, do it. God says, be careful with that, and don’t let yourself be lured in a wrong direction. Ecclesiastes 8:11 also has an interesting principle that applies to this. And it says:
Ecc. 8:11 – Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly...it says, notice...the hearts of the sons of men (as well as women) are given to fully do evil.
In other words, this deceitfulness will carry on because people will say, "I don’t think anybody’s looking." And yet, if we had eyes to see, we’d know God is looking and there’s angels all around us, looking and watching and recording our behavior for the living God. So we have something very interesting to take note. One - Watch out for Mr. Friendly and two, Be careful that you don’t get seduced into the idea that pleasure is everything.
Pleasure is temporary and pleasure was what God intended for all of us to experience, that’s why we enjoy eating and drinking and it’s proposed in the kingdom of God, there will be eating and drinking. When you go to a marriage feast, what do they have on the table? Good for everybody to eat and enjoy. We’re going to have a marriage feast in the kingdom of God between the Church and Jesus Christ. Can you imagine what the Father’s going to have spread out on that table for us to eat? Is it going to be just the white sheet and say, "Sorry, ran out of goods and services here, I don’t have anything to offer you." It’s going to be one wingding, I mean it is going to be like you wouldn’t believe! Because remember, when Jesus, at the marriage festival, Cana, His first miracle, when He turned the water into wine – remember what the reaction was? When wine is served at His table, "Why did they give us the junk first? This is the best wine, we should have had this first." Because whatever the Lord does, He does to the very best of His handiwork and we are pictured in the scripture then to be mindful of that very thing.
All right, there’s another element that we have to keep in mind concerning the deceitfulness of sin. Sin has an effect upon all of us in the following manner; that once engaged, it has a numbing effect upon us. Once we begin to keep going in a wrong direction, it begins to become numbing to our senses, we don’t feel sensitized to sin as we should. That’s why the bible admonishes us to be tender hearted one to another, never to let your heart become hard hearted, because we live in a hard hearted society and a world that will put you down, that will make fun at you, that will laugh at you and Jesus said, That’s not My way, you will help, you will encourage, you will uplift one another because you are your brother’s keeper. You all need one another, you were designed to compliment one another and all of this to the glory of the great God who made it possible for us to smell a rose, to enjoy the good things of life. And what a blessing we have in this country that we can sojourn our life in the greatest country that the world has ever seen with blessings like you wouldn’t believe, so many that God says there’ll be a time, He said, because we weren’t thankful for the abundance of all things, there’s going to be a time when there’s going to be a great going without in Israel’s future, until God restores all things. Let’s take a look at I Timothy 4. It says:
I Tim. 4:1 – Now the spirit speaks expressly that in the latter times, some shall depart from the faith...well, that has happened and continues to happen with individuals and the reason why given...giving heed to seducing spirits...that they’re behind the scene as spirit influence, working on the minds of individuals...and doctrines of demons.
Which means the seducing spirits are working through the minds of individuals and throwing out all kinds of ideas out there that are floating around, that can take a person away from the truth of God, clearly established in the scripture. Where people then aren’t sure about anything anymore because they hear this, they hear that. That’s why it says; You weren’t called to be tossed about by every wind of doctrine. See the wind of doctrine, there are things blowing around out there that can get a person trapped if one gets involved with it and thinks about it and starts getting seduced by it and then it ends up, notice:
V. 2 - ...speaking lies in hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy was one of the things Jesus warned His disciples – He said beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees and it was the leaven of hypocrisy of their teachings, because they said, but they didn’t do it. There was hypocrisy involved in this matter. But notice what he says on this:
V. 2 - ...having the conscience seared with a hot iron...
What that translates to is this; that if a person embarks on a wrong course that is not sanctioned by the bible and we can fill in the missing blank, I want us to understand the principle, we’re not worried about talking about a specific sin per se, but understand the principle that applies to all elements of sin in this matter, that if a person allows one to go on there long enough, the longer you stay in it, the less it bothers you. You begin to see it, "Well, I don’t have a problem," when somebody points it out, out of love and concern for you and says, You know, you need some help in this matter. "I don’t have a problem." Well maybe you’re drinking too much. "Oh no, not me, I handle my liquor, I can quit anytime I want to, I just don’t want to!" That’s unfortunately what happens a lot of times because again, they’re dealing with a deceitful element. See the heart is deceitful, it’s playing tricks on the person. They want to believe they can stop at any time but other people are seeing the fruit that the actions betray what is being said. So in this particular case, a person has got to be extremely careful. Ephesians 4:17.
Eph. 4:17 – This I say therefore and testify in the Lord, that you henceforth walk not after the Gentiles...or the nations...walk in the vanity of their mind...notice...having the understanding darkened...see once we enter into a wrong direction and it starts leading into sin, then what the scripture is telling us, we’re going to end up...alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart.
That is why we have to be extremely careful, because we haven’t learned that from Jesus Christ, that’s why the world operates. And what you and I must keep in mind is the example we’re all familiar with and have heard many a time. You’ve heard about the frog and the kettle? What do you do? Put a frog in a boiling pot of hot water and what do you get? The fastest frog in history – that frog is out of there! Put that frog in a kettle of cold water and slowly turn the heat up. He likes that lukewarm water, that feels soooo good! Little bit more, little bit more, but he doesn’t notice that it’s in increments creeping up until finally, he’s so neutralized, so to speak, by what is happening, you now have froggy stew because he’s cooked, he’s finished, he’s had it. And that’s the same way you and I must keep in mind, that sin will do the same to us, it will affect us in the same way.
Which brings us to the last point that we want to keep in mind and that is this: Anytime we embark on a sinful course, whatever that sin might be, the scripture is telling us that it will backfire, it will turn on you. There is never a good reward for sinful conduct, it will always backfire and turn on you and that’s why the scripture says, Be sure your sin will find you out. If you think you can hide it, it’s going to burp out. Why? Because it’s leaven, it puffs up, it’s going to come out unless you’re doing something else to neutralize that. Eating unleavened bread, by your actions, reminding you that you stay deleavened, that you don’t go down that road.
Jesus Christ gave us the example right from Genesis all the way through, that it was a lying spirit that devised the cunning trap that deceived mother Eve and the lying spirit of this world is all around us and what it does, it continues to entrap people to commit sin and sin is the violation of the law of God, it becomes an attitude of lawlessness or anomia, as the Greek word is, they don’t want any part of law in their life. Well God says His law is holy, just and good and it was designed for one very important thing, to set a guideline for living life and it also did what? It quickly points out, like Paul said, that sin would become exceedingly sinful, it really nails it to the wall and because of that, you and I are told that unless we go to God for the solution to this problem, because only God can do it, that’s why we kept the Passover, because we know only God can take us out of this box canyon we’ve got ourselves in. Mankind as a whole hasn’t learned that lesson yet, but one day will.
Now for the rest of us, we are told, I Cor. 10:13, a very important promise is given to us, that in the world we find ourselves living, that:
I Cor. 10:13 – No temptation has overtaken you such as is common to man...everybody is going through the same bombardment because we all live in the same leavened world, it’s a society of leaven. It goes on to say...and God is faithful....yes, He is extremely faithful in all that He has purposed for us...and He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you’re able.
He won’t take you and let you be broken in spirit. Satan would like to break everyone’s spirit, but God will sustain us through the power of His spirit. And it goes on to say:
V. 13 - ...but with temptation...
Because you have to be exposed to it, because it’s going to test your character to find out, are you going to try to weasel around it or does your heart want to try to connive a different avenue – here is what God says, what do you say? God will try the heart. Life is filled with what we call "circumstances." Those circumstances do what? They test our mettle, they test our character as men and women and what God does then, He provides a way of escape, if we’re looking to Him. We recognize there’s temptation, there are problems, "God I need Your help." God comes to our aid and He says He will give you the wherewithal to escape, that you may be able to endure or bear it. Doesn’t mean necessarily He’ll make the temptation go away, because you see, Satan is in this world and Satan is always trying to feed temptation into the mind. He’s always trying to seduce, he’s always trying to overthrow. He was a liar from the beginning and once you yield to his influence, you experience it’s results – and we all have, we just didn’t know what a cunning adversary we had out there and how deceitful he has been. And through his deceit and his anti-law attitude, he has built that into us.
It starts at a very early age, we have these precious little children that come into the world and technically speaking, we look at them, we say they’re innocent. Yes, well their innocent to a point, but just tell them they can’t have something and see what happens. Whaaaa! Why do they do that? It’s because they’re their own little person, they may not be able to articulate the words yet but they’re their own little person and you watch those little eyes and those little eyes will talk back to you and tell you, "I’m my own little person and I don’t necessarily want to do what you want to tell me to do." But mommy’s and daddy’s have what? A responsibility to control that environment, to help them, bring them through and make them realize they’re going to have to make choices, they can’t just have everything they want and that’s what God is teaching us. My sons, My daughters, I have good things for you, but you can’t have everything you want, you’re not ready to handle everything yet! I’ve purposed that the whole universe shall be under your feet, but you can’t handle that yet, you’re not ready for that yet, you can’t even handle the earth I put you on, you’re making a mess of things down there, we’re going to have to change that by first changing you from the heart. We have to get rid of this leaven that is in your nature and make you de-leavened and as we walk through life with that understanding, then we understand why and this is the concluding scripture I have for you. In Romans 6:11 it says that our approach should be:
Rom. 6:11 - ...even so consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ.
See this is what Paul was saying when he said, "I am crucified with Christ, yet I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me." (Galatians 2:20) Because again, when you realize the life that was given to us, who gave it to us? God gave it to us. We have a moral obligation to live it to His glory, the way He likes, and we know we haven’t done that, that’s why we come to Him in an attitude and a desire of repentance, He’s shown us that there’s got to be some changes made. So that’s exactly what we desire to do and that’s the struggle we all fight and God says that’s why I want you to go seven days with this and to realize that on that last holy day when you assemble, the reason why there’s a holy day on the end of the days of Unleavened Bread, just like the beginning, because it took God to get you out and it will take God to put you in the kingdom of God. "For by grace are you saved through faith, not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." And thank God for God that that’s the way it is. May you have a wonderful conclusion to the holy day, a wonderful week, we’ll see you on the Sabbath and we’ll gather again on the next holy day.