Could You Deny Jesus Christ

In Luke 22, we find what is a very poignant scene to consider at this time of year. Luke 22, every time I read this, I try to imagine it in my mind for the moment that it meant to Peter and Jesus and what it meant on that evening when Jesus had been a prophet. Let's begin in chapter 22 of Luke, verse 54. Having arrested him, they led him and brought him out into the high priest's office, but Peter followed at a distance.

Now, when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat among them. And a certain servant girl, seeing him as he sat by the fire, looked intently at him and said, this man was also with him. But he denied him.

Seeing him as he sat by the fire, looking intently at them, he said, this man was with him. But he denied him, saying, woman, I did not know him. And after a little while in verse 58, another psalm and said, you also are of them. But Peter said, man, I am not.

That after about an hour had passed, another confidently affirmed, saying, surely this fellow also was with him. For he is a Galilean. But Peter said, man, I do not know what you are saying. Immediately while he was yet speaking, or still speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.

So Peter went out and wept bitterly. The annual memorial of the Passover brings us to this moment of eye contact between us and Jesus Christ. That's how we should look at this. We should put ourselves in Peter's place on this courtyard, on this night of nights, and look and ask ourselves, have we denied Christ? Or could we deny Christ?

Now, Peter, never in his imagination, felt that he would be in this position where Jesus would look across that darkened courtyard and piercingly go right into this very heart with, showed out a look that Peter remembered the rest of his life. Because when we go back to Matthew 26 and verse 31, we read where Peter had vehemently denied anything like this would take place. Matthew 26. And in beginning in verse 31, Jesus had said to them, all of you will be made to stumble because of me this night, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered, but after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee.

Peter answered and said, even if all were made to stumble because of you, I will never be made to stumble. As you know, Peter had a lot of confidence in himself, his abilities, and he certainly was a talented man and he was dedicated and sincere as a disciple, always having an answer, always wanting to be in the front of the pack of the other disciples and giving an answer and speaking sometimes would seem even for the group.

And he said, I'll never be made to stumble. But Jesus said to him, assuredly I say to you that this night before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. And Peter said, even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you. And so said all the disciples. So it wasn't just Peter. All the disciples felt the same way on that moment that neither none of them would deny Jesus Christ. And so I ask ourselves the question, could we, could you deny Jesus Christ?

As we prepare ourselves to take the Passover a week from tomorrow night and to begin the Days of Unleavened Bread shortly thereafter, what I would like for us to do today is to come face to face in our inner life with this scene that we have just read and think very deeply about it as we prepare ourselves through self-examination, through physical means of cleaning our homes and hopefully extra time spiritually spent, preparing our hearts for the upcoming Holy Days and especially the Passover.

Because preparing ourselves through that process requires, I believe, that we face this most critical question and ask it of ourselves, could we deny Jesus Christ and consider its implications and what it might mean for us. I'd like to take us through two examples here this afternoon to help us set this question in our mind and to think about a number of different ramifications and aspects of it and leading up to it.

We won't have time to consider all of them, but hopefully we can come to some answers for ourselves. Let's first go back to the Gospel of John and look at chapter 6 and look at an occasion there that is a rather extensive discourse by Christ, one of the longer chapters in the book of John, beginning in John chapter 6. In this chapter, Christ had fed 5,000 people in the opening verses. It performed a very strong, very impressive miracle. 5,000 hungry people had been fed.

And as we know from all of Christ's actions and teachings, it was not just what he did, and in this case providing a free meal for people, which was noble. They didn't have McDonald's or Long John Silver's to go out to after in the wilderness, not in the wilderness, but in the area where they were in Galilee. It just wasn't there, as we know. Food would have had to have been carried with them or they would have had to have been in a spot where it would have been prepared for them.

And Jesus, out of his mercy, he and his compassion, he fed them. But it was more than just a potluck meal for Christ. It was an opportunity to teach and to make a very strong, profound lesson. And he used that occasion and that scene to give some of the most profound teaching about himself and himself being the bread of life and eternal life.

Profound teaching that we find nowhere else in this particular location. It is here that we find Christ making statements such as, I am the bread of life. I am the bread of life. It wasn't, in fact, they were going to be hungry again, as he said.

They would be hungry in a few hours of the next day. So it was more than just a miracle and a meal that he had provided for them. There was deep spiritual teaching. He said, I am the living bread which came down from heaven. So he identified himself with something spiritual. He also said, if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.

I'm just reading excerpts leading up to where I want to begin. He also said, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. This is Passover teaching. This prefigure is what he was to do. He said, he who eats this bread, spiritual bread, the spiritual life, will live forever. So here is profound teaching from Christ about eternal life and himself, this person, who he was, what he was to do.

It comes down to this, the bread of life. And many other statements have been made about bread from Scripture and even on the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus had given instruction there. But at this point was very strong instruction. We use another term from one of Paul's writings. We call this strong meat. This was meat. You like meat? We all like meat. I think most of us like meat, probably a few vegetarians here.

I'm not one of them. It's okay if you are. But spiritually, we talk about strong meat, don't we, from time to time. And give me some meat. Sometimes people want to say, I want to really, well, this was strong meat about bread. The teaching was about bread. And let's look beginning in verse 60 at what happened here.

After he had said all these profound matters, therefore many of his disciples, when they heard this, said, this is a hard saying. Who can understand it? And when Jesus knew in himself that his disciples complained, some of the broader grouping of disciples who had been with him and had heard his teaching over a period of time, he said, does this offend you? They were literally offended by this teaching.

It's hard sometimes for us to imagine that, but they were. We could go into all the reasons why, but that goes beyond this particular message. He says, what then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are Spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe.

For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were, who did not believe, and who would betray him. And he said, therefore I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted to him by my father.

From that time, many of his disciples went back and walked with them no more. The offense was so deep, the lack of understanding and comprehension so strong, that some of the disciples said, this is it. It's either heresy, I can't understand it, I don't agree with it, I'm going to go find another teacher is what they were doing. And they did no longer walk nor be taught with him. And so Jesus said to the 12th, the inner core of the disciples that he had called with whom he had worked, he said, do you want to go away as well? Do you want to leave?

And again, it was Peter who answered, Lord, to whom shall we go? There was no other rabbi, there was no other teacher that they had on their list. Of the other disciples that did leave, they'd been on the internet, they'd heard a few other people.

So they went searching for somebody else. They had another feed that they were clued into with people.

It's kind of like our situation today. If you don't like what one church, one organization, one minister, one teacher says, oh, there's 50 others that you can just kind of click into and figure out who fits you at a particular time. But Peter said, no. Who else are we going to go to? You have the words of eternal life. Also, we have come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, did I not choose you, the Twelve, and one of you is a devil? And he spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. For it was he who would betray him, being one of the Twelve. So Peter made a confession here that Christ was the one to whom they would look, and there was no one else. Others could not understand this deep and profound spiritual teaching. The message that Christ brought from the Father contains very deep teaching and understanding about who Christ is and what it means for our spiritual life today and forever. After all, he said, if whoever eats this life, this bread, this flesh will live forever. And that's the burning question, really, that is so important to us. We desire to be in God's kingdom. We will talk about being in the kingdom. We picture that. We yearn for that. We hope for that. We have that desire for all that it will bring to this world. And certainly we want to be there. And being there means that we transcend across the first resurrection, our bodies are changed, and we become spirit beings. And we talk about that. We think about that. We imagine what that will be. It is our hope. Eternal life. The man came to Christ and said, what must I do to have eternal life? And Christ gave him the answer to keep the commandments. And we find, as we have seen here, that Christ said, you eat my flesh, you will have that life in you. That is the means to that.

And that goes even deeper to how Christ is in us. If we want to live forever, he is saying, we must take in the life, the living bread, that Christ said he was. And this is the message that he brought. This was the gospel. This was about him. It was about his person, his life, his ministry, his death, and his resurrection, the entire package. It was about Jesus Christ. And he is giving it here as the deepest, most profound information that we need to understand as we seek eternal life. And as we obey God, we hope for that and we do his work. Some could not deal with it in the audience that day. We, like Peter, must continually acknowledge with our life, a life of worship and obedience, that Jesus brought the gospel of eternal life.

And we must believe and know that he is the Christ, the Son of the living God, which is what Peter had said here in answer to them, to the disciples. They said that we know that you have the words of eternal life and you are the Christ in verse 69, the Son of the living God, the one that the prophets spoke and pointed to. They believed and came to understand that. So again, Peter never would have imagined that he would be in any way denying Christ in any part of his life.

The gospel, the message and the announcement that Christ brought with his life, death, and resurrection, is that the one prophesied throughout the scriptures by the servants and the prophets of God to be the one by whom peace and salvation would be available for all humanity.

This is the message that Peter acknowledged was there, and he acknowledged it through his years of following Christ and then on beyond after that night because he came to himself, and he repented of that denial. But he came back to understand that Christ had brought the gospel of eternal life. He believed it, and we must as well know that he is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Now let's look at another story in scripture here to understand something, another part of this. Let's turn forward to John 12. John 12.

This is less than a week before the Passover. Christ's arrest and his death.

As we begin in verse 1 of John 12.

Then it says, six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, who had been dead, whom he had raised from the dead. Bethany was a small village just beyond the crest of the Mount of Olives, just a very short distance from Jerusalem.

You would have been coming up from the Dead Sea area, the Jordan Valley toward Jerusalem. The road would have passed through Bethany, and since it was frequently traveled by Christ and the disciples, it also became a place that he had a great deal of affection for because of this family of Lazarus. We know that prior to this, he had come there a bit late, according to Martha and Mary, after Lazarus had died, and he had resurrected Lazarus.

It was also on another occasion he was there, and in the house of Lazarus and his sisters, that Mary had spent a great deal of time with Christ right there listening to him. Martha was scuttering about the kitchen and trying to get things together, and she felt abandoned by her sister. She said to Christ, look, can you tell my sister to come in here and help me?

And Christ used that as an opportunity to teach as well. But the point is this.

This house, this family, was a favorite respite for Jesus. He liked those people. And he had an affinity with them. They were his friends. He had wept over Lazarus's death, but he brought him back to life. I think speaking directly to the humanity that Jesus did have.

And he felt comfortable in this home. And now, just a few days before what he knew was facing him in Jerusalem, he stops there, and there's a gathering of disciples in a very comfortable spot that he had. Maybe he was even sitting in his favorite chair that they had had for him there. If you can imagine that, though it would have been a bit of a different arrangement in that ancient world. But imagine a place that you like to go. A place, as the TV show said a few years ago, where they all know your name.

And it's just your comfortable spot. We all have that. This is what he had.

Now, in verse 2, there they made him a supper. So it was a meal. Again, fellowship, lots of people. And Martha served. And that was Martha's role. She was in charge of the kitchen. You didn't buck Martha. Martha was the deaconess in charge of the chicken. The chicken in the kitchen here in this location. But Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with him. Still alive. A celebrity of sorts. Because you read later that a lot of people had come just to see Lazarus still. He was part of the scene. But here, then, something different happens in verse 3.

Mary took a pound of very costly oil of Spikenard. Now, we'll later say that this was worth upwards of 300 denarii down in verse 5. I was trying to figure out how much 300 denarii would be in the equivalent today. One book I looked at said it was $50,000.

Another source, you know, you get out on the web, you find all kinds of information. $30,000.

And then I say, oh, that's got it, you know, there's big discrepancy. I looked at another one, $400. So I guess you have to figure for inflation. And all that that was. But here's what it was.

It's understood that this was the equivalent of a year's work. Now, you figure up whatever that is worth to you, all right? $30,000, $50,000 or more. But whether it was $400 and, you know, that would have been in that day, in that setting, still a lot of money. And it was also a very, it was very costly. What she did was she anointed the feet of Jesus, and she wiped his feet with her hair. And it says the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil. Now, again, let's understand what exactly this was. She would have had this in a jar. And it also says that this was about a a pound of oil. Some say it was about 12 ounces, if that was equivalent to the Roman pound, or our 12 ounces. But probably some type of a jar, not much bigger than this, would have been sealed.

And if she broke that seal to use that oil here, she would have had to use all of it. She could not have kept it. The type of fragrant oil that this was would have likely been used for embalming someone to spread over the body. It would have been made that the commentators feel as far away, perhaps, as India. And the way that oil was made then and the oil that is still made in that part of the world today, again, adds to its costliness. About 10 years ago, 12 years ago, we went to the feast in Jordan. They had one of these add-on tours in Egypt afterwards. And when we were in Egypt, what they do is they take you, you know how every tour guide in that part of the world does? They always take your tour group to some type of a store or factory where they want you to spend a lot of your American dollars so that the people make a lot, you know, that everybody gets a cut of what you're spending there. One of the places that they took us in Egypt was a perfume store. And I did learn about perfumes there because they had actually the oils out of which the very expensive perfumes that we might buy at Macy's or some other expensive store made in Paris or some other location, the oils that these companies make the really nice perfume, obsession, passion, or whatever in the all the names that they come up with. That's an education in itself to look at the names for perfumes. But the essential oils come from places like Egypt and the Middle East, even to this day. And they're made over a period of time. They take petals from flowers, herbs, roots, and other sources depending upon the scent. They're put into jars and with oil and they, in a sense, ferment or they set there for a period of time.

And it creates this very, very strong oil and that then is sold to the fragrance houses and then they take that and reconstitute it into what you and I pay, you know, $200 for two ounces of it if we really feel like we want to do that. That's why it costs so much money. Understanding it even from our perspective today helps us to appreciate how much this was valued in by Mary at this particular moment. This, this what she did was she was taking what some commentators feel was her security for her future because that could have been sold for a lot of money to have provided her for her future. But she took it that night and she used it on Jesus and she anointed him with it.

And again, once she broke the seal on the jar, she would have had to use all of it. It couldn't have been put back, put away. So this was an act of worship that included her giving her all, totality of her being by what she is doing, number one, with taking the oil. As you read, as we read this, she undid her hair and wiped Christ's feet with that. Now there was another occasion where another woman, some feel that was Mary Magdalene, had done that. And this was a very personal gesture for her to do this, on her knees, accomplishing it and pouring the oil over Jesus and over his feet and wiping her feet down with this. And it says, notice in verse 3, the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil. Again, such concentrated fragrance would very easily, very quickly have permeated the entire house very strongly. We all know how people get offended, well, not offended, I don't mean to use that term, but affected today by fragrances. We have to have fragrance-free rooms. And we're even encouraged in gatherings like this, often not to wear fragrance out of the concern for other people because of they have a reaction to that. So we understand that. This particular fragrance filled the room and it would have been strong enough that it actually would have permeated the clothing of everyone. It would have been with them for some time. I like to imagine, looking at this, that the fragrance that they had that night when they all left that room lingered with them for days. In my thinking, the disciples who were there and went all the way to the cross and watched Christ die would have been still smelling the fragrance from this night.

And it would have been on their mind. That's how strong this oil was, but also how important it was, the entire act and what is being done that night by Mary. This is a very, very intimate, affectionate, deep, profound spiritual action that she is doing as she does this with Jesus.

But in verse 4, one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, and we know what he was to do, Simon's son, who would betray him, said, Why was this fragrant oil not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor? Judas was the treasurer of the disciples and the group. He dispersed funds. He paid bills. He was responsible for all of this. So his mind thought in a little different way. And he's looking and knowing the cost of this and what could have been put into the bags that he was carrying. Greed. In the about the attention even being given toward Jesus at this point, perhaps part of Judas's problem was after three and a half years with Christ, the relationship had grown a little bit thin, as relationships do. Perhaps there had been too much traveling, too much time together, and there just needed to be some space.

Who knows all that was working on Judas to take him to the point of betrayal, but in this case it was envied over the money. And verse 6, John note as he wrote this later, he said, This he said not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and had the money box and he used to take what was put in it. They probably found this out later after Judas had went out and committed suicide. He probably did an audit of the funds and found out that he'd been dipping in and turning in double receipts or whatever things are done to take money out of a common fund like this, betraying a trust. So he had no care for the people.

Jesus said in verse 7, Let her alone. She has kept this for the day of my burial.

For the poor you have with you always, but me you do not have always.

Now, if you read Matthew's account of this same night, he adds something that John doesn't.

In Matthew's account, Christ also said, Wherever this gospel is preached, this will be told.

Wherever this gospel is preached, this will be told.

This gospel. What gospel? This action of a woman who, out of an act of worship, anointed the feet of Jesus, understanding who he was and what he was bound toward, his death.

Because this would have been used for burial. Someone else had to then provide the oil that anointed his body as it was laid into the tomb. Because Mary used hers up six days earlier.

But she understood where other disciples did not, where he was going once he crested the hill of the Mount of Olives and started down on the other side toward Jerusalem. She understood, likely, that there was no turning back. And that this would be the last meal that they would have together, probably in this home. And they had had several before that. And so, we find two people.

Judas, a hypocrite. A man with a closed heart, a cold heart, and a closed hand.

He couldn't understand what was happening, nor was he capable of alleviating any poor person's suffering. So where would you and where would I find ourselves in this story?

Would we be closer to the kneeling Mary, absorbed in what she was doing, wanting to understand how Jesus commented on that? Or would we have been in another part of the room closer to Judas, complaining and murmuring with Judas? Where would you or I have been? Because Judas denied this particular event here. It's a question to ask ourselves. I've asked, how or could we deny Christ today? Let's look for a minute at a few examples and ways by which we might deny Jesus Christ. The first is this. We could deny Jesus Christ today by diminishing the full gospel.

We've read a bit about the gospel here. Remember Matthew's account said of the event here, that wherever this gospel is told, her account will be a part of it. And the profound teaching of Jesus about his body, his suffering, his life in John 6, is a part of the gospel as well. We could deny Jesus by diminishing the full gospel.

You see, the gospel, as the Bible records it, is a multifaceted, multi-dimensional matter.

It is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it is the gospel of the kingdom of God.

It is the announcement sent through God by His only begotten Son. It is a message that Jesus Christ announced in His ministry about both the coming kingdom of God and His person and His body and His whole life. It's multifaceted. It's multi-dimension.

Twenty-two years ago in the United Church of God, we made a momentous and correct step in establishing our mission statement for the United Church of God to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God. It fully captures the essence of the gospel of God.

Jesus Christ is central to the gospel of God, which is also the gospel of our salvation.

And it's the gospel of the kingdom of God. You cannot separate any part of what the gospel is as told to us throughout the Scriptures. You cannot separate one out and say that that is the one-soul aspect of the gospel. It is a holistic matter. It is a total matter. And we should never let ourselves ever be thinking that it's only one part.

It's multi-dimensional. And when we come to the Passover service, when we come to the Days of Unleavened Bread, there's a very critical part of it that we do focus on. And we want to be very careful that we don't ever deny that in any way, shape, or form, but that we fully understand what that means.

A second way by which we could deny Jesus Christ is by diminishing the divinity of Jesus Christ.

What do I mean by that? By thinking that Jesus Christ is not God.

That He was not the Word who became flesh. That He was not equal with God.

That He was God from eternity. Whatever that means. You really can't say from eternity and be correct because eternity has no from. It has no beginning. It has no end. We say from a date, to this one date to the other, whatever it is, and that's because we're temporal. But to deny that Jesus is God diminishes a very critical point.

Peter confessed that Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah. And that can only mean that He was God. And though He failed on the night that Christ was arrested and He denied Him, Peter got back on his feet and he understood very clearly through his later writings that we see in his preaching, because we see in the opening sermon in the book of Acts that Peter gives the first sermon of the church, and he very clearly believes that he was the prophesied Messiah, that he was the Son of God, that he was God. And that is proven throughout by Peter and by the other apostles as well.

But we must always be very careful today, each of us, not to deny or to diminish the fact that Christ was God come in the flesh. To do so diminishes and frankly takes away any hope that we have of a Savior. Because if Christ was not God, we do not have a Savior. Because it required nothing less than the life of God to be sacrificed for human sin, to provide the means of atonement and justification, and the means by which we can have the hope of eternal life. This is what the scriptures show. In 2 John, verse 7, the apostle John is addressing this idea that began very early in the church, that Jesus was not divine, that he wasn't God. 2 John, verse 7, in one of several references that John makes about the spirit of Antichrist, about Antichrist, he says in verse 7, For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an Antichrist.

One of the ideas that John was actually attacking that was coming up at that time was what is called docetism. The idea that Jesus was merely kind of a phantom, and he really was not in the flesh.

The docetism taken as a belief that Jesus only seemed human, that his human form was an illusion, was an early form of heresy. There was another early heresy that came on the scene called Arianism, that denied the divinity of Christ and that it subjugated the role of Christ to the Father or to God as Christ being less than God or in some forms of Arianism, that it was a human being who kind of climbed up the ladder of righteousness by his own merit and became God. That's a heresy because Christ was God who came in the flesh. He was not a good Jewish rabbi. He was not just a good moral man who somehow attained a resurrection in God's favor. He was God who came in the flesh. Arianism is an early heresy, a teaching that claims that he was less than that. I've run across forms of Arianism in the church in my years in the ministry, both even in recent years. You run across people who believe and deny. They believe Christ was not human, or was, I'm sorry, was not God. And through various shades and forms of teaching, it diminishes that. And scripturally, anything like that takes away the reality that we have a Savior. And it is certainly anti-scriptural and not true. It's a pernicious heresy.

It is important that the church, that you and I individually, and especially as we come to take the symbols of Passover, the bread and the wine, that we hold it very clear that we have a view of who Jesus Christ was and who He is. That is what is involved in properly taking the symbols of the Passover meal. That we understand that He was God, divine before His human birth, is essential.

Again, I say, without that, we have no Savior. And frankly, we would have no hope of eternal life.

But the Scriptures prove otherwise. John says that a spirit of Antichrist was working in his day, and the spirit of Antichrist continues to work in the world today in many different forms, from outright rank atheism to other forms that deny the divinity of Christ. And one should be very vigilant to varying ideas that sometimes crop up even within the church, that we might hear about seem to be intriguing or otherwise, and judge them very, very carefully, according to the standard of the Word of God. God's Word is truth, not other forms of human reasoning. We must always be vigilant, or we could be guilty of denying Jesus Christ. A third way by which we could deny Christ is by diminishing the role of Jesus Christ in us. Jesus Christ in us. The key to the Days of Unleavened Bread is what we read from John 6, which we just covered, where by eating the flesh of Christ, the bread that came down from heaven, we're taking in the life of Christ, the life of the resurrected Christ. That's the hope of eternal life. And that, brethren, is the power to put out the spiritual sin that so easily affects our lives, and to overcome the flesh, and overcome the pulls of this world, this life that crowd in on us. The effective, long-lasting, scriptural, viable way of overcoming sin, of putting out sin, is by putting into us the life of Jesus Christ.

And if we have problems overcoming, if we find ourselves year after year after year after year after year after year with the same problems beset by the same sins, never seeming to make any progress, one root cause for us to consider could be, have we put enough of Christ in us to put out the leaven of sin. That is a critical question for us to think about. So many scriptures talk about putting on the new man, Christ's life in us, Christ in us, the hope of life. So many. And what we just read in John 6, in Galatians 2, verse 20, the apostle Paul was speaking to this here, Galatians 2, verse 20. He said, I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. A profound verse, a cardinal verse to consider as we go into the days of Unleavened Bread. Have we taken in the life of Christ even more? That's the key to overcoming sin. And that is where we need to focus. And that's where the ministry and all of our efforts in educating and teaching and really, truly, brethren, caring for one another, caring for all of us ourselves as disciples comes down to that critical point in helping us all to understand how it is that we live that life with Christ in us day by day, every day of the year. We focus on it during the days of Unleavened Bread, but that's where our focus should be.

So this year, in 1 Corinthians 5, Paul writes, he says, we are unleavened.

We're unleavened spiritually by the life of Christ in us through the power of the Holy Spirit.

So this year, as you put out the leaven, and you should put out the leaven, and as you prepare in your preparation for the days of Unleavened Bread, this year then, as you eat the unleavened bread, during the days of Unleavened Bread, each day, as you do that, think on these profound truths that it's a picture of Christ's life in you helping you, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to put sin out of your life, to overcome sin over a period of time, as we grow in grace and knowledge. Think about it that way. Understand that. Because after all that we've done is only physical.

We get, if we get every crumb out, and I don't know that I've ever had every crumb out of my house, but I always make the effort every year. And there have been times when I've slipped and eaten a jelly donut. Not knowingly, until after that donut is working its way down through my intestines that I realize, oops, there's three days left. And then I put the jelly donut away.

That's what happened when I was a kid. I stopped eating jelly donuts every day of the year, for the most part anyway. I eat other things I shouldn't eat, but jelly donuts, I just, I like them, but they don't like me. But we've all slipped during the days of Unleavened Bread, a hamburger, or whatever it might be, and there's object lessons there, but those are physical matters that do help us understand the deeper spiritual truths.

Which is why, as we de-leaven, and as we put in the unleavened bread, we focus on that during that time. And by that way, we are affirming what Christ's teaching is about eternal life, about how we overcome sin, and what this is all about. Think beyond the physical aspects and see the eternal truths that God has placed in these festivals that we are now entering. Determine all of us to grow in grace and in knowledge. As we prepare for the Passover and the days of Unleavened Bread, think on these matters and other things about Jesus Christ and what God is doing and has done. As we come on that night to take the Passover, we all have varying thoughts that have prepared us in our hearts and our minds for that evening. And that is as it should be as we pour over Scripture, read favorite passages, have certain rituals or routines that we've all kind of worked into through the years that help us mentally and spiritually to prepare. Trust those, keep those, work those through, enhance them as you as you as you year by year. But come that night prepared to affirm who Jesus Christ is and to remember what it is that brings us to that night. Because we come to the night of the Passover to remember the Passover Lamb who died for us. We come to remember the One whose sacrifice takes away the sin of all the world. We come to remember the One slain from the foundation of the world. On the night of the Passover, we come to remember the One by whom all things were created in heaven and earth. We come to remember the One who was the I AM, who spoke to Moses from the burning bush and gave the law from Mount Sinai.

We come to remember the One who was the rock that the Israelites followed in the wilderness.

We come to remember the One who was God and came to dwell among flesh, proving that the eternal spirit can be joined to human flesh and making possible salvation for the human creation.

We come to remember the I AM, who said that before Abraham was, he was.

We come to remember the One who is the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior.

We come to remember the One who on the night when they came and arrested him said, I AM. I AM. And they were afraid when they heard that name because they understood, some did in the crowd, what it meant. We don't want to be one who denies any part of the identity of Jesus Christ, because it is in him that the Father has determined that all will ultimately be reconciled.

We don't want to be one who diminishes in any way, any part of who Christ was at any point in time and eternity. He was God. He became flesh. And John says that we beheld his glory.

So let's be very, very careful as we consider ourselves and as we consider our preparation for that night. In 2 Corinthians 4, 1 Corinthians 4, thinking back about Mary with that costly oil, pouring it over Christ and wiping his feet with her hair and that fragrance filling the room. And as I imagined lingering with all of the disciples who'd been in that room for several days. And then read what we read here in 2 Corinthians chapter 4. And let's think about that. Paul writes, we have this treasure in earthen vessels.

The oil that she anointed Jesus with came out of a clay jar, an earthen vessel.

And that oil represents God's spirit. And God's spirit in us is the life of God through Jesus Christ within us. And Paul writes, as he perhaps even remembered that story as it was told to him as he writes this, he said, we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.

Something to think about as we prepare ourselves and examine ourselves for the Passover.

Let us come to take the Passover with a reverent and worshipful spirit. Let us keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. And let us acknowledge Jesus Christ, our Lord, our King, and our Savior. And let us not deny our Lord.