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Well, I mentioned in the letter yesterday, today is an important day in the calendar of God. Today is the first of AVID. It's the first day of the first month of the year. In Exodus 12, God was bringing Israel out of Egypt. He said, this month will be the beginning of months to you. And there's a reason that God does things like that and why He named it that, because Israel was coming out of several hundred years in a society and an existence that was leading them nowhere.
Their life was futile. It was meaningless. They were only destined for death, hard work and death with no future. He would miraculously bring them out. And in this month, he would give them a new beginning, a new life. He would deliver them from death into life, promise and hope. And so we're here today on the first of AVID. Now, if we look at the first of AVID, here, the new moon. If you look at the astronomical charts, there was a new moon last night. And two weeks from now, on the 15th of AVID, there will be a full moon.
And as we gather together for the night to be much observed, if you look up in the sky that night, you'll see a full moon and you'll know we're in the right place at the right time that God had designated for us to be here and observe the Holy Days. If we look down the road, two weeks, there's an awful lot that happens between now, the first of AVID and the 15th of AVID.
You have your bulletin there. You saw all the things that you will be doing collectively as a church as we engage in the various Holy Days and other activities that God has ordained for us to do. There's other things that we'll be doing individually as well between now and then. At least I hope we'll be doing those as we prepare for the upcoming Holy Days.
It's a really busy time of year. And it's a day that we can, you know, as we look forward to the 15th of AVID and the first Holy Day of Unleavened Bread that we'll be gathered together right here for on that day, we can look and we can think about that day and have our eyes focused on it.
You know, Jesus Christ, I often like to think, what was his life like? What was he thinking on the first of AVID and that last year that he was alive? Because he knew exactly what his life was going to be like for the next 15 days. He knew the trials he was going to go through.
He knew what would be what was ahead of him. He knew that he would suffer. He knew that he would be crucified. He knew that he would die. All within the next 15 days. And yet, as he looked on the first of ABIB and looked forward to those 15 days, you know, we'll see it was with fervent desire he wanted to live those days because they had tremendous meaning for him and they had tremendous meaning for us because he was about to give his life and sacrifice his life that you and I might have a future.
That we could be delivered from the bondage of sin, the bondage of death. And that we might have an opportunity to live forever. Something that we can't even imagine yet, but something that God has promised us. And as that 15th of ABIB dawned when he was alive, he knew he would be in a tomb. He knew his physical life would be over. He would have died before the 15th of ABIB began.
And his disciples, who followed him and who loved him and who knew him as the Son of God, might on that 15th of ABIB be quite bewildered. What happened? What happened? How did this occur? Later they would know and understand what went on in the magnitude of what the next 14 and 15 days would mean in their lives and what they mean in the life of all of mankind because literally Christ's life, his death, changed everything for every man, woman and child.
And they happened, monumental events here, in these 15 days leading up to that first day of Unleavened Bread. You know, for us, for us, it's the same thing. There should be some monumental things that go on in our life. And as we think back on to what God has done for us, we would look back and say, these next 15 days we should have a very good picture of what God has done for us and come to the 15th of ABIB, the first holy day, with an appreciation and a gratitude that we might not have had before. Let's go back and look here in Matthew 26 and look at Christ's last few days here on earth before the crucifixion. Matthew 26, verse 1. It came to pass, Matthew writes, it came to pass when Jesus had finished all these sayings that he said to his disciples, You know that after two days is the Passover and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified. So he's setting the stage here. If the Passover is near, and they didn't understand, they really gasped, but he said, I'm going to be offered up. I'm going to be crucified in a couple days. If we keep going, it says, Then the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders of the people assembled at the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, implied to take Jesus by trickery and kill him. So their minds were really not on the meaning of the holy days at that time. They were looking forward to the 15th. That was their first day of unleavened bread as well. But what they had on their minds as they approached that feast is, how can we capture Christ and how can we kill him?
Christ had something far different on his mind during that time of what he would do. But they said, not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people. So they knew they wanted to kill him, and they had this very short timeframe. Just a few days, they were going to have to capture him, they were going to have to arrest him, they were going to have to convict him, they were going to have to convince Pilate and the Roman government, kill this man, and they were going to get all that done in just a few days.
That was their mission, a very unholy mission as they approached the holy days. Jesus Christ as he approached it knew that it was God's will to be done, and he was going to complete the task that he was on earth to do during that time. If we drop over or go forward to Matthew 27, we pick up and read a little bit about the last hours of Jesus Christ, what he did on that end of the 14th of Abib, leaving into the 15th of Abib.
In verse 45 of Matthew 27, it says, "...from the sixth hour until the ninth hour..." That's from about noon until 3 p.m. "...there was darkness all over the land as he was crucified and hanging on the stake. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,' that is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' As he felt the weight of humanity on his shoulders, as he felt the sins that he was paying the price for, and as he felt the distance from God, as he was about to die for you and me, some of those who stood there, when they heard it, said, "'This man is calling for Elijah.' And immediately one of them ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and offered it to him to drink.
The rest said, "'Leave him alone. Let us see if Elijah will come to save him. No mercy, no kindness at all. Let him suffer. He is one who professed to be someone. Let's just see if someone will come and save him.' Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and he yielded up his spirit. He died. Then behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth quaked. The rocks were split.
The graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming out of the graves, after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many." Monumental, supernatural things that were occurring. So when the sin suari and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earth quake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly saying, truly, this was the Son of God. The Jews didn't see it. They closed their mind to it. But those from afar, when they saw what happened, they knew something monumental had just occurred.
And many women who followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, were looking on from afar, and it names who they were. Let's go over to Luke and pick up what Luke says about this event as we finish it up. Over in Luke 23. As the 14th of David was ending and the 15th was about to begin, the first day of Unleavened Bread, Luke 23 and verse 50. It says, Behold, there was a man named Joseph, a council member, a good and just man. He hadn't consented to the Jews' decision, indeed. He was from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who himself was also waiting for the kingdom of God.
This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. And then he took it down, wrapped it in linen, laid it in a tomb that was hewn out of the rock where no one had ever lain before. That day was the preparation, and the Sabbath drew near. So as the 15th began, Jesus Christ was dead. Jesus Christ was in a tomb. The disciples had experienced many things, learned some things about themselves.
People around who witnessed the crucifixion, they saw some things that changed what they thought. And the 15th of Abib came, and the disciples of Christ kept the Holy Day. How were they feeling? How were they feeling? As I said, they were feeling probably a little confused. On that Holy Day, they didn't understand yet what had gone on. They would, in time.
The Holy Spirit would lead them to understand this was the Son of God. He gave Himself so that you could be delivered from the bondage and the futility that your life is. And when they came to that realization, I'm sure the first day of unleavened bread had a whole new meaning for them. Yes, it was the first day that they were eating unleavened bread.
Yes, it was the day that they were picturing eating that unleavened bread of Jesus Christ. But they knew that on that day, Jesus Christ had accomplished His mission, and there was new life, new possibility, new promises for everyone. He completed His mission. And on that first day of unleavened bread, there was a feeling and there was an awe and a reverence for God that I think must have transcended anything that they felt before. As we come to the first day of unleavened bread, and we will have done all the things that come before the 15th of Abib, and we'll talk about those.
We'll go from the 15th of Abib back to where we are today here on the 1st of Abib. What feeling will we have? Will it just be another holy day? Will it be the 40th or 50th time we've kept the days of unleavened bread? Will it just be the same old thing and we'll think we're going to hear the same old message?
Will we come to that holy day with the fear and the awe and the reverence that we should have for Jesus Christ because He is the reason that we are even here? He's the reason that we even are here and have the hope that we have? Will we think about what had gone before? Will we experience between now and then what had gone before so that we're here on the first day of unleavened bread, ready to eat the unleavened bread, but understanding and committing that we really mean it?
We're not going through a physical thing of eating a little bit of matzo every day, but that we really are committed and recognize the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that we will eat the unleavened bread for the rest of our lives.
Let's go back. Let's go back and look at the Old Testament here because the 15th of Abib was a notable day in Christ's time. It's a notable day for us as we will gather together and begin the days of unleavened bread, celebrate the new life that God has brought us into. Let's go back to Numbers 33. Look at ancient Israel. God said all these things happened to the people of old as examples to us upon whom the ends of the ages have come. And so we can maybe look at Israel and say, wow, it's a wonderful story, it's a magnificent story. There are so many lessons that we learn, and the parallels between the Old Testament and the New Testament, the lessons that people then learned, and the lessons that we should be applying and learning and applying into our life are riveting when we look at it. So in Numbers 33 we find what happened to Egypt, I'm sorry, what happened to Israel on that 15th day of Abib. Numbers 33, verse 1, these are the journeys of the children of Israel who went out to the land of Egypt by their armies, unto the hand of Moses and Aaron. Now Moses wrote down the starting points of their journeys at the command of the eternal, and these are their journeys according to their starting points. They departed from Ramses in the first month, on the 15th day of the first month, on the day after the Passover, the children of Israel went out with boldness in the sight of the Egyptians. So on the 15th, the 15th, the Israelites would have looked around and for the first time in their lives, there would have been a feeling among them that they had never experienced before. No longer slaves. No longer was someone, some physical slave master above them telling them what to do and how to do it. No fear of whips on their backs. No fear of any of that. They had been delivered from that bondage. They were no longer in Egypt. They were a free people.
Two weeks before, they might not have understood that. On the 1st of Abib, they might not have understood that in just two weeks they would be free, that they would have a future, that their God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, our God, had something in mind for them that transcended anything that they could have possibly imagined in just two weeks. And on the 15th of Abib, as they were there outside of Egypt, I'm sure the atmosphere in the camp was far different, far different than what our atmosphere as we keep the days of Unleavened Bread, and as we begin the days of Unleavened Bread. Let's go back to Exodus 12. In Exodus 12, this is where they actually leave. In Exodus 12, beginning in verse 39, a Passover had passed. The next morning was there. Pharaoh is urging the Israelites to leave, and they're packing their hoses up quickly and preparing themselves to leave. Exodus 12, verse 39, they baked unleavened cakes of the dough, which they had brought out of Egypt, for it wasn't leavened because they were driven out of Egypt and couldn't wait, nor had they prepared the provisions for themselves. It was quick. Now the surge of sojourn of the children of Israel who lived in Egypt was 430 years. And it came to pass at the end of the 430 years, on the very same day, it came to pass that all the armies of the eternal went out from the land of Egypt. All of them. All one, two, or three million people that were Israelites left. A city the size of what? Chicago. Or something like that. Just leaving. And in verse 42, God sets that night, that beginning of the 15th of Aviv, apart. And gives us instructions for that beginning of that holy day different than any other holy day that He gives us instructions for. In verse 42, He says, it's a night of solemn observance to the Lord for bringing them out of the land of Egypt. This is that night of the eternal. A solemn observance for all the children of Israel throughout their generations. Let me read that to you from the King James Version, because sometimes we get questions on, what is this night to be much observed? Where did you come up with that title? Here's what it says in the King James Version.
Verse 41, it's a night to be much observed unto the Lord for bringing them out of the land of Egypt. This is that night of the Lord to be observed of all the children of Israel in their generations.
Now, again, picture yourself as an Israelite. You've been a slave for your entire life. You've seen things that have happened before this that boggled your mind.
You've seen Egypt, the greatest power on earth at that time, brought to nothing through the plagues. Every God that they worshiped that you had been part of in that society, and maybe even secretly worshiped and thought it was the one who was helping Egypt along. You watched all those come to judgment. You've seen Egypt decimated. You've gone through the Passover. You've seen the hand of God.
You've seen the distinction that he made between you and the Egyptians through six of the plagues. He gave you instructions, and you followed them for that tenth plague. Because you followed them, you were delivered from death, where the people around suffered untold anguish with what had happened to them because they didn't.
And then you find yourself out of this flurry of activity that occurred in the time before the 15th out as a free people, out as a free man. Do you think there was celebration in the camp that night? Oh, I think there was a feeling of celebration, but not like we read in Exodus 15 after Pharaoh was drowned in the sea.
I think that night when God says, it's a solemn observance, I think the people of Israel had to sit and absorb what had happened. They had to sit back and they had to think, look what God has done. Look what our God has done. He's taken us from nothing, from the scum of the earth, and made us a people.
We've seen things that our minds couldn't even have imagined. We are in a place we couldn't have imagined. I think they were in awe. I think they were in reverence. I think they were in fear of their God. It was a good feeling. It was a solemn observance. Not a sad observance, a very joyous observance, but one where they were simply in awe of what God had done and the God who was watching over them.
You know, as we keep the night to be much observed, and God says, you notice Israel, they weren't keeping it in their homes by themselves. They had left their homes. They were with the whole congregation. And God said, it's a night to be much observed among the people in his generation.
And I hope, wherever we're keeping the night to be much observed, we're with other people of the Church following what the example that God has given us to, because on that night, we should be having the same feeling that the Israelites had.
If we take the time, and if we look at ourselves, and if we appreciate what God has done for us, and don't just take it for granted because we've been around for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, we will begin to understand a magnitude of what God has done for us.
When we look back at our lives and we see what God has done for us, we should be moved with a deeper reverence, a deeper awe, a deeper appreciation, a deeper gratitude.
We come together on that night, yes, to be together and to honor God and to enjoy a meal with one another, but the focus is on Him, and what He has done, and an awe and a respect for Him that should transcend and should be the product of what we do before then.
Israel. Israel had that gratitude because of everything that they had experienced leading up to that 15th of Abib.
If we prepare for the days of Unleavened Bread, the way God would have us, immersing ourselves in study, immersing ourselves in remembering, which is a key word these holy days, remembering what God has done, teaching our children about it, appreciating it ourselves, when we come to the 15th of Abib that night, we will have an appreciation for God that maybe we haven't experienced in a while.
It is the time of year that God says He wants us to renew our commitment, renew our zeal, renew the things that He would have us be.
You know, if we turn back to Revelation 5, you see here at the end of the age, as the time of Christ's return nears, we see the hosts in heaven praising Him and recognizing Him. And that's something that should be at the forefront of our mind always, but certainly as we come to the days of Unleavened Bread, and we recognize when we get to the 15th of Abib and when we're sitting here together on that in two weeks, recognize what has gone on and appreciate what's going on, we should be able to appreciate what it says here in Revelation 5, verses 9 to 13.
They, it says in Revelation 5, 9, they sang a new song saying, you are worthy, Christ, to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain.
You've redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and you have made us kings and priests to our God.
Now we shall reign on the earth. Who would have ever thought that?
Do we even appreciate that? Are those just words that now waft over us just like the spring breeze?
Then I looked, John writes, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne of living creatures and the elders, and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing.
Worthy is He and every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea and all that are in them, I heard saying, blessing and honor and glory and power be to Him who sits on the throne and the Lamb forever and ever.
The four living creatures said, Amen. I hope on the fifteenth of A.B.E.P. we're saying Amen, and we're feeling those words.
And they were appreciating in a deep, deep way what Jesus Christ did for us because He accomplished what He came to do. It was finished.
By the time the fifteenth began, and as we gather together for the night to be much observed on the fifteenth, He had assured our path to salvation if we believe, if we choose to follow, if we commit ourselves, if we do the things of repentance that so marks this time before the time of the first day of Unleavened Bread.
Let me stop here because we mention a few things here. Sometimes, as we're in this days of Unleavened Bread, we go back to the Old Testament, we'll talk about Egypt.
And some among us may wonder, what are you talking about Egypt for? That was a story that happened thousands of years ago.
But Egypt, we know, for those of us who have been, Egypt is a type of sin. When you read Egypt in the Bible, it's a type of sin.
God brought Israel out of Egypt. It was a nation that was steeped, as we talked about, in idolatry. Everything was pagan about them.
And when God talks about Egypt, we say, you know, when we liken ourselves to God bringing us out of Egypt, He brings us out of sin.
You know, God calls things what they are. Right here in the book of Revelation, He lets us know what He's talking about and how He names things.
In Revelation 11, in verse 8, this is as the beast power is on earth for three and a half years.
You have the two witnesses who are preaching during those three and a half years. At the end of time, God allows those two witnesses to be killed.
And in verse 8 of Revelation 11, it says, Well, we know the city where our Lord was crucified is Jerusalem. It wasn't Sodom. It wasn't Egypt. But it was a sinful city. God calls things what they are. So when we read Egypt, think sin. When God brought Israel out of Egypt, He was bringing them out of a sinful, pagan, demented society.
When God brought us out of this world, He brought us out of a demented, sinful society. And whoever we were, we were steeped in it.
God brought us out. We could not have brought ourselves out on our own. Only by the power of God's Spirit made possible through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ do we even have the opportunity to have death replaced with life and the promise of it.
And so, when we talk about Egypt, we think about sin. The other thing that so many people in the world don't even understand what leaven is.
Sometimes when I mention leaven, people will be like, what is leaven? I used to talk about baking so that you could talk about yeast. Everyone knows what that is. But leaven?
Leaven. It's a physical substance. It's those things. And there, I think, is on the back table.
If you don't know what leavening is, there's a handout back there on what is leavening as you begin to prepare your homes that you can look at and see what is leavening and what is not.
But leaven is a type of sin. You know, we might think, and some people might think, oh, that was just for ancient Israel. That's an Old Testament thing. You don't have to worry about leaven. Yes, we do. Jesus Christ, when He was on earth, He talked about leaven. When He talked in Luke 12 about the leaven of hypocrisy, He wasn't doing something for the Old Testament.
Jesus Christ, when He was on earth, He used the physical to expand and to explain the spiritual.
You know, when He came to earth, He didn't just do away with the Ten Commandments, like so many want to believe. He expanded them.
No longer was it okay, does He say, to just not kill someone. You're not even going to hate them if you're a Christian. You're going to work that out in your life.
You're going to think that, okay, just to not have adultery, you're not even going to think along those lines. You're going to clean your life up. You're going to clean your act up.
And you're going to do things the way that God wants done.
Well, by the same way, He expanded what sin was. You know, sin is the transgression of the law, it says in 1 John 3-4. Certainly, if we break the commandments, that's sin.
But He said leaven, the leaven of hypocrisy.
There's not a commandment that says, thou shalt not be a hypocrite, unless you want to look at the lying commandment, because it is a lie if we're a hypocrite.
But when He denounced the Pharisees, He said, beware the leaven of hypocrisy. Don't let that define you. Look at these Pharisees. They say all these words, but they don't do them. They act totally differently.
And He says, you don't be that way. You don't just pretend. You just don't say the thing. You just don't put a show on for those around you and those in church.
You live the life that you've been called to. You make sure, as part of you, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you spend the rest of your life doing that.
And making sure that what God says becomes who you are, in your heart and in your soul. Not just someone who's out there for show, and to everyone, to the world around you look like this way, but secretly somewhere else, God says there's a change.
God says there's a change. In Matthew 16, He talks about the leaven of the Pharisees, the doctrine of the Pharisees.
Because they thought they had the Word of God, but what they did was they put their own spin on it.
And how many times did He ride them for putting their own spin on the doctrine? He's like, this is my idea. We'll teach for commandments, as Christ said about them. Teach for commandments the doctrines of men. This is what I want to do, and I'm going to make the Scripture say what I want it to.
Christ said, beware of that. Do what the Bible says. Do it the way He said. Don't add to. Don't take away. Don't put your opinion in it. Don't take away from it because you just don't like that one and you ignore it. The doctrine you live by, the way you live by, is the thing that's written in the Bible, the Word of Truth.
And so the Church of God, the Church of Jesus Christ, started. The doctrines come from the Scripture and only from the Scripture. And that's where they should be. The doctors of so many other churches don't come from Scripture but from preference and from an influence that is anything but God, as they reason away the words of the Bible or just ignore them altogether. But Christ said, even you, even you personally, when you look at yourselves, beware of leaven, beware of sin, beware of the attitudes, beware of how you act.
Beware of sin, but all those things that God is looking to us to become the way He wants us to become.
And so we look at leaven, and we look at that. Back in Exodus 12, if we go back there, we see that preceding, preceding the observance of the 15th day, there's something we have to do.
We just can't show up on the 15th and not have done something between now and then. Because if we do, then we've neglected what God's purpose and what His principles are here in the Bible. Exodus 13.
Let me look at the Bible here. Yeah, Exodus 13, verse 3. Exodus 13, verse 3. It's a symbolic thing. The leavening symbolizes sin. God says, no sin during that time.
On this day, verse 4, on this day you are going out in the month A.B.E.B.E.
And then verse 5, He says, you shall keep this service. Verse 6, seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there will be a feast to the Lord.
Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days. Now that's as we get into the 15th through the 21st days.
But He says in the end of verse 7 there, and no leavened bread shall be seen among you, nor shall leaven be seen among you in all your quarters.
During that days of unleavened bread, nothing leavened. No leavening should be seen with you or in your homes.
Get it out! Before the 15th day of A.B.E.B.E. Not on, not during, before.
There's a preparation time for the days of unleavened bread that we need to do.
And in accordance with the Scripture, we do the physical act of de-leavening our homes.
The Israelites did the physical act of de-leavening their homes simply because it was a physical act that God commanded them to do.
But we don't do the de-leavening of our homes simply because it's a physical act.
We do it because God said to and because we can learn spiritual principles from the physical act.
God says, get that leaven out of your home. We know that leaven pictures sin.
So He's saying to us spiritually, get that leaven out of your lives.
We'll take the time between now and the 15th to look in, to vacuum our homes, to clean out our freezers, refrigerators, look in the corners of drawers to see if there's any hidden crackers or anything like that there.
We'll go under the couches and we'll sweep and we'll take the cushions off and we'll sweep our cars and we'll do all those things looking for leavening.
And we should be diligent and we should be careful in that.
But if that's where we put all our diligence and care, we're missing a big part of the Holy Days.
Because today there's a spiritual application of why we do these physical things.
You know, our homes, God said, I want them to leaven as a symbol of what you do, of what He wanted Israel to do.
And we take the care that during that time no one's bringing in the leavening in.
But it's not just physical homes that we deal with today, is it?
Where does God want to make His home? He wants to make His home with you and me.
He wants to make His home with you and me.
So there's a spiritual application here of what we're doing as we go through the physical process of unleavening our homes.
He wants us to go through the spiritual process of unleavening the homes that He wants to live in.
You and me. He wants us to be unleavened.
And we have to be diligent and careful and mindful.
With our eyes wide open and not turning a blind eye to what might be out there, but looking at things realistically and through the eyes of God and His Word, is there leaven hidden in our lives?
Psalm 139, verse 23 says, when David says, search my heart, see if there's any hidden sin in me. Let me know the motives.
David wanted his spiritual house cleaned up so God would live with him.
God would live in him. The same thing that you and I should want.
God won't live in leavened homes.
He will live in our unleavened lives and the spiritual homes that we're building individually, which is our responsibility.
And as we de-leaven our physical homes, we should be thinking about the wider application of this.
And as we do that, be thinking about what we're supposed to be doing in our spiritual lives.
But He also wants to live because He's in our collective home, where He's also building a home and a temple.
You know, back in 1 Corinthians, some 20 years after Jesus Christ was resurrected and ascended into heaven, Paul was teaching the Corinthian church, a Gentile church that also had Jews in it. He was teaching about these same holy days that we're about to embark on.
And they were about to come up on the days of unleavened bread.
And they, as you will recall, some had reported to Paul some things that were going on at that church.
Some unleavened things, if you will, that were going on at church.
And he spends the book of 1 Corinthians talking about some of those things. In 1 Corinthians 5, he actually gives us an example of what unleavening should be like, certainly in our physical homes, certainly in our spiritual individual homes, also in our collective home.
Chapter 5, verse 1, it's actually reported, Paul writes, that there's sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles, that a man has his father's wife.
And you are puffed up. Well, what puffs us up? What puffs bread up? Yeast? Leavening? What puffs us up? Sin? Wrong attitudes? Pride?
And you are puffed up and have not rather mourned. If you weren't puffed up, you would be mourning that this person who is in your house, in your spiritual house, is doing these things. It would be an offense to you, and you wouldn't hate him, but you would be praying for him, and you would be mourning for him because he isn't living the life that God has called him to.
He isn't mindful. He isn't mindful of the promises that God has given him. And you are puffed up and have not rather mourned that he who has done this deed might be taken to the grave.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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Rick Shabi was ordained an elder in 2000, and relocated to northern Florida in 2004. He attended Ambassador College and graduated from Indiana University with a Bachelor of Science in Business, with a major in Accounting. After enjoying a rewarding career in corporate and local hospital finance and administration, he became a pastor in January 2011. Since then, he and his wife Deborah have served in the Orlando and Jacksonville, Florida, churches. Rick served as the Treasurer for the United Church of God from 2013–2022, and was President from May 2022 to April 2025.