Basics of Keeping Unleavened Bread

Now for the second split sermon, our pastor, Mr. Tuck. Certainly appropriate as we begin to approach the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread to give meat in due season, to talk about what we are going to participate in very shortly as God's people. And most of the messages that we give, as I alluded to in the announcements, revolve around the Holy Days, as it should. We, of course, each time we come to the spring Holy Days, spend our time talking about the spring Holy Days. As we approach to Pentecost, we begin talking about the meaning of Pentecost.

And as we head toward Trumpets and the Tobin, we do the same thing. So that in reality, every sermon that is given, it should build on, and frankly, every sermonette or Bible study should build on, the framework of God's Holy Days. And, you know, we have to repeat, in fact, some of the things that we have been taught for the sake of our young people as well, our families, our children growing up, so that they know what God's truth is.

I think we'd be very remiss. Of course, we have some that probably this year, in the church here locally, I'm not going to ask anybody to raise their hands, but are keeping the festival season for the very first time. So we've got to reiterate and go through those things that many of us are very familiar with. And we have, of course, the Night to Be Much Observed that is coming ahead of us as well. Many people are not aware of that. I know that Mr. Brayman gave a message up in the Northern Arizona on that particular topic. And we are going to have, of course, Night to Be Much Observed here.

And I did want to mention, we have a sign-up that is outside in the foyer. And if anyone does not have a place to go to keep the night to be much observed, make sure that, again, you sign that list and we will let you know. We'll get somebody that you can spend that night with them. No one should be alone for that particular night. But that, again, the mention of that even is, meet in due season.

And God instructs the ministry to do this, to teach these things, because it's important that we never forget God's instructions. You know, it's natural for us as human beings to grow familiar with things. You know, if I were to ask here for a show in his hands, how many of you have been keeping the Feast of Unleavened Bread for over 50 years, we'd have considerable number of people.

You know how to do it. You know how to observe the Holy Days. It's not necessarily true of everyone. Everyone doesn't have that experience. Like I say, we have new people, and our young people need to be instructed about it.

They may know how, but they need to maybe have the particulars of what the Bible says. And God wants us, brethren, to observe his Feast with a sober mind, with an understanding, and an eagerness to glean from the Holy Days the meaning of these days that are approaching the full meaning.

Frankly, there are some who are not among us anymore that really never got the message, never understood it. So we're going to review today the basics of keeping the days of Unleavened Bread. And if you think about it, brethren, peace comes as a result of keeping the Feast of Unleavened Bread and observing the Passover properly. You know, we'll have peace in our lives, and we will have that peace that passes all understanding if we keep the Holy Days in the correct way.

And the first place we begin is the Passover and the days of Unleavened Bread. Let's go over to Leviticus 23 here to introduce the topic here. Now, the word Leviticus, many are not aware of what that word means. It sounds like just an Old Testament word. But the word Leviticus means, very simply, relating to the priests or relating to the Levites. Because the priests were the educational arm, that educational system that God used to teach Israel his way.

And so that's why when you read what it says in the book of Leviticus, which we're going to read very shortly here, beginning in verse 5, that it mentions about the offerings that are to be done during the time of the festivals. Because it was the duty of the priests to make sure that happened, to make sure that that occurred. And God informs all of us, brethren, of these things.

We don't necessarily need to know the details of what was happening in the Tabernacle, but there was much symbolism to it that's certainly very interesting today that helps us have a deeper understanding of the truth. But here in Leviticus 23 and verse 5, if you're following along in your Bibles, but in verse 5 down to verse 8, you know, here it says, On the fourteenth day of the first month of twilight is the Lord's Passover.

So very shortly we're going to be observing the Passover, and we'll do so in the evening. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which follows immediately after Passover. And it says, seven days you must eat unleavened bread. And it says, on the first day you shall have a holy convocation, and you shall do no customary work, as a day of rest like a Sabbath. And it says, but you shall offer an offering made by fire to the eternal for seven days. And the seventh day shall be a holy convocation, and you shall do no customary work on it.

So these were Sabbaths that were like bookends of the days of unleavened bread, that they were to observe. And so that was the instruction. Now it says that we must eat unleavened bread for seven days, but we get to eat other things too, right?

I know there have been some people that, by the way, who have taken these quite literally, and thought that all you could do is eat unleavened bread for seven days. Of course, that is comical to us, but, you know, a lot of things we don't understand when we first began keeping the Holy Days. It's like when I first read about the Day of Atonement. It says you're not supposed to imbibe any food or water.

And I think I've remarked this before to the Church. I mean, I was willing to obey God. I thought it was a sin to swallow your own spit. So, you know, maybe you're not that particular about it, but when I really understood it, obviously I laughed at myself that I had that kind of idea about it. But we need to be, again, educated about what is balanced and what God expects of us and what He expects us to do.

Let's go to Deuteronomy 16 now. Deuteronomy 16, here in this second statement of the law that was prior to Israel crossing over the Jordan on end to the Promised Land, God gave instructions here to the children of Israel in the second statement again. And, you know, think about the fact that these things were clearly spelled out. Moses spelled it out for the people, and Joshua spelled it out for the people, and the people that heard Joshua spelled it out for the people.

But after those who were, you might say, the old-timers of Joshua's day died, people drifted away from even the Holy Days. They stopped keeping the Holy Days. Interestingly, though, when Israel got into trouble and they had all kinds of trials during the period of the kings and the judges, what happened, of course, is they would repent and they would return to God. And, you know what? They always returned to the Holy Days. But here in Deuteronomy 16, let's notice here, I was talking and not turning, but in verse 16 of Deuteronomy, observe the month of Abib, it's another name again for Nisan, which is the same month in which Passover and Unleavened Bread take place.

And it says, And keep the Passover to the Eternals of God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of the land of Egypt by night. So they came out by night. Therefore you shall sacrifice the Passover to the Lord your God from the flock of the herd, the place where the Lord chooses to put His name.

We know that Jesus now is that lamb for us. And we do not need to do a physical lamb as they did then, but Christ was sacrificed once and for all for us. And it says, You shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat a leavened bread. And it says with it, That is the bread of affliction, for you came out of the land of Egypt and the haste, that you may remember the day in which you came out of the land of Egypt all the days of your life.

That you never forget this story about Israel, ancient Israel. And no leaven shall be seen among you in all your territory for seven days, nor shall any of the meat which you sacrifice the first day of twilight remain overnight until the morning. And down in verse 8, Six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a sacred assembly to the eternal God. You shall do no work on it.

Again, there were holy days to be observed. There were like Sabbaths. And interestingly, when Israel drifted away from God, it was people like Hezekiah, who was a stalwart in terms of righteousness, he brought the people back, keeping the Sabbath and keeping and observing the holy days. And there were, of course, among the judges as well. They lost, again, the truth, as it were. We could lose the truth, brethren, if we don't keep our minds focused on what the Bible says. Israel drifted away from God, and it would just be as easy for us to drift away as well, and lose the knowledge of the plan of salvation that is revealed through the holy days.

Not only did ancient Israel keep the holy days, and they were instructed to do so, but the New Testament Church kept the holy days. And unleavened bread is specifically mentioned. Let's go over to Acts 12 over here. Just a few references here. But in Acts 12, you'll notice this over here.

You know, we wonder how sometimes the churches of the world have missed some of these things. It's almost like they are blinded to it, and Satan has done that, we know, so that the light of the glorious gospel can't really shine to them.

They can't see it. They miss it. They just do not see it. But here in Acts 12, verses 1-3, we'll read here. But it says, at about that time Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some of the church. So it was a time of persecution. Oftentimes happens around the Holy Days. You ever find that around the Holy Days you have more trials than any other time? Well, that's the way it's been for God's people all along. Christ went through severe trials, the most severe trial any human being could go through on the time approaching the Passover. And it says that he killed James, the brother of John, with a sword.

And because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also. And it says, now it was during the days of Unleavened Bread. You know how the worldly churches explain that away? The way they would read it, then was Christmastime. In other words, it was just a Jewish holiday. It didn't have anything to do with what the church was doing. And yet we see scriptures that show what the church was doing.

And verse 4 talks about the Passover here. Because the early New Testament church was observing the Passover. 1 Corinthians 11, of course, brings that out. And we will cover much of that during the time of the days of Unleavened Bread in the future here. And the sermons even leading up to that, and sermonettes and so forth. Let's go to chapter 20 over here, Acts 20.

And in verse 6. Here was Paul traveling along with Luke, the physician, who was one of the... He recorded these things that we read here in the book of Acts. But it says, here they had been preaching the gospel, and they had had journeys there in Greece. But notice verse 6. We'll break into the thought here. It says, but we sailed away from Philippi after the days of Unleavened Bread. And in five days joined them at Troas where we stayed seven days.

Now, if they were not observing the Holy Days, why does it say, we sailed away from Philippi during the days of Unleavened Bread? No, it was after. They had observed the Holy Days. Travel would have been much, much more difficult in those days than any of us can imagine. Today we hop in a car or plane or even a boat, for that matter, and you can make a whole lot better time at it. Then it was a giant ordeal to travel.

And that would not have been in keeping, of course, with the Holy Days to go during the days of Unleavened Bread. 1 Corinthians 5. Let's go over to 1 Corinthians 5. Again, these are the basics, brethren. Frankly, we all should have many of these things just committed to our memory that if the question ever comes up, we know where to turn. We know where to go in the Bible. But here in chapter 5 of 1 Corinthians 5, 6, it says, He talked about a man here, by the way, in verse 5, who had been committing adultery with his own stepmother.

Today, that would be probably people would yawn at that. But in the world then, when they had some morals about them, it seems like in the world today our morals are going down, down, down. You know, in the world that we live in. But, you know, Paul had to say, well, he should be delivered into the hands of Satan. You know, as it says in verse 5, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Now, Paul later had to write in the second chapter, or the second book of Corinthians, to tell the Corinthian people to forgive this man.

But they were not judging the matter properly in Corinth because they were turning a blind eye to what this man was doing. He was committing adultery. But going on here, verse 6, in 1 Corinthians 5, it says, Your glory, he says, is not good. Do you not know what the little leavens, the whole lump? And he says, therefore, purge out. He says, the old leaven, the sin that this man was committing had to be purged out, had to be gotten rid of. Purge out. It says, that old leaven that you may be a new lump.

And, you know, we're all striving individually to be new lumps, right? Another, you know, analogy to that, a new creation. You know, who was the guy that was in, was it Happy Days? He was called Lumpy. So I guess we all should be a little, we could all be called Lumpy, you know, because we want to be a new lump, a new creation, a changed people. And in order to do that, we have to get rid of those things that are sin. And during the days of Unleavened Bread, leavening depicts sin. But he's admonishing the church to do that, to purge it out.

For indeed, Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Christ paid the price, and we should not hang on to sin, rather, but put it out of our lives. Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice or wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. You know, the leavening depicts sin. On the other hand, while the leavened bread depicts sin, during the days of Unleavened Bread, the unleavened bread depicts Jesus Christ.

Then we put out the old leaven of malice and wickedness, and we bring in Jesus Christ. And that's what the church was admonished to do. You know, in the time, you know, they're related to the Passover and the days of Unleavened Bread. And again, what necessitated Paul writing this stern letter to the Corinthians was this man committing sin there. And, of course, there were a lot of other problems that they had to overcome. And, you know, we love the Corinthians because they showed us.

And I deeply appreciate the fact that the Corinthian church existed. They've shown us so many things. If there had not been a Corinthian church, what would we know today? There's a lot of things we learn from the mistakes the Corinthians went through. But Paul rebuked the congregation because their sin caused them, interestingly, to not be teachable. You know that sin does that to us. It makes it so we can't be taught. We can't be instructed. It puts a barrier up there, and you try to get through to people. Have you ever tried to talk to somebody?

It's like somebody's got a — is an alcoholic. You ever tried to convince an alcoholic he's not a — he's an alcoholic? There's something there, isn't there, that blinds the mind. And it says back in the book of Isaiah that sin separates us from God.

Eventually, if we allow it to go on, it will not only separate us from God temporarily if we continue to sin, but permanently. And that death penalty we could be under again if we were not careful. You know, God wants us to not again be that way. But, you know, we need to again be careful that we not follow the example of the Corinthians.

Let's read verse 1 and 2 of chapter 5. He says, It is actually reported that there's sexual immorality among you. This man was maybe the tip of the iceberg for the Corinthian church. And such sexual immorality is not even named among the Gentiles, that a man has his father's wife. But notice what the sin had done. You see, the Corinthians thought that they were big-minded. They thought that, hey, we're so good of Christians that we don't, you know, we can accept someone no matter what they do.

How heinous the problem might be in the eyes of God. But God said to them through Paul, you are puffed up. You're puffed up. And Ebonot rather mourned. In other words, they should have been crying for the problem, the sin that was there. You know, there was a leadership problem in Corinth as well here. So it was not leading properly. But it says that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you.

So this Greek word, puffed up, means to be proud, yet proud of sin. It inflates our vanity about ourselves. Whereas we should be saddened, brethren, by sin in our lives and in our midst. You know, Paul, in fact, calls the Corinthian people carnal. They're carnal. You know, they're not living the life of spirituality that causes peace. Where you have peace of mind in life, but they're carnal. And if we are carnal, Paul also calls the Corinthians babes. You know what a babe is, brethren? I know you. You know what a babe is. A babe has to be fed milk, basically. If you try to teach a babe too much, it's like, you know, obviously it's ludicrous and extreme to think, well, you know, I'm going to feed my baby. And you lay a stake in front of them. You know, obviously there's not going to happen, is it? But spiritually it happens to people, too. They've got to have milk. Because you have to handle them with kid gloves. Because they're easily offended. It was like a little baby. If you try to force a baby to something, what's going to happen? They're going to cry, right? You know, they're going to cry. Same is true with somebody who has become a babe through sin. They can't take correction. They can't take instruction. So, living, brethren, during the days of Unleavened Bread, and we'll talk about this more, depicts and pictures sin. And Egypt is a type of sin. And with the analogy of the Old Testament example of Pharaoh and Israel coming out of Egypt, Pharaoh is a type of the devil. The devil is very, again, active against us during this time. I'm sure from time to time God has had discussions with the devil about you, like he did with Job. Look down here at this man or this woman. If you took this away from her or him, they would curse you to your face. And God allowed Job to go through the trials that he went through, and it made him a better man. It made him, in fact, a better man of God. Maybe I should put it that way. And whatever we go through, brethren, it will make us better men and women of God. God brought Israel out of Egypt during the days of Unleavened Bread, and that means that they fled from the devil, and he also brought them out of sin. So it means that we have to make a choice, brethren, in our life. We've got to determine, are we going to come out of sin? Or do we want to have one foot in the world and one foot in the church? We have to make up our minds about that. We're going to have peace of mind in our life, and frankly, we've got to do that.

You will never have, nor will I ever have peace of mind if I'm sitting on a fence between this world, the world of God's way of life, and the world that is out there. You know, you've got to fish or cut bait. All of us have heard that joke, right? About the guy that was fishing with dynamite. And the man who was on the boat said, you can't do that.

That's illegal. The fish would dynamite. He would cast the dynamite into the stream, and then it'd explode, and the fish would come to the top, and he'd get the fish. And the man said, I can't be a part of this. And so the man lit a stick of dynamite and handed it to him. He said, are you going to fish or are you going to cut bait?

You know, obviously he made the commitment. Now, I'm not advocating for us to dynamite fish. I've never done that and would not do that. But we've got to make a commitment. We've got to fish or cut bait. You know, we've got to commit to get off the fence and into the church, to do it completely and totally, and come out of the Egypt of this world, and put sin out of our lives. Now, why is leavening a symbol of sin?

Well, leavening has qualities that make it a perfect symbol of what sin is and what it does. And when we forget what it does, brethren, that's when we're going down the wrong direction. We forget what sin does in our life and the damage that it can do. The chief attribute of leavening, we know, is it spreads very quickly. Very quickly. In dough, like Paul said, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. It'll just pervade that dough. And the other quality of leavening is it puffs up.

It makes bread to rise. It makes what otherwise would be flat bread. I remember when I was a kid growing up, my mother from time to time, I had no idea why she did. Maybe it's because she ran out of yeast or baking powder. But she made flat bread. You know, it's the kind of bread that you could, on the edge of the table, if you... it sounds like a hammer, you know? And it's hard to chew. Very hard to chew. Because leavening puffs up. You don't have that. You know, we always don't have a very enjoyable piece of bread, right?

But sin has that effect in our lives, too. If there's just one sin, brethren, that we tolerate, one sin, and we tolerate it, and we tolerate it, and we tolerate it, it spreads to other things.

And pretty soon we allow another sin. And then another, and another. Pretty soon we're really in a heap of trouble in our lives, if we permit it to remain. But sin also puffs up. It causes that vanity that we have naturally in us, that we're trying to fight in that old man to emerge, to get stronger. That vanity just can cause us to be, you know, proud and vain. And as I mentioned, sin makes us unteachable. So, like leavening, it creates turmoil in our lives.

It agitates, leavening agitates. It works. You know, they talk about how the leavening works, you know, in dough. You leave it to work. But if you leave, again, that sin there, it works, and it spreads, and it becomes turmoil. Again, this lack of peace that we were talking about earlier, that comes about when we are keeping God's laws correctly in our lives. So this is one of the reasons we clean the leavening out during the days of Unleavened Bread. Symbolically, we go through the actions of getting rid of the leavening out of our homes and out of our cars as well.

And, you know, God wants us to do that. He wants us to do that in the physical sense in the church. Maybe some of you have already started to do that. You know, I try to, you know, vacuum the car, but sometimes you never notice that the way they design cars, it's really hard to get to some of the places in a car.

I know sometimes I have pulled out the seat of a car, but I've been amazed how many breadcrumbs I remember when our kids were small, especially. You know, how people eat in the car, and how many breadcrumbs have gone into the seat, under the seat, and you have to get in there and clean it out. I remember one man many years ago gave a sermonette about cleaning out the leavening. I think it was a big Sandy. Texas, I think, was John Robinson. It was a sermonette back in those days.

He gave that, and he talked about how he had bought a car. He thought he had gotten all the leavening out of his car, and he pulled out the back seat, and apparently there was a sandwich that had been painted into the body of the car. So I don't know what he did with that, but he may have chipped it open, and maybe it was preserved. I don't know. So we've got to be careful about it.

You could be surprised where leavening can show up, and it can be. But let's go back over to Exodus 12. So, brethren, these are the basics. We've got to get rid of the leavening. But in Exodus 12, verse 15, it says, "'Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses.'" So technically you could remove it in the day between Passover and the evening of the first day of unleavened bread. Technically you could. I would not recommend that. As you know, time gets away.

"'But whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.'" This was symbolic of being cut off from God here, for us, brethren. If we think this is kind of silly instructions that were given to ancient Israel, brethren, don't kid yourself. What God was instructing here was serious business as far as God is concerned. It's not just a physical act. It becomes spiritual if we refuse to do what God says. What He instructs us to do. So we need to, again, take this very seriously. Unless we be cut off from God. And again, a little leaven leavens the whole lump.

Keep that in your mind. And it says, "'On the first day shall be a holy convocation, on the seventh day shall be a holy convocation. No man of work shall be done on them, but that which everyone must eat, that only may be prepared by you.'" So here are the instructions given. "'And you shall observe the feasts of unleavened bread, for on this selfsame day I have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as an everlasting ordinance. In the first month of the fourteenth day of the month, and even you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month of the evening.

For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses.'" Now, by the way, that doesn't mean you could take your leavening and put it in a bag and take it to your next-door neighbor. You know, you think about the ramifications of that. Where you can't take the leaven products and put them in a bag and tie them in a rope and flip them over to your neighbor's fence, you know? Do it that way. God expects us to do what He says here, not play games.

"'But it says, for seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses. Since whoever eats what is leaven, that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a native of the land.'" And so God wants us to, again, take this serious business, brethren. And if you need understanding about what things should be thrown out, what things should be you are allowed to keep, and if there is a peace council with one of the elders or deacons or, you know, who have been doing this exaggerating for a long, long time, I could spend some time talking about that, but I won't do it.

You know, the word leaven, by the way, in the Old Testament, has to do with a yeast that has a swelling quality about it, like, again, putting yeast in a bread causing to puff up. But no leaven product, even, should be found in your home or in your dwellings. God wants us to, again, get that point and to understand it, what we're supposed to do. These things are pretty important, brethren. And if you have doubts about what you should throw out, when in doubt, what's the motto? Throw it out. When in doubt, throw it out. You've got it all down path. You know, it does say in Romans 14.23, whatsoever is not of faith is sin.

And we don't have faith in it, brethren. It becomes sin to us. So here you get the connection between what we might consider a purely a physical act, but there's a connection of what we think and what we do. There's a connection between those things. And we're all striving, brethren, to conform to God's law. So, brethren, when we observe the days of unleavened bread, we observe it to God. Not just for us, not just for us, although we benefit from it, but we're doing it unto God.

You know, don't think about what other people do. You think about what you do. I think about what I do during these days of unleavened bread. And though we don't want to be pharisaical in the church of what we do, we also don't want to fall into the ditch on the other side of the road, either, do we?

I think sometimes people have become so liberal in what they do. You know, we used to say that some people can be so liberal-minded that their brains fall out. That really is true. So we want to make sure we're balanced in what we do. Don't want to become pharisaical, but there again we need to obey what God has said. God does indeed look, brethren, at how seriously we treat His instructions, His laws. It's not just a purely physical act, but it carries an enormous spiritual impact, a spiritual lesson on us if we follow through and we do it, and we're careful to practice what God instructs us to do. So, brethren, let's remember these basics about the preparation and the keeping of the days of unleavened bread.