Eureka!

Rather than 2,250 years ago, in the ancient Greek city of Syracuse, a Greek mathematician and inventor by the name of Archimedes lived and worked. Many of you are familiar with Archimedes, and if you're not, you're at least cursorily familiar with his work. Archimedes did significant work in the field of mathematics. He was credited with the discovery of pi, not the delectable dessert, but the mathematical function that enables you to calculate various things with circles. He determined through, using what he termed at the time indivisibles, that if you took a circle and you broke it into a series of progressively doubled polygons, that eventually you could have enough polygons to roughly estimate the circle itself. The curve of that circle could be approximated, and the more you had in there, the more accurate that number would become. I'm going to be perfectly frank with you. The rest of his mathematical discoveries are beyond me. I tried. I really did. I looked at them. I thought, I can maybe simplify these down and make them make sense. I couldn't. So, ask Mr. Hanson. That's my...just checking with him. I'm sure he'll be able to help. I couldn't do it. Where I had interaction with Archimedes and Archimedes' work was in physics. Physics and astronomy, primarily. He did a significant amount of work in astronomical modeling. He constructed several mechanisms. You might be familiar with the concept of orreries, which is like the little planetary models where you move one and it moves them all so you can see kind of the motion of the planets. He had created two of those in particular, one of which was taken by a Roman general when Syracuse was sacked and kept in his personal possessions. The other was placed within a Roman temple. Based on his writings, if you go back and you look, Archimedes appeared to be convinced of the heliocentric model, which was a model that was then debated many, many, many years later, ultimately, which would be disputed. The devices that he made, these orreries actually show mechanisms of eclipses. They show mechanisms of eclipses. They show positioning of moon phases. And there have been some today who actually theorized the Antikythera mechanism, which some of you might be familiar with, which was an old Greek model of predicting eclipses, could have been created by one of Archimedes' students based upon his work. And so there were some incredible, incredible discoveries that Archimedes put together. Within the realm of physics, what Archimedes did was he produced work in the realms of leverage. He also is responsible for screw pumps that are still in use today. So for those of you that have ever seen a screw pump in a granary, where it screws around inside of a chute and the grain comes up with that turbine essentially turning inside, Archimedes created that 2,000-some years ago, and it's still in use today. The concept, I should say, is still in use today. But what he is most well known for, probably most well known for, is his work in buoyancy and volumetric displacement known as Archimedes' principle.

You're probably familiar with the story. If you're not, I'm going to tell it. So sorry. Here in the second of Syracuse took the throne after a military coup in 271 BC. Now, weirdly enough, he was then duly elected, quote-unquote, as a diplomat that was in charge of Syracuse shortly after that, which was kind of uncommon in those years. In honor of his victory, what he wanted to do was make an offering, and the offering that he wanted to make was a golden crown, one shaped in the form of a laurel, similar to what you might see given to a winner of the Greek games, for example.

In his mind, that symbolized victory, and so he wanted to be able to provide that offering. So he gave a brick of gold to a smith, not a smith with the last name of smith, but somebody who worked with medals, and the smith returned the crown to him a short time later. However, rumors began to come to the king that maybe he'd been cheated, actually, that people said, you know, I bet that smith casts some of that in a different medal. I'll bet it's not all gold, I'll bet he kept some of that gold back for himself.

And so the king was pretty perseverating on this idea. He was pretty concerned with this. And so Archimedes was employed, because Archimedes was known to be somebody who had a great mind and a great way of thinking about things, Archimedes was employed to determine whether or not the crown was genuine or not. And so, as often takes place in scientific endeavors, those of you that have pursued science, as you're thinking about the project you happen to be working on, you're mulling on that idea a lot.

You're thinking about it. You're walking along, and you're going, I wonder how that's going to come together. You're doing this thing, and you're going, what if I did this? I wonder if this would cause the effect that I'm looking for. And one morning, according to the story, Archimedes climbed into a bath. He climbed into a bath, and he noticed that when he climbed into the bath, that the water in that bath rose in proportion to the amount of himself that he placed into that bath. A small amount of his leg and a little bit of water would go up, the rest of his leg and the water would go up more, and when he put him whole self in, the water overflowed the tub onto the floor.

So he reasoned that there must be a relationship between the volume of his body, which was a concept, at least volume, was a concept that was understood, and the water that was then displaced. So the more volume, the more water that's displaced, was the relationship that he came up with, and we call that today volumetric displacement, essentially. He realized, though, and this was the big discovery, he realized that if he did the same thing on a smaller scale with the crown, fully submerging it, that he could measure the amount of water displaced afterwards to figure out the volume of the crown.

And if he knew the volume of the crown, and he compared that volume with the volume of a pure bar of gold with the same mass, he could determine whether or not the crown was a forgery, or whether or not it had been altered. According to the legends, this is where the stories pick up, and this is where you might be familiar with the story, Archimedes leapt from his tub.

I would love to tell you he placed a towel on himself. He did not, according to the stories, he ran through the streets of Syracuse shouting, Eureka! Eureka! Which means I have found it. I have found it. He determined that when that object was fully submerged, that it will displace a volume of water that is comparable to the volume of the object submerged. And sure enough, when Archimedes tested the crown, it displaced more water than a gold bar of the same mass, proving it had a greater volume and that its density was less than pure gold.

The smith had, in fact, altered. He had, in fact, altered the crown, keeping a portion of it back for himself. Now, you might imagine it didn't end well for the smith, according to the story. But the principle that Archimedes discovered, which bears his name, states that the upward force, what we now know is buoyancy, and what we now know is buoyancy, that an object experiences when it's placed in water is equal to the weight of the liquid that is displaced.

So essentially, the liquid is pushing back on that object with a force that's equal to that weight. So a ball of steel, for example, will sink because it's not able to displace an amount of liquid that is equal to its weight. But if you take that same weight of steel, that same mass of steel, and you shape it into a bowl that can displace a lot more water, as long as you can reach a point where it will displace the amount of water necessary to push back with equal force, you could make that steel float.

And now, today, we have cruise ships, we have cargo ships made of steel floating across the oceans today. It's an incredible discovery. I mean, it really is an incredible discovery. And it's one that's been invaluable to modern shipbuilding as we can produce these steel ships that are literally the size of small cities. I mean, these things are massive, and they float just fine. Archimedes was a truly talented mind when it comes to the thought process of these things. He died in 212 BC at the hands of a Roman soldier during the invasion of Syracuse.

According to legend, his last words, when they burst into his study, were, don't disturb my circles. He was working on a mathematical problem, according to the story on his table. The soldiers burst in the door, and he said, don't disturb my circles! And they got upset that he wouldn't come with them, and they killed him.

The title of the sermon today, very simply, is Eureka. What does Archimedes and his Eureka moment have to do with the days of Unleavened Bread? Absolutely nothing. No, I'm kidding. It totally does. I promise. I promise. Let's go to Exodus 12. Let's go to Exodus 12. What does Archimedes and this concept that he discovered, this principle that he discovered in this Eureka moment, have to do with these days? Exodus 12, and we'll see the instructions here that God provided Moses regarding these days. We can see additional instructions relating to the days of Unleavened Bread in Leviticus 23. We can see it also in Deuteronomy 16. There's a number of places where these instructions can be found. We're going to go to Exodus 12 just to see the instruction that God provided Moses when we take a look at these days. Exodus 12, we'll pick it up in verse 15. It says, very clearly, very plainly, seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day, you shall remove leaven from your home. So by the time that first day comes around, the leaven should be gone. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. So if we eat leavened bread during that time frame, they will be cut off from Israel. Verse 16, on the first day, there should be a holy convocation. We're here, gathered today, to satisfy the obligation and the wonderful opportunity that we have to gather before God on this holy convocation. And on the seventh day, there shall be a holy convocation for you. It says, no manner of work shall be done on them but that which everyone must eat. That only may be prepared by you. So you shall observe the feast of unleavened bread, for on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore, you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance. We commemorated a portion of that last night as a part of the night to be much remembered. On this day, so many years ago, the Bible records that the Israelites assembled at Ramesses. They departed Israel by night last night. They trekked around 20 miles to Sukkoth, where they kept first day of unleavened bread. It's an incredible thing to go back and go through that process that they were coming out of Egypt. It says, in the first month, on the 14th day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the 21st day of the month at evening. So as a part of the method by which God has provided his people to symbolically commemorate these days, there are two very specific instructions that he gives. One, you should remove the leaven from your dwellings. Alright, leaven should be gone. And two, you should consume unleavened bread. Those are the two big instructions that we have regarding these days with regards to how we are to keep them as we consider that today. Now, there's a lot more instructions overall as you look at other places. Israel was commanded to give certain offerings at certain times. They were commanded to gather together in convocation. They were told to keep these days as an everlasting ordinance. But what I want to focus on today are these two big aspects of the days of unleavened bread and the importance of these two things in our life today. Verse 19 of Exodus 12 says, For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, since whoever eats what is leavened that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel. Whether he is a stranger or a native of the land, you shall eat nothing leavened in all of your dwellings. You shall eat unleavened bread.

So as the people of God for seven days, we follow his instruction. We remove the leaven from our homes. We've gone through that process. We've gone through and undergone the de-leavening process. And some of you know it is a process. It is. It's a process at times. We go through and we look for the places in which we've consumed leaven. Think about where those little crumbs of leaven might reside as part of the spiritual symbolism. We might clean up our workplace, especially for those of you that eat at your computers. Let me tell you something. You want to know what gets leavened? Your keyboard. You ever take your keyboard apart and vacuum them out during the days of unleavened bread? Or use the little air nozzle or whatever to blow it? It's beard hairs. I mean, it's crazy, okay? I'm just saying. Most of you may not have that problem. However, we take it out of our... we get it out of our vehicles. One of my kids asked me, literally. This came out of one of my kids' mouth. Did you get the moldy goldfish out of the back?

How long have you known there was a moldy goldfish in there? All three of you sit in the back of the car. You could have pulled it out. Yes, the moldy goldfish is out of the back of my car, in case anyone was curious. It is. We throw out our baking soda. We throw out our baking powder. We toss our yeast. We kick Martha to the curb. Martha was our sourdough start. We kick Martha to the curb. So that we have everything within our control to be able to remove the leaven as we've been instructed. And I hope, I really truly hope, that in this process, each and every one of us recognize that one of the spiritual lessons in this is that we're never going to get it all. I hope that you realize that as you go through this. That one of the lessons in this is that we go through this process physically, metaphorically, as we consider this. We're not going to get it all. Now, it doesn't mean we don't do it, but it means we keep that in mind as we go. Every single one of you has a story. Every single one of you has a story, and I've heard several of them over the years, a time in which maybe you come across something long after the Days of Unleavened Bread have begun. You're going along, and suddenly you remember, oh, I have a toaster. Or maybe it's not so long since the Days of Unleavened have begun, and you reach in your pocket, and you find some little ziplock baggies full of leaven treats, and you realize, huh, oops! We all have stories. We all have stories. Maybe your story is one of a spectacular failure. I mean, not a small slip-up, but a spectacular failure which results usually in the realization mid-bite. Oh no.

Oh no! What have I done? Or, possibly, after you've consumed it completely, and you look back later, and you realize, oh no, what have I done? Usually, that's Donut Day at work. Usually, that is, maybe you go out with a friend somewhere in town. It's out of your normal routine. It's out of your normal operation, and when it's out of our normal operation frequently, we just don't catch it. You just don't catch it. Part of the spiritual lessons that come from these days, these Days of Unleavened bread, that we gain as we go through this process is we recognize the insidiousness of sin. We recognize how it can just... how it's packaged. We recognize the ways that it's packaged. We recognize how easy it can be for it to slip into our lives unnoticed. For example, in small little Ziploc packages, right? Without a thought. Just not even thinking, and all of a sudden, there it is.

And I think we recognize, too, part of the lesson in this is the absolute need for continued and constant vigilance in our lives. Constant vigilance. We have to be on guard. We have to be focused. We have to be thinking through these things. We've already turned here once today, but let's go ahead and turn over to 1 Corinthians 5. We've been here quite a bit over the last weeks building up into the Days of Unleavened bread.

We went there this morning. I'm going to refresh a couple things, and then I'm going to build off of where Mr. Kinsella went in the sermonette. But all of these spiritual lessons, all these things that we're looking at during these days, they're important. They're critical to these days. And it's interesting because there's times where you can hear about these things. You can learn about these things, but until you're doing them, the lesson doesn't always fully come through.

It doesn't always fully come through until, as Mr. Kinsella talked about this morning, the action is there, until the action is present. 1 Corinthians 5 should have been turning there. Instead, I was monologuing. 1 Corinthians 5. And we're going to go ahead and pick it up in verse 1, actually, because I want to grab the full context here.

1 Corinthians 5 and verse 1. The reason why Paul was writing what he wrote here... again, we recognize this was written likely around the timeline of the Days of Unleavened bread, with given all of the symbolism and all of the context that he provides in this. But 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 1, it says, it's actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality, as is not even named among the Gentiles.

It says that a man has his father's wife. And he says, as a congregation, speaking to Corinth, he says, you're puffed up. He says, rather you've not mourned that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. Paul says, for I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged as though I were present to him who has done this deed.

So he says, look, even though I'm not there with you at the moment, I'm making an administrative decision here. He says, the decision has been made, the judgment has been made. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, he says, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

Verse 6, this is where he kind of gets into this symbolism and context of this day. He says, you're glorying, you're glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.

Now, symbolically, as we consider again, the meaning of these days, symbolically, as a result of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we, as his people, are unleavened. That's what Paul says. Paul says it right here. The Greek word that's used to describe this state is asymos. The word is asymos or asymos, we might say, the way the Greeks would have done it, which translates directly as without fermentation. So, zymos was a way to describe things that had fermented.

Remember, we talked recently about how dough at that time was a sourdough transfer, essentially. A fermented bit of dough moved into a larger batch of dough. And so, a in Greek means without. Asymos means without fermentation. So, in that sense of the word, as we've kind of addressed recently, there hasn't been an addition of that small fermented dough that Hebrews seor from the previous batch. It hasn't had that controlled contamination that enables bread to become puffed up. As Greek went on, or as it went on in Greek, the word asymos became synonymous with the Hebrew flatbread matzo.

It used to be a way to reference the matzo flatbread. And eventually, these days of unleavened bread simply became known in Greek as asymos. In fact, you'll see that referenced at times in Scripture. When it talks about, in the day of unleavened bread came, it's an asymos came. Like the time that is represented by these things came. But metaphorically, the word was used to describe something else.

Mounts' complete expository dictionary of Old and New Testament words says that asymos references something metaphorically that is pure. It's pure from foreign matter. It's unadulterated, and it's genuine. Asymos means unleavened, as Paul is using it in this location. It's something that is pure from foreign matter, something that is unadulterated, and something that is genuine.

And Paul is undoubtedly using it in this way, as he writes in verse 8, Therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old zymos, not with the old leaven, nor with the zymos, leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleaven, with the asymos, or asymos of sincerity and truth. So how are we supposed to keep these days? How do we keep these days?

We keep them with asymos, with the unleavened. What are the characteristics and the traits of that unleavened? Paul describes it as sincerity and truth. Where does that come from?

It comes from Christ's sacrifice, because Jesus Christ died as our Passover so that we may live.

As we look at the way that this is set up and as we look at the way that this is connected, these concepts we're going to explore additionally today. But first, briefly, I want to pause for a quick object lesson. And this may or may not work well. I have no idea. We're going to try. There's a reason there's a tub here that Caleb kicked. I brought it with me today.

And if I can do this without completely dumping it off of the stage, I'm going to be pretty impressed with myself. Can you guys see that? That thing? The jar? Those of you in the front row might not be able to quite all that well. It's a little higher than I probably would have liked. But what I'm going to illustrate to you today is a little bit of this concept of volumetric displacement. I want you to see what this means. And with that, I brought a little bit of water taken from the Euphrates last week.

Or the Nile, I should say, I guess. That's about as full as that's going to get. At the moment.

Okay. Wiggle the podium too much and I'm going to lose my stuff here.

What Archimedes found when he shouted Eureka was that the volume of an object that was placed within something would displace an equal volume of water from it. I have a large fishing weight that I've used. It's lead. I'm using this screwdriver to keep from dropping it in the glass and shattering it. Watch what happens to the water when I lower this down inside.

Okay. So we're going to let that sit there for just a minute.

One of the things I want us to keep in mind as we look at this and as we go through today is this idea that the volume of what is placed in will push out that which is inside. It will displace that which is inside equal to the volume that is taken in. One of the things that we need to keep in mind as we consider the Days of Unleavened Bread is the analogy that the Apostle Paul builds here. Because in that analogy, in 1 Corinthians 5, Paul is giving us the mechanism by which we put out leaven in our lives. He's showing us the mechanism. We do it through the taking in of unleavened. We do it through the taking in of the unleavened, through taking in of Jesus Christ as the bread of life. Turn over with me to John 6, please. John 6. John 6, verse 48 through 51. Jesus Christ describes Himself in this way. This is the method by which Christ describes Himself. John 6, verse 48, He says, I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, that physical bread that God had given Israel. Your fathers ate the bread in the wilderness, the manna that came down. And Christ says, they are dead. They're dead.

This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. 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. Eating of the bread, eating of that asymos, that unleavened, Jesus Christ being holy, being without blemish, without impurity, has the result of displacing the leaven in our lives, pushing it out as we take Him in. As we take Him within us, it displaces the sin in our life. This cup of water before we started could be considered to be representative of humanity, of carnal, human nature. And I wish this lead filled the entirety of the jar. That would be a much nicer example in that sense.

But this water represents the impurities that are contained within us, the adulterants that are contained within us, the fermentation that takes place, that controlled contamination that causes this leaven, represents the corruption of human nature. When we take in Christ, when we take in the godly nature, that unleavened displaces the leaven just like Archimedes' principle, the volume of the object placed within, displacing an equal volume of the liquid, causing it to exit the container, as Paul described in New Lump in that sense.

You take in enough of that unleavened, you could displace the sin entirely. But we recognize, in this life, due to our own humanity, complete removal of sin is not possible. So in this sense, maybe this demonstration is a little more accurate at times. That there is going to be some which remains. But the more we add the unleavened into our lives, the more that we add that, especially symbolically, as we consider that during these days with the consumption of unleavened bread, that bread of life, the more that this sin and carnality is displaced. Now, I want to show you this real quick, just to show you how much water this displaced.

There's how much water, ultimately, that displaced. I'm going to see if I can let this thing down without rolling off the front of it. There we go. I'm going to top it off again.

Maybe. Like I said, it could go great. It could completely fall apart and dump water everywhere. Okay. That's pretty cool. By the way, stage isn't level.

I can tell because it's running out the left side of the thing there.

You know, there's a second benefit of this from the standpoint of taking in the unleavened. When we allow Christ to abide in us, it's also preventative. When we allow Christ to abide in us, it's also preventative because leavened attitudes can't return to the space they were displaced from, provided we continue to place Christ and keep Christ in the rightful place in our lives. I have another example here. This time, a whole bunch of little lead weights that hopefully won't shatter the bottom of this this way. Watch what happens as we add these little by little, as we take in this unleavened attitude, as we put in sincerity and truth.

Now, we can't quite get all the water out here because it's not perfect in this sense. All analogies break down at some point in time, but I hope you get the idea. What I mean by it being preventative is this. If those leavened attitudes try to come back, there's no place for them to go. There's no space whatsoever in this for them to be able to fill, because right now, in this scenario, in this example, the unleavened is in its rightful place. The unleavened is occupying the space in our lives and not allowing the leaven to return.

Brother, that's the goal of these days. That's what it means to come out of Egypt. That's what it means to leave Egypt behind metaphorically. You know, it's a recognition that our deliverance comes only through the sacrifice of Christ, that it is that sacrifice that made deliverance from our bondage to sin possible. Our deliverance from that sin, however, and the degree to which that remains depends upon us, and it depends upon our submission to Him. It depends upon our willingness to let Him live in us and to fill those spaces in our lives with that unleavened, with that pure and then unadulterated and genuine character. So, with the time that we have left today, I'd like to explore two of these traits, two of these characteristics that the Apostle Paul describes, and that is sincerity and truth. Sincerity and truth, these two unleavened characteristics. When we consider the concept of sincerity in the English language, it means to be genuine. It means to really mean it, so to speak. If we're genuine about something or we're sincere about something, it means we really mean it. The etymology of the words is pretty fiercely debated, but I think it's kind of interesting to look at. One camp claims the word came from the French through the Latin, ultimately came from Latin through French, in the word sincerity. Sincerity meaning to have a clean and pure sound, but another camp claims that the word is combined from two Latin words, that it's a compound word, sin or sign, which means without, and sérice, which means wax. And so one might argue that it might mean sincerity, might mean without wax. The word in Greek, which is a precursor to Latin, right? You know, kind of a precursor in that sense to the way the Latin developed. The word in Greek that the Apostle Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 5, verse 8, is elecrenia. It's e-lecrenia, which comes from the root word e-lecrenace, which is made up of two words, the word for son, eleos, and the word for judgment, krinos, which essentially renders the word to judge something by the light of the sun, to judge something by the light of the sun.

In the ancient world, when you made purchases through merchants and booths in the market city, pottery is an everyday necessity. You know, pottery was something that was needed. You needed it for all kinds of things. You needed it for carrying water. You needed it for storing food items, storing, you know, random metal bibis. This isn't real pottery, but you know what I mean. You needed it for a lot of different things. And so ultimately, because it was such a critical item, the quality of that item was pretty important. You didn't want to buy, you know, shoddy pottery, so to speak. But as you might imagine, human nature, not being much different than as it was today, people sometimes like to cut corners. They look for the budget option. Maybe the clay is not as thick as it should be. Maybe it was fired improperly, or the person that made it just had no idea what they were doing, but they were making it anyway, and they enjoyed it.

Quality pottery was thrown well. It was fired. It didn't have cracks. It didn't have holes. It was the real deal. While cheaper potters might have cracks, chips, or holes, it would adversely affect the function of the pottery. To make it able to be sold, what would happen is the lower quality potters would fill those cracks and those chips and those holes with wax to make it seem better than it was. It would smooth it over, mix it in, make the colors match, and ultimately what would take place would be a big deal. If you put hot water in that pot, what's going to happen to your wax? It's going to melt, and your pot's going to leak.

That's not a very useful pot in that sense. It's not a very useful item. What they found was that if you held the pot up to the light, if you judged it according to the light, Elecrinaia, you'd hold it up and look on the inside of the pot and hold it up to the sun, you'd see the places where that wax was because it would not be as dark or opaque as the area around it. It would be more translucent. As time went on, that became a method by which one checked the quality of pottery. According to the stories, potters and stone carvers in Rome began to stamp Cinceres, without wax, into the bottom of their pots in a fashion to be able to guarantee its quality, similar to a maker's mark in that sense. Cinceres became sincere or genuine. Now, it's possible, given the other definition, that they would knock on the side of the pot and it would ring or resonate in just a certain way, and you could tell whether it was whole in that sense to bring the other definition of having a clean and pure sound in. Symbols are like that. If you have a cracked symbol, you'll know it real quick. You'll know it real fast.

The overall meaning to English is fiercely debated, but when you look at the passage that's located in Luke 12, I think the concept of without wax begins to hold up to scrutiny. Let's go to Luke 12. Luke 12 in verse 1. Luke 12 in verse 1.

Luke 12 in verse 1 says, In the meantime, when an innumerable multitude of people had gathered together so that they trampled one another, he began to say to his disciples, first of all, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. We talked about this last Sabbath.

Christ specifically identifies hypocrisy as a leavened attitude. If you think about it, hypocrisy is really the antithesis to sincerity. It's the exact opposite of being sincere or being genuine. Verse 2, he goes on, says, For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known. Therefore, whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed upon the housetops, that light would reveal it all, essentially, that which is hidden, that which is spoken. Christ is admonishing his disciples to be genuine, or we might say, sincerest, sincere, without wax. Brethren, what would Christ see if He holds us up to the light?

What would He see if He holds us up to the light? Would there be light shining through the cracks and the holes that we've patched up with wax in order to make ourselves appear, maybe perhaps better than we're doing on the outside, to be passable when compared to the standard of God? What happens when we go through the challenges and the trials of life and we pour hot liquid into that vessel? When that wax has been there smoothed over to cover those imperfections?

When that happens, the wax melts, the pot leaks, and renders the pot almost next to useless. We as humans are painfully fractured. We are painfully fractured. And the importance of what we are repaired with becomes really important. Is it us? Is it us who does the repair? Do we just quickly slap some wax on there and smooth it over so that nobody notices? Or is there a different repair that we should be looking at? What fills those cracks? There's a beautiful, beautiful Japanese pottery repair technique known as kintsugi. Some of you are familiar, probably, with kintsugi. In kintsugi, the potter recognizes the cracks. The potter sees them. It recognizes the imperfections. The potter notices the imperfections. And using a mixture of lacquer, combined with either powdered gold, silver, or platinum, he fills those cracks, creating this beautiful network of precious metal throughout this particular clay item. And as it's fired, and as it ultimately sets and does its thing, it is an absolute work of beauty. Kintsugi is beautiful. What that potter does is creates a thing of beauty from something that was previously broken. Our God is a master potter. And we, as the clay, are the work of that potter's hands.

It is through Christ's sacrifice that these cracks can be filled. It's only through His sacrifice that these cracks can be filled, through taking in the unleavened, displacing those leavened attitudes of our carnal human nature. God desires His children to be genuine, to be sincere, to be without wax, and to do that He gave His only begotten Son for us. That He might pay the price for our sins, and that those cracks can be patched up with gold.

Additionally, what we see is that we need to be putting on truth. We need to be putting on truth as one of those unleavened attitudes. The word truth in 1 Corinthians 5 verse 8 is the Greek word elethea. It means truth, absolutely means truth, but the root of that word means to not conceal something. So yes, it means true, but it means to not conceal something. So maybe even a better translation is full disclosure. Full disclosure. So, I'll give you an example. If I am selling a car to someone that I know, and I know that there's something wrong with that car, I know for a fact there's something wrong with that car. It burns a quarter oil every mile and a half. That's pretty bad. But if I know that that car burns oil, and if I know that it is a mess of a car, and I don't mention it to that person up front, I just let them go through their inspection. I just let them go through and look. They go do their thing, and then as I see them decide they're going to take it, I just breathe a sigh of relief because they missed it. Have I been truthful? I mean, in one definition of the word, I didn't lie to them. I did not say any lie from my mouth. But have I been truthful or not? The answer is no. I've not been truthful because I've concealed something. I've not provided full disclosure. I didn't lie. I never came out and said that the car was in perfect condition. I just didn't happen to inform him that he's going to need stock in Chevron to be able to pay for all the oil that the car is going to burn over time. That's the kind of truth that this section is discussing. Elethea means to not conceal something. It goes hand in hand with sincerity. It goes hand in hand with being genuine. We have entered a time in human history in which falsehoods are passed off as fact. We're in a rough time in human history. It's very challenging to know what is real and when it's real. We live in a time in which magazine covers don't represent reality. They're airbrushed. They're colored. They're adjusted. Photos from the royal family have small adjustments that everybody jumps on as they're released. A whole generation is experiencing self-image issues because of an impossible standard due to those airbrushed altered photos on the fronts of magazines. We live in a time when fact checkers are necessary, but we question whether we can trust the fact checkers. We live in a time of AI-generated articles, fake news, deep fakes. We live in a time in which it's becoming more and more difficult to determine whether what we see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears is true. You can make almost any singer today sing a song they did not write using AI. And you can almost not tell the difference in your ears. If they have enough vocal samples of that individual, you can just about make them say anything. All you have to do is type what you want it to say, and it will spit it right back out in a voice that is not just impersonated, but derived from their actual vocal patterns. It is becoming harder and harder to understand what is true. It's becoming harder and harder to define what is true. It's been said for some time that journalism is the last bastion of the truth, but in this era, even that has become suspect. It's hard to know. It's difficult to know. The end result is a society in which rampant skepticism and distrust takes place. You have a tendency to not trust anyone but yourself and your own interpretation, your own worldview.

What that's led to is a rise in personal truth, people living their truth and searching for their own inner truth. Once they find it, they're told, embrace your truth. Embrace your truth.

Society has become a post-truth society. Truth is subjective. We've removed the shared objective truth that we used to hold, and we've begun defining all of these things for ourselves. We've begun determining exactly what is true. Well, it's true because I think it's true, and so therefore it's true. Who defines truth? Who defines that which is right?

In the absence of a shared objective standard, mankind has no option but to define it for themselves. But the reality is there is only one truth that truly matters. There's only one truth that truly matters. The word truth in Hebrew is emet. The word truth in Hebrew is emet. It's made up of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph. It's made up of the middle letter mem and the last letter tov. The Jews say truth is from the beginning of the book to the end of the book and everything in between. It's the way they look at the concept of truth. The truth encompasses all things that we see that God has revealed to His people and that it endures from the beginning to the end. Turn with me please to John 17. We're going to take a look at some of the final words that Christ spoke to His disciples. John 17, He talks about this truth. He addresses it.

John 17, we'll pick it up in verse 9. John 17 and verse 9. Christ says, I pray for them. I do not pray for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to you, Holy Father. Keep them through your name, those whom you have given me, that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name. Those whom you gave me, I have kept, and none of them is lost, except the son of perdition. This scripture might be fulfilled. Verse 13 of John 17. But now I come to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. It says, I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Verse 17. Sanctify them by your truth. Your word, he says, is truth. Truth is defined by God. We recognize that. We're here today because we agree with that statement that truth is what is defined specifically by God. Not by man's interpretation of God, not necessarily, but by God. And ultimately, what we see here in John 17, in Christ's own words, is that it is His truth which sanctifies us. It is His truth which makes us holy, which sets us apart. As we came into this Passover season, we took time. We examined our lives. We examined the various areas in which we're maybe struggling. We examined the areas in our life in which we're going through various issues. And what we did was we compared our life with a standard of objective truth that God has provided. God's standard is objective truth, and we compared our lives to that standard. And what we found were areas in our lives that need to come into alignment with that truth.

And I hope that was your conclusion as well. That was certainly mine. But there's areas that need to come into alignment more fully with that truth. Brethren, we don't bend the truth to us. We don't bend the truth to us and hold this personal position and decide, no, you know what? God's going to bend to me. That's pretty arrogant of us. It's very arrogant of us. The societal ideals of personal truth, living our truth, searching for inner truth, when it comes to the truth of God, none of that matters. God establishes truth. It's our responsibility to come into alignment with that. And brethren, sometimes the truth hurts. Sometimes the truth hurts. Sometimes you take a look in that mirror and you don't like what you see. There are times in our lives as we go through this process of examination where we find places in our life that are still out of alignment with God's way of life, with His truth. Brethren, the question is very similar to what Mr. Kinsella asked this morning. What are we going to do about it? What are we actually going to do about it? You look in the mirror, you see you're out of alignment. Now what? Turn around, walk away from the mirror, and forget what we look like, and be right back in the same spot next year, and the year after, and the year after, and the year after, because nothing got solved. What will we do about it?

Is this year, is this Days of Unleavened Bread, the one where we place our faith and our trust in our God fully, where we rely on His power in order to be able to deliver us from that sin which so easily ensnares us? What's it going to be as we examine ourselves in the light of God's truth? What's it going to be? Identifying and admitting the problem is the first step towards fixing it. In the business world, what this is called is root cause analysis. You start by defining the problem, you start by gathering data, figuring out where the problem really is, why the problem exists, try to identify causal factors, you try to determine the root cause, and then ultimately, you come up with recommendations and solutions that you then try to implement. At least that's how they do it in the business world, most of the time. Not always. Give you an example. Football. How many of you like football? A few football fans in here, at least.

Football is one of the most popular sports in the United States, much more so than soccer, much more than a number of other, even basketball. But as a result of the hard hits that take place in football, frequently players receive head injuries and pretty significant head injuries in football. It leads to the need for a really good helmet. Gone are the days when you're wearing a leather cap. Back in the old days when these guys were playing with just a hunk of leather on their heads, running around playing football. A recent study showed that high school players on the whole are almost twice as likely as college players to receive concussions. Why is that? Root cause analysis, you start taking some data, you start doing some digging, you start trying to find out what it is. There's a couple ways you can analyze the issue. You can either keep treating all these kids' concussions and continue as business usual, which I think is the decision most have taken, unfortunately, or you try to do the analysis to figure out why that's the case. Why is it that the college players don't have as many concussions? Are they better football players? Do they hit lighter? No. They have good gear. They have better helmets. The kids at the high school level, what they found in this study as they begun to do it, they were experiencing older helmets that had not been reconditioned, and that was leading to a much greater impact from those hits than those that had reconditioned or new helmets. So the question then, you got two options. Keep treating a concussion or replace the helmets. Those are your options. When we do root cause analysis, try to get to the bottom of things. Alcoholics Anonymous, any of those subsidiary slash anonymuses, they utilize root cause analysis in their 12-step program. First step is recognizing a problem and then admitting it, realizing what the issue is. Brethren, that's where God comes in because we can't recognize the issue without the truth of God. It's only through the light of that truth that these issues in our lives can even be identified.

And that's where the Days of Unleavened Bread come in, because it's in taking in the unleavened, symbolized by these days that these areas of darkness in our life can be displaced, where we can reach a point where all that old human nature, all that old carnality, gets pushed out by the unleaven that is taken in and maintained and kept in. One of the things I've observed over the years as I've gone through the process of the Days of Unleavened Bread, as a church, as we've kept these days, we've done a pretty good job really emphasizing the removal of leaven, emphasizing that side of the equation, so to speak. We focus year over year on the importance of removing the sin, physically de-leavening our homes, metaphorically de-leavening our lives.

But brethren, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the physical leaven that we worked so diligently to remove this year represent very real spiritual issues in our lives that, quite frankly, we need to be rooting out with the same or not greater levels of diligence.

Now, we think about it's like the push for the Days of Unleavened Bread is getting into the Days of Unleavened Bread. We've done all this work to get all the leaven out and everything's out, and we can kind of just go through the Days of Unleavened Bread. Are we focusing with the same level of diligence on putting in the unleavened bread? Not just physically, not just in the sense of eating unleavened bread. That's part of it. But spiritually, taking in the unleavened attitudes, working through these things. What is the mechanism that enables us to do this? What is the mechanism that provides our ability to do this? Taking in the unleavened bread, taking in Christ, taking in His nature, allowing God's Spirit to lead. Sadly, brethren, the inverse of this is true. The inverse of this same principle that we've talked about today is also true. If we take in the leavened attitudes, if we are consumed by pride, if we're consumed by hypocrisy, falsehood, that will also displace and that will drive out the unleavened attitudes that we're working so hard to develop. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 5, they were a new lump. They were unleavened. If we invert this prior example, we invert this prior example, and we see the effects of sin and pride and hypocrisy and the like, this time, inverting the example, this represents the new lump. Clean, pure, unadulterated.

And this represents sin. A little jar of Fleishman's yeast. It's empty. I filled it with water. It's been cleaned out, just in case anybody was wondering. I didn't smuggle yeast in here, but this represents sin. What happens to the unleavened if we put the sin into our lives?

The good news is it won't fit all the way in.

The inverse is true. The inverse is also true. If we end up putting in a little sin, we end up putting in a little pride, a little hypocrisy, just like these little beaties. Every little bit of it adds up, and it adds up, and it adds up until eventually it can fill the cup to the full, displacing that pure and that unleavened that we have dwelling in us.

That cumulative effect of displacing those things is similar to what Archimedes discovered.

The volume of an object will ultimately displace a similar volume of water, and so the volume of what we take in matters. The more of that unleavened that we take in, the more of the leavened is displaced. As we think about that, as we consider that, as we go about our lives during this day of unleavened bread or these days of unleavened bread, think about ways that we can be taking that unleavened in, not just physically, spiritually as well. At the end of the day, it's all displacement. At the end of the day, it's all displacement, but the question is, what are we going to displace? The unleavened or the leavened? These days of unleavened bread symbolize the putting out of sin from our lives made possible through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, little by little, every bit of that unleavened bread that we take in, every little bit of that sincerity, that genuineness, that truth, that openness, that transparency. These things drive out and displace hypocrisy. They drive out and displace falsehood, drive out and displace sin, the influence of Satan and pride. Every bit of unleaven that we take in pushes out more and more of the leaven that's in our lives. So, brethren, we come before God today on this first day of unleavened bread. The leaven has been put out of our lives physically. We have physically put the leaven out of our lives. We have had Christ's sacrifice on our behalf, which is spiritually and metaphorically removed that leaven. Let's be vigilant to keep it out for the remainder of this week.

But this year, these days of unleavened bread, let's maintain the focus on keeping this feast, not with the leaven and the malice of wickedness, but with the unleavened of sincerity and truth.

So, brethren, let's maintain the focus on this week's leaven. Let's maintain the focus on this week's leaven.