God Is Not Trying to Improve You

Good afternoon, everyone! Good to see everyone here, good to see the visitors, and Glenn brought a cheering section. That's fantastic. It's always good to have family support, good to see people back on spring break and other people visiting. It's nice to have everyone here this time as we're coming into the Passover. Appreciate it. Glenn's sermon, sermonette, it's always good to hear different people up here and hear their points of view. So appreciate that very much, and the kids did a fantastic job. It's always hard to follow at children's choir. For those of you who like a topic to a sermon, you can write down the title of this one as, God is not trying to improve you. God is not trying to improve you. Now, hopefully that sounds like a slightly strange topic for a sermon, because otherwise you might fall asleep and wake up in 45 minutes or so. But I'd like to talk about this topic a little bit today, and I think this viewpoint, this topic, and how we think about it, how we look at it, how it leads us to look at our lives, is very important as we go into this time that leads up to the Passover, a time that we traditionally use for self-reflection, to think about the commitment that we've made to God, to think about the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made so that we could be forgiven for our sins. So what I'd like to do today around this topic of God is not trying to improve you, is to go through some of the events that happened around this time of year, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, and look at how was it that God was dealing with people, how is it that God is dealing with us, and what is it that we're supposed to draw from those things as we reflect on those experiences. So let's start in the Old Testament. We know, of course, that this time of year in the Old Testament was the time when God brought Israel out of Egypt, and a lot of symbolism takes place there, there are lots of stories. It's really one of the classic stories of mankind when you think about it. You know, one of the iconic films that was made was The Ten Commandments, and I think we've all got images of Charlton Heston up there playing Moses, and The Ten Commandments, and the epic sets and the cast of thousands, literally, that they used to make that movie. And for those who are younger, you probably remember Prince of Egypt. This is a story that just lives on because it's so incredible what God did.

There are interesting things that I'd like to dig out of the story as we go a little bit deeper in it, and as a starting point, what I'd like to ask is, have you ever thought about the plagues, the plagues of Egypt? And why did God choose the plagues of Egypt that he chose? Strange things, right? Frogs and locusts, darkness. It seems kind of odd that he would choose these things, but when we think about that time and what those things meant as symbols, I think it'll bring out a lot more as we reflect on it. Today we've got a lot of different symbols that we can think about, and as we say or talk about different things just by reference, immediately different images and thoughts come to mind. For example, if you were to see on the screen a picture, like you see at the airport right now, of an elephant with red, white, and blue behind it, it's talking about the Republican National Convention that's coming to town here. Or on the other side, if you saw a picture of a donkey with red, white, and blue behind it, that symbolism means something to us. We think of the financial market, we often talk about bulls and bears, right? There's this big sculpture of a bull in front of the New York Stock Exchange, the symbol of a market that just keeps going up, or theoretically will. A bald eagle flying majestically in the sky, as Americans we think about as a symbol of our country. It brings all kinds of imagery, all kinds of emotions, and all kinds of meaning along with it. And that's actually what it was like with the plagues of Egypt. So I'd like to spend a short time walking through the plagues that happened in Egypt, and not only what happened to Egypt, but then Pharaoh's, the way that Pharaoh reacted, and the different options that he held out to the children of Israel over the course of time. And we maybe haven't thought about it for a while, but the children of Israel actually had several different options to leave Egypt, which for one reason or another either Pharaoh ended up withdrawing or the Israelites ended up turning it down, and for good reason. So I looked on an online concordance for some of this information, which is called Got Questions dot org, if anyone wants to look back there. But the first plagues that happened were the Nile turning into blood, frogs, gnats, and flies. So what did these things mean? Looking here, it says, the first plague turning the Nile to blood was a judgment against Apis, the god of the Nile. Isis, goddess of the Nile, and Knum, the guardian of the Nile. The Nile was believed to be the bloodstream of Osiris, the Egyptian god, who was reborn each year when the river flooded.

The river formed the basis of daily life and the national economy, and it was devastated as millions of fish died in the river, and the water was unusable in the first plague that happened when that water was turned into blood. The second plague bringing frogs from the Nile was a judgment against Hechet, the frog-headed goddess of birth. Frogs were thought to be sacred and not to be killed. God had the frogs invade every part of the homes of the Egyptians, and when the frogs died, their stinking bodies were heaped up in offensive piles all around land. The third plague, Nats, was a judgment on Set, the god of the desert.

Unlike the previous plagues, the magicians were unable to duplicate this one and declared to Pharaoh that this is the finger of God. And the fourth plague, Flies, was a judgment on Euachit, the fly god. In this plague, God clearly distinguished between the Israelites and the Egyptians as no swarms of flies bothered the areas where the Israelites lived. And if you turn to Exodus 8, we won't read it, but if you're interested in noting it down, Exodus 8 verses 25 through 28, after these first four plagues that happened in Egypt, there was an offer to the children of Israel to leave. But the offer was for them to go sacrifice in that land, not to leave altogether, but in order to go out and make sacrifice. In verse 28 of that chapter, Pharaoh says to Moses, I'll let you go, that you can sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness, but you shall not go far away and please intercede for me. So that was the first offer, and they didn't end up going after those four plagues. And what wasn't that was happening in this process of these plagues as the first four of the ten began? God was showing, piece by piece, that He was supreme. He was supreme over everything that the people in that land thought had power, whether it was economic power, whether it was religious power, whether it was power over the river, over the desert, over the different areas. God was showing step by step that He had power over everything that that society thought was powerful, every God that they worshipped. And it didn't stop, of course, after four plagues. The fifth plague, the death of livestock, was a judgment on the goddess Hator and the god Apis, who were both depicted as cattle. As with the previous plague, God protected His people from the plague while the cattle of the Egyptians died. God was steadily destroying the economy of Egypt while showing His ability to protect and provide for those who obeyed Him. Pharaoh even sent investigators in Exodus 9 to find out if the Israelites were suffering along with the Egyptians, but the result was the hardening of his heart against the Israelites. The sixth plague, boils, was a judgment against several gods over health and disease, including Sekhmet, Sunu, and Isis. This time, the Bible says that the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils. Clearly, these religious leaders were powerless against the God of Israel. Before God sent the last three plagues, Pharaoh was given a special message from God. These plagues would be more severe than the others, and they were designed to convince Pharaoh and all the people, as it says in Exodus 9, verse 14, that there is none like God in all the earth.

Pharaoh was even told that he was placed in his position by God so that God could show his power and declare his name to all the earth. So then the seventh plague, which was hail falling on the land, attacked the god Nut, which was a sky goddess. Osiris, the crop fertility god, and set the storm god. This hail was not like anything that had been seen before because it was accompanied by fire, which ran along the ground and everything left out in the open was devastated either by the hail or by the fire. So before God brought the next plague, he told Moses the Israelites would be able to tell their children of the things they'd seen God do in Egypt and how it showed God's power. The eighth plague, locusts, again focused on Nut, Osiris, and Set. The later crops, wheat and rye, that had survived the hail were now devoured by the swarms of locusts, and there would be no harvest in Egypt. So as the plagues continue on, God shows the power that he has still over all of the different areas that the Egyptians could rely on for power, for sustenance, for crops, everything that they had. And in Exodus 10, in verses 8 through 11, again there's an offer, there's an opportunity for the Israelites to leave Egypt, but they don't. In verse 9, Moses says, we will go with our young and our old, with our sons and our daughters, with our flocks and our herds, we will go, for we must hold a feast to the Lord. And in the end, in verse 11, they're told not so. Go you who are a man and serve the Lord, for that's what you desired. And then Moses was driven from Pharaoh's presence.

So in this case, Pharaoh was willing to let the men go, but not to let everyone go. And so the process continued. The ninth plague, darkness, was aimed at the sun god, Reh, who was symbolized by Pharaoh himself. And for three days, the land of Egypt was smothered in an unearthly darkness, but the homes of the Israelites had light. And if we look in verses 24 through 27 of Exodus 10, there was another opportunity after this for the Israelites to leave. Pharaoh called Moses in verse 24 and said, go serve the Lord, only let your flocks and your herds be kept back, and keep your little ones, and they can go with you. But again, the Lord in the end hardened Pharaoh's heart, he changed his mind, and they didn't go. And this was all part of God's plan, because something God wanted to show was his complete and total supremacy. He didn't want there to be any question, he didn't want any half measures, he wanted a full and complete deliverance. I think we know that the tenth and last plague was the death of the firstborn, and it involved action on the part of the Israelites, painting the doorposts of their houses and sheltering inside of it, which we know was a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice. And in that plague, the firstborn of all the Egyptians died. And after that came what it was that God intended, which was that all of the people of Israel would go with all of their flocks, with all of their herds, and to add on to it, the Egyptians were so glad at that point to have them gone. They took the gold, they took all the treasure that they had, they gave it to the children of Israel, and they said, get out of here, be gone. A complete leaving of Egypt, far beyond anything the Israelites could have designed for themselves, a complete change of their home, complete change of their surroundings, everything that they did. But even at that point, it wasn't finished. What else happened after that that completed the deliverance of the Egyptians, or of the Israelites? If we remember, after they left Egypt, Pharaoh again, as he was wont to do, had a change of heart, and he sent his armies after Israel, didn't he? And the final act of deliverance and coming out of Egypt happened a number of days later at the Red Sea. Those of us who have seen the Ten Commandments movie, I'm sure that's one of the vivid things. It's a piece of film history, right? Moses standing up on the rock as they depicted it, with the waters rushing around. Turn with me, if you will, to Exodus 14, and we'll read it from the pages of the Bible. Exodus 14, verses 21 through 30. If there was any doubt at this point who was mightier and that the God who took Israel out of Egypt was supreme over everything, this was going to end the story completely.

There was nothing left that had had power over the Israelites after this miracle was finished. Exodus 14, verses 21 through 30. Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and the Lord caused the sea to go back by strong east wind all that night and made the sea into dry land and the waters were divided. And so the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground and the waters were a wall to them on the right hand and on the left. And the Egyptians pursued and went after them into the midst of the sea all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. And when it came to pass in the morning watch that the Lord looked down upon the army of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and cloud, he troubled the army of the Egyptians. He took off their chariot wheels so they drove them with difficulty. And the Egyptians said, Let's flee from the face of Israel for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians.

And the Lord said to Moses, Stretch out your hand over the sea that the waters may come back upon the Egyptians on their chariots and on their horsemen. And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and when the morning appeared the sea returned to its full depth while the Egyptians were fleeing into it. So the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots, the horsemen, and all the army of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them. Not so much as one of them remained. But the children of Israel had walked on dry land to the midst of the sea and the waters were walled to them on the right and on the left and the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians. And Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore and thus Israel saw the great work which the Lord had done in Egypt and they feared the Lord and they believed the Lord and his servant Moses. So it's interesting to me through this entire progression, we go back to the title of this message, God was not trying to improve the situation that the Israelites were in. God wanted a complete and total victory over that situation and he wanted them out of that situation. When it was all done, Israel was in a different place. They'd come out of Egypt. Everything that had surrounded them, everything that had power over them had been destroyed and only God remained sovereign and supreme over them. He had completely changed their situation a hundred percent. You think of what they were living with in terms of slavery, overseers, people beating them, people requiring them to work hard every day to build all the things that they were doing. Now they were completely free and all of their oppressors have been taken away. God had given them a complete and 100% change in their situation. Let's move on to a second analogy that we think of at this time of year, which is leaven. So for those who haven't perhaps been in the church for a long period of time, the word leaven is not really a word we use much these days in everyday speech.

If you went into a restaurant or a store and asked them, you know, what's leavened, most people would probably look at you like you came from Mars or something wouldn't be able to answer that question or even know what it means, right? But it results from a chemical reaction, right, that makes bread dough rise, essentially.

What I found interesting, though, is that the way that we think of leaven today is very different from what people thought of in terms of leaven and leavening agents up until probably a hundred years ago or 150 years ago. Let me read to you why.

This comes from the website of the Dakota yeast company. They've got a little blurb on the history of yeast, which I actually found interesting because I'm a geek and I like reading this kind of stuff. It says here that yeast can be considered man's oldest industrial microorganism. Who would have thought? It's likely that man used yeast before the development of a written language. Hieroglyphics suggest that the ancient Egyptians were using yeast and the process of fermentation to produce alcoholic beverages and leavened bread over 5,000 years ago. The biochemical process of fermentation that's responsible for these actions was not understood and undoubtedly looked upon by early man as a mysterious and even magical phenomenon. I'm sure after a while, through trial and error, they kind of figured out, you know, if you've got some dough and you've got some water on it and you've got something with some sugar in it, it'll start to cause this magical process and they start to see the things they could do with it and with trial and error, they probably figured it out. It's believed, it goes on to say here, that these early fermentation systems for alcohol production and bread making were formed by natural microbial contaminants of flour, other milled grains, and from fruit or other juices that contained sugar. Such microbial flora would have included wild yeasts and lactic acid bacteria that are found associated with cultivated grains and fruits. Leaven, referred to in the Bible, was a soft dough-like medium. A small portion of this dough was used to start or leaven each new bread dough. Over the course of time, the use of these starter cultures helped to select for improved yeasts by saving a good batch of wine, beer, or dough for inoculating the next batch. For hundreds of years, it was traditional for bakers to obtain the yeast to leaven their bread as byproducts of brewing and wine making. And as a result, these early bakers have also contributed to the selection of these important industrial microorganisms.

But it wasn't until the invention of the microscope, followed by the pioneering scientific work of Louis Pasteur in the late 1860s, that yeast was identified as a living organism, the agent responsible for alcoholic fermentation and dough leavening. Shortly following these discoveries, it became possible to isolate yeast in pure culture form. With this newfound knowledge that yeast was a living organism and the ability to isolate yeast strains in pure culture form, the stage was set for commercial production of baker's yeast that only began around the turn of the 20th century. So for those of us who think about yeast and leavening and things as pulling a packet of dry yeast out of the cupboard or some baking soda, this type of a method of leavening bread was actually only in place since a little over a hundred years ago. And so at the time the Bible was written, and in fact, you know, most of history, if we look back to probably our great-grandparents and farther back, if we talked about leavening and how to go about leavening something, people would think about a chunk of sourdough starter is what we would usually talk about it today. And they would have it either sitting in a ceramic jar. I've read stories about people in the Old West and about how a lot of them would have a tin and they would keep this in a tin, even strapped to their belt or in a knapsack.

And when they were traveling, they needed to bake bread, they'd get the dough ready, they'd reach into this tin, they'd take a pinch off of this sourdough starter, they'd throw it in there and they'd knead it into that dough that they'd made, and that dough over time, a little bit of leaven would then leaven that entire lump of dough. And this sourdough starter that they carried with them would just keep going and you could feed it additional amounts in order for it to grow bigger and you would use little chunks of it in order to leaven new lumps of dough and to make bread. As we think about the analogy of leaven, I think a lot of things come to mind as we consider the fact that it's not just taking a package of yeast and kind of pouring it on something, the fact that this lump would be used and be carried forward sometimes for a long period of time, in fact, sometimes for more than a hundred years. Which takes us to an article from the Casper Star Tribune in Wyoming from December 4, 2011, which is titled, Newcastle Woman Maintains 122-Year-Old Sourdough Starter.

122 years. And in fact, in just browsing websites and things, there's a bit of a cottage industry for people who are sourdough enthusiasts about different types of sourdoughs and starters and trying to track the history of them and how old they are. So this article says, the particular sourdough starter under consideration is older than most things. It was created before the rotary dial, airplane and modern assembly line. Someone first stirred its ingredients together the same year the Eiffel Tower opened and Vincent van Gogh painted Starry Night. It's lived through the turns of two centuries, the Great Depression, World War I, World War II, the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, and beyond. Past blues, jazz, rock and roll, and 23 US presidencies. In fact, it's older than the state of Wyoming. Lucille Clark Dumberl of Newcastle got it from her mother who got it from one of her husband's students at the University of Wyoming.

The student's family could trace it back to 1889 to a sheepherder's wagon near Casey. Guinness World Records tracks all sorts of achievements regarding things that are edible. Longest sandwich, largest meatball, largest pizza base spun in two minutes, and things that are old. Oldest pig, oldest sweater, oldest acrobatic salsa dancer. Never seen that one. Not sure I want to see that one. It even has eight records involving the food Lucille makes most with her starter, pancakes. But there's no record for the oldest sourdough starter. Maybe it belongs to Lucille. Her starter is 122 years old, kept alive and fermenting in Lucille's refrigerator. To maintain a starter this old, Lucille is 83, keeps it in a ceramic jar with a lid. When baking for guests, she takes the starter out of the fridge a couple days ahead of time. She removes a half cup to one cup of starter, puts it in a bowl on the counter, and feeds it flour, sugar, and water to make batter. Just before adding in eggs, oil, and more sugar for pancakes, she puts a half cup to one cup of batter back into the starter jar and then back into the refrigerator. And let's be sure about one thing. The idea that sourdough starter is tough to keep is a big misunderstanding, Lucille said. You don't have to bake with it every week to keep it alive or have someone babysit it while you're on vacation. In fact, when Lucille's mother died, winter, spring, and summer passed before Lucille could clean out the house. In the fall, Lucille finally brought home the sourdough starter untouched for months. She baked pancakes with it just fine. Lucille's advice? You just have to not be afraid if it doesn't look good. Once Carol Rolfe, who assists Lucille at home, was cleaning the fridge and opened the starter jar. The contents had turned black around the edges, clear and oily on the top. Whatever this was, Carol thought, it needed to be thrown out. Oh no, no, Lucille said. Just stir it together, and it'll be fine. Now we think of the analogy of sin and think about this method of leavening, which would have been extremely familiar to the people at the time of ancient Egypt.

We think about sourdough starters and how they live on for 122 years. How even if you don't tend to them, they just continue to kind of bubble and ferment and turn gross and oily and funny colors around the edges. What does that make us think about in terms of sin and what that does when it's left untended and how it just ferments and builds, and how one small pinch of it, when you take it and you add it into a situation, into someone's life, what it does. It's a very apt analogy, and you can see as we read through these things about how these starters worked, how leavening was done back then, why that's used as an analogy for sin and how that works in our lives. Let's turn to 1 Corinthians 5, verses 6 through 8. I referred briefly to this passage of Scripture a moment ago, but 1 Corinthians 5, verses 6 through 8.

1 Corinthians 5, verse 6 says here, Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump, just like we read about with Lucille's starter? Therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you're truly unleavened. For indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us.

Therefore let us keep the feast not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

So what I find really interesting when you think about leavening, it's not like other things. So nowadays we're used to eating non-fat or drinking non-fat milk, right, or non-fat cheese to eat and all these things. There are chemical processes where you can take dairy products, you throw them through, I guess, a centrifuge and a filter and you pull the fat out of them, right, and you cause non-fat milk or skim milk or low-fat milk. What's the process for taking a piece of bread and drawing the leavening out of it?

There's no way to do it, right? It's all through that thing. It's part of the substance of what it is. If you want unleavened bread, you've got to start with it. You take yourself back again to the way that they made bread in the old days. What did the Israelites do? They had that starter that was probably sitting there, whether it was in a knapsack, in a tent, or whatever else.

When days of unleavened bread came, what did they do with it? They chucked it away, right? That's what it says here as well. We're to become new lumps, right? We're not supposed to keep picking at that old lump that's there, the way we used to do things, the way that we lived our lives before we knew God, and pick at pieces of that and add it into our lives as Christians. We're supposed to take that old lump, and it's supposed to be thrown entirely away. And that was the lesson of this time. When we think about that, you know, 122 year old sourdough starter percolating and you know fermenting and doing everything that it does chemically, again, we can think about the things that live within our lives and how they keep percolating and fermenting.

And if we don't isolate them and leave those things out of our life and start a new life, that those things are waiting there to come back into our lives, to change the way that we do things, to impact the way that we do everything we do. If you want to use another example, you can think about if you're eating a cookie and you're cleaning the litter box, like I often have to do.

I don't usually eat cookies while I clean the litter box, but if you drop a cookie or a piece of food or something into the litter box while you clean it, you're probably not going to use the two-second rule, are you? You're not going to blow it off and figure, well, I think I got most of the big stuff off. I'm just going to go ahead and eat it, right? You're going to chuck that thing out.

You're not going to go anywhere near it, right? And that's exactly what we're talking about here with leavening and the old lump, right? That lump that they were using for the past year and taking pieces off of and using it in their bread, it would have a distinctive taste, probably have a distinctive aroma, and it would take that thing, they would throw it away, and they would start all over again after the days of unleavened bread with a new lump. It was different than what they had had before. Turn with me, if you would, to Galatians 5, verses 16 through 18.

Galatians 5 verses 16 through 18, sounding a similar note. Verse 16, I say then, walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary to one another, so you don't do the things that you wish, but if you're led by the Spirit, you're not under the law. So we're supposed to be coming out of the way of that old lump and living as an entirely new lump, not taking pieces of the way our old life was, taking pieces of the way things were, and adding them on to our way of life as Christians.

Now, there are different ways that that can manifest itself. You've probably heard some people say or seen people take an approach of saying, you know, my life's pretty good, and you know, God needed to come in, and there was probably 30% of my life that God had to clean up. I was going on pretty much along the right path, and God came in and He just kind of helped me move forward faster.

Is that what this analogy is saying? Is this what it says in the Bible? It's not. And that's something we all have to recognize and realize within our lives, no matter what our background, no matter what things we've done well, what things we've done poorly, what sins we have, all of us as human beings are leavened.

Just like that sourdough starter is leaven that's permeated with yeast. And God doesn't come in and sort of replace the pieces that aren't very good. Sort of picking off the little pieces that He can work, you know, blowing off the junk off the cookie that fell into the litter box.

God's not in that business. He wants to replace the entire thing. He's starting 100% over. With this analogy of leaven, we can't go back into that old lump and maintain pieces of it, pieces of the way that we did things, and rely on those things rather than relying on God. Let's look next at the Passover sacrifice as the third element or symbol that we think about at this time of year. We won't turn there, but if you look in Exodus 12 and the Passover sacrifice, one of the instructions for the lamb that was slaughtered at the first Passover back in Egypt was that every bit of it was to be burned up.

First of all, they were to eat the lamb, and then anything that remained of the lamb at the end of their meal was to be put in the fire, and it was going to be burned up. None of it, what's said in the command, was to remain until the morning.

It was a complete sacrifice. 100% everything was supposed to be consumed.

And likewise, when Jesus Christ died, He gave His life, His entire life. Turn with me if you would to 2 Corinthians 5. His sacrifice was entire, and it was enough.

It was enough to forgive us and anyone who ever lived of the sins that we've committed. 1 Corinthians 5. 1 Corinthians 5, we'll start reading in verse 14 through verse 19. For the love of Christ compels us because we judge thus, that if one died for all, then all died. And he died for all that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. For though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. So if anyone is in Christ, He's a new creation. Old things have passed away, and behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. And what's so powerful about this is how strong and how complete the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is. It creates a complete and a different life within us. I think one of the questions that we have to ask ourselves at this time of year is, do we really see our lives as new and different after the commitment that we made to God, after receiving His shed blood, Jesus Christ's shed blood, and being baptized? Because God sees our life as completely different. Do we? Or do we see it simply as a somewhat continuation of the way we've been living before? He views it as completely new and different. Turn with me to Romans 6, verses 1 through 4.

Romans 6, verses 1 through 4. There's some very strong analogies used in the Bible for how we're viewed after we've made this commitment and been baptized. Romans 6, verses 1 through 4. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we should also walk in newness of life. So the scripture here talks about our life after baptism as being new, being as different from our old life as someone who was killed and raised from the dead, which symbolically is what happens as we commit our lives to Jesus Christ through baptism. Galatians 2.20 underlines this even further. Galatians 2.20. Here Paul says in Galatians 2.20, I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. So in God's view, we are completely new and different creatures after baptism. And again, I have to ask the question, do we view ourselves that way? Do I view myself that way every day? And I think the answer, if we're honest to ourselves, is no, we really don't. Not as much as we should and not all the time. Something to reflect on as we come into this time of year. So as we wrap up here, in the final area of this sermon and talking about the fact that God is not trying to improve us, hopefully that makes a little more sense now as we read through these things, what does this mean for us as we contemplate the Passover? What does this mean for us as we contemplate the Passover?

Because God's not trying to just take the existing life that we had and make it a little better or even a lot better. God's trying to replace that life. As we read, as we're baptized, it's a death. It's a symbolic death. He wants everything that we were, the desires that we had, the motivations that we had, the ways that we went at things to die. And He wants us to take a completely new life that doesn't draw even on little bits and pieces of that old life, but a new life in Him. So as we think about the Passover, we have to consider, are we living as a new creature? How has our life changed after the commitment we made to God? And to what extent do we need to recommit ourselves? Now what's fantastic is the fact that God understands us. God has mercy. He knows that we're sinful human beings. And as long as we're in the flesh, there's no way that we're going to be able to do anything perfectly. And that's why He gave us the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ. At the same time, we have to consider and think about, what is it that we bring into our lives from before? And what I'd like to recommend is thinking about it in the area of this lump, this lump of leaven, as we were reading about and talking about earlier in this sermon. It's not a matter of going through our lives and trying to catalog the sins that we commit. Well, I do this. I need to stop doing that. And I do this. I need to stop doing that. And I have this problem and I have that problem. But what God needs us and wants us to focus on is the fact that we are sinful. It's not about the sinful acts that we commit, because when we think about those, what do those come back to?

They come back to a root cause. That root cause is that we as human beings are sinful. And that's why Jesus Christ gave us sacrifice. And the thing that we need to fundamentally understand going into the Passover is that we, as human beings, are inherently sinful beings. Of ourselves, we can't be righteous. Of ourselves, we can do some things that are generally good, but we cannot be good without Jesus Christ and his sacrifice. And that, at its core, is what we have to understand. That old lump, that leavened lump, has to be completely replaced. And that's the thing that we have to consider and contemplate as we're going through this time leading up to the Passover and understanding the need that we have to the very core of our being for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Because without that, which allows us to live a new life, to be a new creature, to be a new lump, there is no salvation. It's only through that sacrifice and that change that it brings. Again, in 1 Corinthians 5 verse 7, the analogy is used that a little bit of leaven leavens the whole lump. And so we can't use that old starter as the basis for our Christian life. Because even a little bit of the leaven that's in that old starter comes through and permeates the entire life that we're living. Matthew 9 verses 16 and 17 uses a similar analogy. Matthew 9, turning to verses 16 and 17. Here it's talking about wine skins. Now, we don't really use wine skins today. We use bottles for wine. But in those days, they would often use skins. It was usually some type of a cured leather and they would use that to store wine. And here in Matthew 9 verses 16 and 17, it says, no one puts a piece of untrunk cloth on an old garment. If you've got an old garment that's shrunk, it's been through the wash a number of times, and you put a fresh piece of cloth on it, it's gonna pull and tear in different directions, right? Because it hasn't done its shrinking yet. The tear is made worse.

Nor in verse 17 do they put new wine into old wine skins, because else the wine skins will break, and the wine is spilled, and the wine skins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wine skins and both are preserved. I don't know all the chemistry that goes into how wine skins worked, but the fact is that you needed the new, just like you wouldn't use old cloth or new cloth to patch an old garment, because things pull. And so the idea here, again, is that we need to be new vessels, new creations. So as we contemplate the Passover, do we see ourselves as God sees us? You know, this can go in two directions, right? I think often it's easy for us as we get near the Passover to look at our lives and say, you know, I really don't feel like I can do anything right. Everything I do ends up in something sinful or something that's selfish at its core, and we see that and we start seeing the shortcomings in ourselves. But God knows that and God sees it because he knows that as human beings we are, again, inherently sinful.

What's marvelous and incredible is that he sees us actually as new creations. He doesn't see that old man. He sees the new man that was created through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of our sins. That's why when we read the Scriptures we can read the story of a man like David who murdered, who killed, who stole, who committed all kinds of...he was an adulterer, he committed all kinds of crimes. And in the end God calls him a man after his own heart. A man after his own heart, despite the things that he did. And that was because God granted him repentance, just as he does to us. And he saw him as a new creature, a new creation, and looked on his heart and saw that despite some of the things that he did, he was in a repentant spirit, he turned back to God, and he was dedicated despite his faults to following God's ways. So in addition, as we think about the past overcoming, and in this context we can rejoice, we can be incredibly happy and grateful for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that was given for us. It makes these things possible that humanly are not possible at all. You know, we think about it, we think we're so great as human beings, all the things that we can accomplish, we send men to the moon, we do all these amazing things, but the one thing we can't do, among many others, is forget. Right? The one thing we can't do is forget, and that manifests itself in a few different ways, right? It manifests itself in the grudges and the difficulties that we have with other people. We can forgive others, but we can't truly forget the things that they've done to us, can we? As hard as we might try, we can forgive those things, we can work to move past them, but as humans we just can't entirely purge it out of our memory. God says he forgets our sins. When he says that, I believe that he does. The other thing we can't forget is sometimes towards ourselves. Many of us have this proclivity where we think of the things that we've done, and we can't forgive ourselves. We can't get past the things that maybe we've done to someone else, the weaknesses that we see in our lives, and somehow we can't move past that and think, God sees me as a new creature. God sees me as something different than the way that I see myself as someone who struggles with these things and isn't any good. And if we don't have that level of understanding that God has moved us past that and wants us to move confidently in him and produce fruit as a Christian, we can often sit back and wallow in the insecurities, the difficulties, the things that we see in ourselves, and never really get past those things to where we can be productive Christians helping other people in their lives as we carry his spirit. Turn with me, if you will, to Hebrews 8. Here God lays out this fact that he will forget, completely forget, and when he makes us new creations, new lumps, new creatures, he doesn't remember the things that were in the past. Hebrews 8 and verse 12 says, here I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their lawless deeds, talking here about the new covenant that comes through Jesus Christ's blood, their sins and their lawless deeds, I will remember no more.

How wonderful would it be to not remember some of the wrongs of people who have committed against us? How wonderful would it be not to remember some of the things we've done to other people that we feel so terrible about?

These things can cut deep. I can remember being by my father's bedside when he was first diagnosed with cancer, and it was amazing as an 80-some-year-old man, him breaking down into tears, talking about what he was like as a child, and disrespecting his father, getting into trouble on the streets, and having these difficulties that he knew troubled his father so much. And he, you know, 80 years later, 80-plus years later, he at some level could not let go of that. And for me, it was a very emotional thing, you know, to see that and that sort of near- death experience, knowing he was going to die in the upcoming months, and the impact something that happened so long ago had on him. How incredible is it that God doesn't see those things? God forgives, God forgets, and he wipes the slate clean. He makes us a new creation. We can be incredibly grateful for that.

Turn with me, if you will, at the end of this message, to 2 Corinthians 5. 2 Corinthians 5. There's a lot of incredible, wonderful things that come through this, and there's also responsibility, as we know, to walk forward as new creations in Christ. And those are the things that we have to think about at this time of the Passover. Turn with me to 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 17.