As in the Days of Noah

About two weeks ago, a movie was released in the United States, and I suppose around the world, that had the title, Noah, on it. Now, somebody, one of our staff members said, who went to see the movie, he said, it could just as well have been called Jeffrey, for all the accuracy that it had about Noah and the Bible. Because other than the name, and that there was a boat, that's about all the resemblance that the movie had to the biblical account of Noah and an ark and a flood. I went to see the movie only because I had said we needed to review it on our website, and you don't want to review a movie or a book unless you've actually seen it or read it, if you're going to have any credibility at all.

So, I spent $5.75 to go see the movie, and that was a complete waste of money, even at that small amount, but I had to go see it. My wife wouldn't even, she didn't want to go with me, and so I had to go by myself on a Sunday morning early to see the movie. And it was boring. It was an interesting experience. There were a number of problems with the movie, I could go on and on and on about. And I'm going to say some of my comments, I think, at your camp out next week.

Rich Chabot asked me to do a presentation on Gnosticism, and I'm going to update that presentation with some observations from this movie, because rather than being a story about the Bible and the truth of the Bible, it was really more Gnostic related than anything else. And the author of the screenplay wove in more Gnostic themes than he did Biblical themes. But there were a number of problems, you know, biblically with the movie, and that's been talked and talked about quite a bit.

But here's the lead-in to some of the points I want to make here today, because I'm not going to necessarily talk about the movie, although I did want to talk a little bit about what the Bible does say about Noah. But here at the beginning of the Holy Day season, we see this big release of this movie. And the attention that was drawn to it was not to bolster and strengthen one's belief in God or the Bible or the truth of either. It was really meant and had an effect of creating more controversy and untruth being spread about the story of Noah as they wove it into a modern tale there than anything else.

And it's the phenomenon that I've noticed quite often through the years that just it seems at this time of year before the Passover season for us, for the world, the Easter season as this time of year rolls around, there's always something that comes out and some big headline that is made to denigrate the Bible, cast doubt on the Bible or on God. And I think that this movie, as it was timed for this release, whether meant to or whatever, I can't say that it's part of any vast plan because there are a couple of other movies that have come out at this time.

One dealing with a little kid that supposedly had an near-death experience. Some of you may be aware of that movie. And then there's another one about actually more tuned toward proving God's existence than tearing it down. Hollywood is turning out a number of movies done by the major studios with major stars dealing with spiritual or biblical themes, not because they're getting religion, but because they see that there is an untapped audience out there of religious people who will come and pay to see these movies.

So it's all about the dollar. But there are more biblically related, spiritually related movies being made in Hollywood today than at any time in the past. There's another remake of the movie Exodus that's being done that will be coming out in December by a big name director, Ridley Scott.

And it will no doubt be a big blockbuster too. I have no idea how accurate it will be. But it's funny to imagine somebody else playing Moses and trying to replace the image of Charlton Heston in your mind when it comes to what Moses may have looked like. I'm sorry. I know that Moses did not look like Charlton Heston. But for all of us, for all the times in the last 50, 60 years that we've seen the Ten Commandments, when we think about Moses, go ahead and tell me.

Who do you? Charlton Heston. That's right. That's who you see. That's who I see. So that's just the way it is. So we'll have a, I think it's Christian Bale that's playing Moses. So we'll have a new face up there for a new generation for Moses this year. But true to form, this movie did more to create controversy. And just a couple of days ago, I saw a headline on an item that had come out a few years ago that was now being brought back out again, where they had the story about a papyrus, ancient fragment of a manuscript that was found dating from the earliest centuries in the church that talked about Jesus having had a wife.

And that came out two or three years ago and created a stir. It was basically shoved to the shelf. A lot of research has done now. They've come back this year and said that it's not a modern work, that it is an ancient work. And so that keeps, it has kind of stirred it up in the headlines again without any basis in reality in terms of the Scriptures or even itself being something that can be a reliable witness of the first century experience of the church and Jesus Christ. The point is, these things have a way of creating controversy and stirring up doubt.

If you look at Noah, this is a story, and if we look at this movie having come out just prior to the Passover and this particular period, there are certain things for us to look at and to perhaps be drawing some lessons. Noah's story, as God tells it there in Genesis and as it is referenced in the New Testament, is a story of judgment. It is a story of a period of a message of warning upon a world that is being judged because of sin and violence.

And it's also a story about God's grace and God's deliverance. And the story of Noah captures our imagination still in so many different ways that a man would be told by God to build a boat for the saving of all life on the earth and bring on board all the animals and humans to do that. It's one of the great stories of the Bible. It truly is, and it continues to be an interest-grabbing story. Even today, people hunt on Mount Ararat in modern-day Turkey looking for the remains of the Ark.

And there are groups and people who spend a lot of money and time going up there trying to find it. And some feel that they have found the spot where the Ark was, or rested on Mount Ararat. In fact, about a year ago, some of a few of our ministers kind of got excited about a possibility of joining with a group of an expedition going up there last year to take some scientific equipment and recording equipment and actually take some readings and try to verify what this huge object is up on Mount Ararat.

And we would have had to spend a few thousand dollars to have joined in on it, and there was a thought among some that perhaps we could write some articles off of it or get some Beyond Today footage or that it might garner to our effect. We didn't... we talked about it, but it didn't happen. We didn't engage. We didn't spend any money on it, and that just didn't happen. A lot of things kind of came in the way.

Let's just say the doors didn't open for something like that, but there's interest there. Up in Kentucky, just across the river from where we are in Cincinnati, there is an effort. There's a man who has been collecting money for some time. He wants to build, as part of an amusement park or as a museum, a full-size replica of the Ark.

Some of you may have read about that. And he's garnered a lot of money for that. He still doesn't have all that he needs. But it is a part of a religious effort to promote belief in the idea of the Ark and the teaching of the Ark, and building a huge scale or not a full-size model is his goal. And of course, the story continues to live on.

Children in Bible classes around the world are taught the story of Noah and how God brought eight people through on that experience. And this movie comes out and on the surface has a wonderful opportunity, but misses by a long shot. When you look at the story of Noah, and I think all of us know the basic outline of the story of Noah that is told here back in Genesis, beginning in chapter 6 of Genesis, it is a story that even I continue to study and read about in terms of the Flood and geology and what we know, don't know, think we know about the Earth's formation and cataclysmic events that have shaped the surface of the earth and the connections with the Flood.

But the story is told here in chapter 6, 7, and 8, and 9 of the book. It's very short, very sketchy, and any movie or book that would be written about it would have to try to fill in a lot of the details. To be honest, through the years, as I've thought about this, I have imagined my own version of the story of Noah that perhaps adds a little bit of meat to the bones that we have in this particular account here.

Like you, I've been fascinated by it. Jesus referenced the story of Noah in Matthew 24. The Apostle Peter talks about Noah. To look at it, to study it, to think about it and what took place. It gives us obviously a clear vision that it was a massive project that spawned possibly generations. If it was 120 years that Noah preached, that God suffered with the sons of men, verse 3 here of Genesis 6, where God says, "'My spirit shall not strive with man forever. He is indeed flesh, and yet his days shall be 120.'" If that's telling us that it was a length of time that Noah preached and built the Ark possibly then, that's a long time.

Even two-thirds of that, or half of that, whatever it took, was a large project. It took multiple generations of people to work on this project. I personally imagined it to be something that employed probably thousands of people. If you see the movie Noah, the way they portrayed the boat being built, these huge rock monsters come up and they build the boat. The rock monsters are fallen angels, which brings in another element to the story that helped Noah build the boat.

They're crawling all over the boat, pounding nails and this and that. They're rock monsters, kind of a different form of transformers that do it. But I think human beings built the Ark. I think that somehow it cost a bit of money to do it. It was a massive project. Materials would have had to have been gathered and brought into a site from far-off areas. In the movie, they show Noah planting what they portrayed as a Genesis seed. He plants the seed and boom! The whole forest grows up. That enables them to cut wood to build the Ark. But I think the whole community and the whole work grew up around that Ark myself.

As it went on in time, I think that people came to work on it from far off. I think they had families born in the shadow of that Ark and kids grew up in the shadow of that Ark as their dad trudged off to work every day as a carpenter or some type of a skilled artisan to actually work on that.

I think a culture developed around the Ark that people worked on it. It was something that they could identify with. We are told that Noah is a preacher of righteousness by Peter, which means that he was a preacher of the gospel.

God doesn't do anything without giving people a warning and a time and opportunity to repent. I think people heard the message of Noah from far and wide in whatever means and way that it was preached at that time. People had the opportunity to accept or reject. Maybe some believed on it for a while and caught a vision and sacrificed their lives and gave their lives to it for a period of time, thinking and identifying with the message of change and the message of righteousness because of what Noah was talking about and showing was going to happen.

It was a preposterous idea and that God was going to destroy all flesh. Something like that had never happened before and where the boat would have been built was not anywhere near any large body of water. Again, people were having to wrap their mind around the idea that God was going to judge in a way that had never happened before in their history and relate that to a change in their own life.

There are similarities. We have been a part of the Church of God, and a work that is preaching a message of repentance and turning people toward the kingdom of God for many, many decades in our own time. It's the message that is very similar to turning from sin, of repenting during a period and an age that has its own level of violence and sin, much like what we would see in the story of Noah.

It was a violent period of time upon the earth. If you look at verse 13 of chapter 6, God said to Noah, The end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

We have our own forms of violence today, whether it is outright attacks upon people in the streets, wars, or violence of other natures that impact the social fabric of our world that we take for granted as legislated choices that people have to terminate life before it's ever born. We have our own forms of violence today that rack our world with indifference and such. The message to repent and to turn from that and to turn to a message of righteousness is what we're a part of and why this is an important matter for us to relate to the story of Noah. You can imagine the message of Noah going far and wide in his day, and people told the story of a man warning about a coming catastrophe upon the earth that if they didn't repent, they would perish and they needed to turn to something different.

Noah, of all people on the earth, had been drawn by God to understand his times, to understand what Leah had for mankind. In verse 8 here of chapter 6 of Genesis, in the midst of all this, it says that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. For all the emphasis upon judgment and the destruction of flesh by the flood, we sometimes forget a little bit about the fact that that little word grace is inserted right here in the account and that he found grace in the eyes of God, which means that as he was a preacher of righteousness, but that merited God's favor upon him to use him in the way that he did.

And grace is a very important part of the story. But when we look at that and we leave it, it is a fantastic part of the book of Genesis. As I said, it's a bit sketchy. We'd like to know a lot more. We have to imagine, as I have, some of the details.

But when it's all said and done, God leaves us with that and we move into the New Testament. And I think, as I was saying to some in talking about this movie and the most important message that comes out of the story, it's probably what we find in Matthew 24, where Jesus made reference to Noah in his Olivet prophecy. Matthew 24, beginning in verse 36. In the midst of talking about the events that would answer the apostles' question, what will the signs be of your coming as he walks them through the various episodes and events, we come down to verse 36.

And Jesus says, About that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the flood, or the ark, up until the day that he entered the ark. And they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be left in the field, one will be taken, the other left.

Two women will be grinding with a hand-milled, one will be taken, and the other left. Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. So in search of this story of Noah, again, doesn't go into all the details, but to Jesus' mind, Noah was a real figure. And because he validates Noah in this prophecy, and Matthew records it and all the other Gospel writers as well, at least in the synoptic Gospels, it validates that Noah was a real person, that it was an event that took place, and Jesus validates it, or he's a liar.

And if he's a liar, we don't have a Savior. But he's not a liar, and we do have a Savior, and his words are true. But what is it that we should take from this? This is, I think, where we need to focus upon the most important lessons spiritually for us to take about the story of Noah, the Ark, and all the other matters and the details.

You can study a lot about the flood, and if you want to spend your life searching on Mount Ararat in Turkey for the Ark, you can do that. Personally, I don't care. I have my own opinions, I won't tell you what they are, about whether there's a boat up there or not. I think I just did, but I won't tell you anyway.

But I just turn to you, this is what Jesus says, he says, as in the days before the flood, people were eating, drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage. Life was going on. Jesus is not saying it's wrong to get married, nor is it wrong to eat or to drink. He's saying that everyday life will be going on just as it did in the days of Noah. And it will be distractions. It will be the potential for distractions just as it was then, and not heeding a message of the gospel, a message of righteousness and repentance.

That's what he's saying. He says, you're not going to know the day or the hour. Only the Father will know that. But as it was in Noah's time, people were violent. It was an age of rebellion against God and distractions. The way the movie portrayed the world of Noah in this movie, it was kind of a post-apocalyptic, dark, dreary, barbaric-type world. I don't personally think it was. They've overlaid 21st century ideas onto it to make certain statements about environmentalism and everything else.

Whatever that world was, it was not post-apocalyptic. It was not just barren bleak and the way the movie portrayed it. Life was going on. This is what Jesus was saying. There was a sense of normalcy for life as it was then, just as it is for us today. We live, obviously, in a very highly complex, technical, global world today. Fabulously wealthy. To get people's attention about a message of righteousness and the truth of God today is very, very challenging. Sometimes we think as we try to figure out why isn't God calling others or why is the church not as big as we think it should be when it's really God's church and His work and He's going to have it as big as He wants it to be.

But we think about that and we certainly want people to respond. We think, well, there's all these distractions and things. Yes, that's true, but I don't think there were any more distractions per capita than there was for the apostle Paul or Peter or for Noah, to be real honest about it. They did their job and God will call whom He will. We must continue to be about our Father's business and do what God asks us to do. But what Jesus is telling us here is that this world is full of distractions and we need to focus in on that.

Those are the big lessons for us to bring down to our level and to really make sure that they impact us. When you look at what Noah did, it was unheard of, as I've said. He was talking about something to come upon the world that had never happened. Today, we talk about the coming of Christ. We warn about a time of tribulation and prophetic events to culminate and come together at the crisis at the close of an age.

For people that are just worried about making a living, getting through life, marrying, eating, drinking, giving and marriage, raising their families, trying to support their families and just getting through this chaos called life today, they're not worried about what might happen in Europe or the Middle East so much until it really jacks up the price of their gallon of gas that they have to buy a couple times a week. Food prices go up or other things that might have been impacted by that. They don't care. That's what Jesus is talking about, a world that is full of distractions. And to craft up the message of repentance to our age today, it is a major challenge, and we do think hard and long about that.

Frankly, this is not the same generation of people that, as my mother was, who 50 years ago plus 50 plus years ago, responded to the message that she heard.

It's a different time. It's a different generation.

And my mother was a depression era, World War II generation person that looked at a whole different worldview. And her world then was completely different than the world that it is today that we are endeavoring to reach. It's not my mother's world today, nor my dad's.

But the message is the same, but we have to make sure that we are communicating effectively to get the point across. And to be honest, for some of us, and myself, it's been hard to grasp that, which is why I do listen to our 20, 30-somethings that work for us and listen to them when they tell us, don't say it this way, say it this way, if you want to reach today's world.

You wouldn't believe what it's like setting through a Beyond Today script process.

How many of you ever went through Spokesman's Club?

Piece of cake. That was kindergarten. I went through Spokesman's Club, too.

Senior year of high school, the minister let me in. I got raked over the coals. I got corrected. Man, it really got personal with me. My minister did.

You set through a script review process, and we have a pretty thorough review process with our staff, and they look at what I've written, and they'll shred it. They'll tear it up and say, you need to say it this way. We're not talking about scriptures and truth. We're talking about just a tone of voice and a voice and getting it across. Sometimes I just throw my pencil down, or I shut my computer. I turned to one of our staff members about a year ago, and I looked at him, and I said, if somebody told me about three years ago I'd be sitting here taking correction from you, I would have told them they were crazy. We could talk like that among each other.

It's been a learning experience. It truly has. But they help us, older guys, boomers like me, know how to talk to a generation today. We're conveying the same eternal truths of salvation in the kingdom of God. But if you're going to communicate to get them to a point of repentance, you've got to know how to lay it out there. This is what we have to work with and work through in the responsibilities we've been given. In Hebrews 8 and verse 7. Paul talks about the reference to Noah, too. He says, He was warned of things to come, not yet seen, divinely warned. And he moved and acted with faith and with a godly fear. That summarizes very succinctly what Noah did and the message that is there. For you and I to think it through in our own life and our own level, this is what Paul wanted his audience to take out of the whole story of Noah.

Four chapters in Genesis give us a bare-bones outline of what took place. We're still trying to figure that out. If you want to really try to understand the fountains of the deep breaking up and the flood and its impact upon this earth and people and all of that, four chapters in the Bible is not very much. Christ had a couple of verses. Paul summarizes it in one verse and gets very succinct. Move with godly fear.

To change his life and to follow where God led.

You've been moved by godly fear, too. I have, throughout my life, to come out of a world, to be different from it by how I live, act, and think. To be transformed, to continue to be transformed, which means to be changed and allow myself to be changed. Forty years plus, in terms of my work just in the ministry. My mother came into the church 51 years ago. I was just a small kid at the time and started to learn.

I've been in the ministry 41 years. I still look at myself every year to pass over season and examine myself. Through the year, seek to change and to be yielded to God. To be moved by the fear of God. To live a life and to be changed in my thinking and my approach to be more like God. To be more like Christ. And as I engage in this world and look at this world, I know that I can be influenced by it as we all can. And I have to ask myself certain questions along the way as to how much I'm influenced and have I come out of this world and letting God work with me.

When Christ said that the world would be drinking and marrying and giving in marriage, he was describing a way of life. And at the end of it, he was saying that the knowledge of God would not be held in high esteem, high regard, by a world that is caught up in materialism. And the idols of money, status, and self would crowd out anything godly from large parts of society and continue to wear down even those who are trying to hold the line. If you will, keep their finger in the dike and keep from being flooded and overcome completely by the waters of materialism and society that is out there. And we continue to deal with that and see those efforts being made.

But if we look at what God is telling us about our world today and what we need to focus on, then we can begin to prepare our hearts and our minds for what we will be doing in just a few hours.

And that is to sit down and take the symbols of the bread and wine and observe the Passover service. And so, let me ask you this. If we look at these scriptures that we've read about Noah, what Christ said, and what Paul writes here about it, what is God saying to the church through these scriptures? And let's bring it down to an even more personal level. What is He saying to you and I at this time? What is it that we need and should focus on?

If we're living in an age that is just like it was in the days of Noah, then what might we take from that and perhaps think about as we prepare our minds and our hearts to take the symbols of the bread and wine and go through the foot-washing service here tomorrow night, those of us who are the baptized members of the church, and to take that solemn annual ceremony?

As I've thought it through in recent days, I've brought it down to three points that I feel that I need to think about. So, let me share what I've thought about with you. And if it rings a bell with you and helps you, then fine. We are told to examine ourselves and I hope and know that we will all do that prior to coming to the Passover service. And be sure that as we examine ourselves, that we do it in a right way that really puts our full examination not just on ourselves, but upon Jesus Christ.

That we might truly discern the Lord's body. Because the Passover service is not about us. It's about what Jesus Christ did for us. And when we fully appreciate that, we can come fully prepared without fear and know that we have discerned the Lord's body properly, as Paul says, to do, and need not worry or fear that we will take the symbols in an unworthy manner.

Don't focus so much on yourself as you focus upon the body of Christ.

One of the things that I thought about is over here in Ephesians chapter 5. In verse 14, the Apostle Paul writes Ephesians 5 and verse 14, Therefore he says, Awake ye who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light. See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wake up, you who sleep.

We all can get a bit drowsy. We can be lulled by our circumstances, the world we live in, whatever level of comfort or influence we might have, and whatever it is that we're comfortable with in our life, we can be lulled into a normalcy, thinking that it's all going to continue just as it has been, and not a sense of urgency in just the way we live our lives.

Being a need to change, to be continually feeding upon the Word of God, letting it correct us and work with us. From time to time, we need to splash a cold water in our face.

God has a way of doing that in particular ways, and it can be through a challenge to our faith. It can be something that is just the normal occurrence of life. It can be what is taking place with a friend or a brother in the faith, and a time of trial to just help us realize we need to pray for each other, and that life can change real quick for any one of us.

As the commercial said, life can come at you real fast.

We need to keep that in mind, keep our life kind of pared down to what's really important, spiritually and even physically at times, but to wake up those who, you who sleep and to arise from the dead, and Christ will give you life, give you light.

I would say, ask in this season for God to give you some light, to shine it a little brighter into your life, to see what needs to be faced and overcome and focused on.

We can make those changes when we really want to, we really apply ourselves.

One of the things I probably will talk about on the last day of Unleavened Bread is repentance and change, and I know just how hard change can be.

We can look back at certain aspects of our life, 20, 30, 40, all of our lives, and see we're still that way. We haven't really changed, and it can be discouraging, but change does come slow. I'm still the way I was at certain points of my life in the past, and I'm sorry to have to say it. Sometimes my wife points it out when she has a certain tone in her voice and things that she will say to me that remind me I'm just like things of the past.

We're all like that, and yet we are to be transformed, and we can be. We can change.

We need to ask God to splash a bit of cold water in our face and apply whatever lessons are right in front of our eyes and to make those changes so that we're attuned not only to the times in the world in which we live, but also to where we sit within God's purpose and plan for us and the calling that he's given to each one of us. Because he has given a calling to us, and he is shaping and molding us for a place within the body of Christ. The work of Christ's bodies, the spiritual body being fitly framed together and built together is ongoing. God and Christ never rest or cease from that work. It is being done. At times when we can't see it being done, we think that it is not being done. We think we have maybe failed miserably as an organization in doing it or whatever. It's still being done.

Sitly framing together the body of Christ is not dependent upon you and I. It is being done by the Father and by Jesus Christ without ceasing.

We all are called to be a part of that and to have our opportunity and our place to be fitted within that structure, that spiritual body.

That's why I said in my comments at the beginning that we serve a great God.

And that God has a big message of salvation and the kingdom of God.

And it's not us. It's not our work. It's not our church. We've been given an opportunity to be a part of what He is doing. And the more we're aligned with that, the better it works.

Second thought to consider.

We need to find God's grace.

At this time of year, we need to find God's grace. You know, it says we read back in Genesis 6 where Noah found grace in God's sight.

He found God's favor, His watchful eye, His attentive care.

And so have we. And we need to remember that and to be thankful for that.

In Romans 5, Romans 5, verse 1, Paul here makes a very important point about God's grace.

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

To be made just as our sins were forgiven when we were baptized, and the blood of Christ washed us from sins and reconciled us to God, and redeemed us. We have that redemption through the blood of Christ. We have been justified by faith and we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

We stand by faith. We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand.

That is speaking to a relationship with God. Not just one act, necessarily, but an entire relationship with God that is based on faith into this grace in which we stand.

It is God's good graces into which we have been brought by the blood of Jesus Christ and in which we stand as we have faith in that.

And that is a relationship that does not get broken. Later on in chapter 8 of Romans, Paul will go on to say in some of the heights of his language that nobody can separate us from the love of God. Neither height nor depth, nothing can separate us. We have a relationship with God when we have accepted by faith Christ sacrificed and we live in that that can't be cut off.

That doesn't mean we won't sin. That doesn't mean we cease to strive against sin. We go through the days of unleavened bread every year and we put the leaven out to remind us that we have our part to work and strive in the sense that against sin while we are in the flesh. And that teaches us a very important lesson. We eat the unleavened bread during the holy days to picture that life of Christ within us. That unleavened bread pictures of the body and the bread of Christ, which is what we break in the past over. He said, take heat. This is my body, which I gave for you.

Christ said that I am the bread of life. You don't eat my flesh or drink my blood. We have no life.

We have no life. Whoever does eat my flesh and drink my blood will live forever. And so we eat that piece of unleavened bread every day of this feast every year to picture that life of Christ within us and that relationship and our faith in that shed blood and in that sacrifice, that broken body, to have access by faith into a grace in which we stand. And when we sin, we repent. We acknowledge our sin from whatever it may be. You go out and sin tonight and you'll, you know, as soon as you get your house is fully unleavened here in a couple of days, you know what's going to happen the next day or the day after? You're going to sin. We'll all do that. Do we have to... have we failed? No. Are we condemned? No. Do we have to repent? Yes. Do we acknowledge our sin? Yes. And God is just to forgive us, which is what 1 John chapter 1 says. And that's all part of the lessons, the symbols of unleavened bread and all that we go through at this time of year. But the deeper lesson is that we have a relationship with God. There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, which Paul says here in Romans 8 and verse 1. And as we keep the days of unleavened bread, then, with their fulsome symbols, we need to relate them to that grace, to that relationship we have with God.

That is the real means by which we can be changed and transformed in our life, bit by bit, piece by piece through the years as we let Christ live his life within us. And when that happens, we are finding God's grace.

And so I encourage you to find that this year and to ask for that and to make sure that as we go through the days, we fully understand why we're doing what we do.

I always say we don't have a whole lot of rituals in the Church of God, but the ones we do are very important. Baptism, laying on of hands.

We come to the Passover service and that one night we've got a lot of rituals.

We wash each other's feet in service of humility. We take the bread and the wine.

And we do that once a year, as Christ's example tells us. And that's a ritual.

Those are physical things that we do, but they have deep spiritual teaching and meaning behind them. They are very, very important. And beyond that, and the rest of the year, we don't have a whole lot of ritual in the Church. We sing three songs before services. We open with prayer. We have an hour and a half to two-hour service. If the guy really gets wound up, he might talk two hours and fifteen minutes. But we don't have a lot of ritual like other religions with rituals and things that they do. And that's as it should be. But what we do, we need to understand why we do what we do, and the spiritual meaning behind them. And that leads me to the third point. Define the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. In 1 Corinthians 5, you're going to be cleaning out your homes in the next few days, a couple of days completely, and maybe some of you are all finished. Debbie and I, we were basically unleavened on Tuesday of this week. Seems like every year we have to be gone, and so trash pickup is a day that's not convenient. So we wind up keeping not just seven days, usually about 11 or 12 days of unleavened bread. We've already gone through one box of matzohs. Can you believe that? But I did have a hamburger before coming in here today, so it's not that I'm not completely unleavened in that sense, but our home back in Ohio is unleavened, and we'll eat only unleavened bread for the days of unleavened bread. But in 1 Corinthians 5, Paul says this, verse 7, Therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump. We physically remove the leaven, but that's assembled. That doesn't justify us, and that doesn't forgive us. We don't earn any merit badges by having a clean home. We merely do what God has said to us and commanded us to do. We are forgiven of sin spiritually by God's grace and through the blood of Christ. But he says, purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump. And that speaks to a spiritual transformation. We'll talk more about that as we go through the Holy Days.

Since you truly are unleavened. That's an interesting phrase there at the end of that sentence. You truly are unleavened. Purge out the old that you may be a new lump since you truly are unleavened. Paul is saying that we are unleavened. And he's speaking in a spiritual sense, not only a physical sense. You can be unleavened by having it all out of your premises. And we should do that.

And clean your cars, clean your homes, and put it out. And spend whatever time one might do. And but I always have told people when I was pastoring, look, spend more time spiritually deleavening than you do physically deleavening. Okay? If all we do is just focused on the crumbs, we're missing the point. Big point. And we can be physically spirit or physically deleavened and still be sending, you know, 24-7 in our minds if we don't see the connection.

But put it out. Spend the time, though, focusing upon the spiritual. For those who are standing, have access by faith into this grace where we stand, we're true. We are unleavened.

There is a relationship with God that hasn't been broken, hasn't changed in terms of our relationship with Him. And it's because of what the latter part of verse 7 says, where indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. We were baptized and we came under the blood of Christ. We were unleavened. Now, again, you sin, but we still repent.

We enter into a relationship with God that is not going to be broken unless we just completely turn our back on Him. And so, the Days of Unleavened Bread teach us a very, very critically important part of not only what we must do, but also in the relationship that we have with God. And that's why, as Paul goes on here in verse 8, therefore, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. That's what we need to keep the feast with, the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. And that is Christ's life within us. That is God's Spirit, living within us, and Christ molding and shaping us and transforming us into something that is a spiritual creation. So, I encourage you to find that unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, and keep the feast of unleavened bread with that as we seek and find God's grace, and look for Christ to splash little cold water upon us and shine a light, help us to shine a light into our life for understanding and discernment, and the age and in the time in which we live.

Because we do live in days that are much like the days of Noah.

And as we go about our life, we want to be sure that our lives are continually being aligned with God. We're making the corrections, the alignments in our life that get us so as we go along. And if we seek that, God will be merciful and gracious to us to give us a wonderful experience in that way. So, as we prepare for the Passover in Unleavened Bread, let these thoughts be in us and help us to find our way to God in that way.