It is Time for Self-Examination.

The title of my sermon is, It is Time for Self-Examination. Passover is just a little more than a month away. It is time for us to prepare for the Passover, both physically and spiritually. Also, this is the time of the year when Satan will tempt us perhaps more. I mentioned this to Mrs. Beakley last time. He will tempt us much more than maybe any other time of the year. We must be ready. That is what the Scripture tells us in Mark 14. Let's go to Mark 14. I think we'll start in verse 14.

Mark 14.

Okay. Talking about the man that they're going to meet with a pitcher of water. And wherever he goes in, say to the Master, the teacher says, Where is the guest room in which I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And then he will show you a large upper room, furnished and prepared. There, make ready for us. As I was reading this, I guess I was thinking about it, and then I looked it up. The phrase make ready is so important. Make ready for the Passover. And that is what we are to do. We are to make ourselves ready. We are to make our homes and our hearts ready for the Passover. Luke 22. This is such an important verse. This is not the time of the year to procrastinate.

Wait until the last minute to try to deal with our homes. That is not the time of the year to procrastinate. Luke 22. Now we go to verse 12. There he will show you a large furnished upper room. There, make ready. Make ready. Very, very important that we approach the Passover making ready.

I would suggest, at least as I do, I start with prayer when the time comes to deliving my home. I start with prayer. I ask God to bless me and bless my wife. I want to get it right physically. I want to remove the leavening physically. I don't want to be careless and sloppy. But then I don't want to be a Pharisee either about it. There is a balance there.

I would encourage you to ask God to bless your homes and your hearts as you make ready for the Passover. Exodus 12.

Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats unleavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. So God tells us to remove leavening from our home. And there may be some that say, Oh, well, we don't need to do that anymore. That's Old Testament. We don't have to do this. But we should do this because God commands us to remove leavening. So we'll go now to Exodus 12 and verse 19. Exodus 12 and verse 19. For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses. Since whoever eats what is leavened, that same person shall be cut off, cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a native in the land. So God tells us how important it is then to make sure that we remove leavening from our homes.

And frankly, you know, de-leavening, or not de-leavening, which we should de-leaven, of course, tells us a lot about our attitudes towards sin. If we're lazy, lackadaisical, procrastinating, careless, about the physical removal of our house, maybe that tells us something about the way we look at sin. We cannot be in looking at sin, getting rid of sin, careless, lackadaisical, lazy, procrastinating. We can't do that. So I think the way the approach that we take to emptying our houses of leavening would be a good look into our heart as well to see what we think about getting rid of sin. Exodus 13, verse 7, Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days, and no leavened bread shall be seen among you, nor shall leaven be seen among you in all your quarters. So here we have three times God says, D11 your homes. So we are to remove the crumbs, whatever it is, the bread from our kitchen, our home, refrigerators, cupboards, vehicles, and of course that favorite spot on the couch where we watch TV and we eat crackers, cupcakes, donuts, probably a lot of crumbs in that spot right there. Okay, let's go now to Exodus 34, verse 25. The preparation and the keeping of it is both physical and spiritual. And this caught my eye when I was reading this scripture, Exodus 34, 25, You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven, nor shall the sacrifice of the feast of Passover be left until the morning, until the morning. Now this has spiritual applications, because the blood of God's sacrifice is literally His Son, the blood of His Son. Jesus Christ shed His blood, every drop of it, for you and me that our sins could be washed away. So when it comes to Passover, let's not bring spiritual leaven with us. Let's not bring sin with us to accept the wine, which is the symbol of the blood of the Lamb of God. If we've got a problem with somebody, let's get it resolved before Passover gets there, according to Matthew 18. Mr. Giddens mentioned that in his sermon last Sabbath. We used Matthew 18 to deal with our... if we have a problem with our brother or sister. So, jealousy, envy, lust, greed, covetousness, don't bring it. Don't bring that leavening to the Passover. Now is the time to examine ourselves. Now is the time to repent. And then we take the bread and the wine. Do not offer the blood of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ with leavening. Well, let's continue on here. There's plenty of scripture we can go. It's not just the physical leavening. It's the matter of spiritual leavening as well. And we see this combined in 1 Corinthians chapter 5.

1 Corinthians chapter 5 verses 7 and 8.

Therefore purge out the old leaven. Now in this case, he's speaking of the heart. Purge out the leaven of the heart. That you may be a new lump. Just imagine yourself a lump of dough. Okay, a lump of bread dough. Minus the yeast. Minus the baking soda. Minus the baking powder. Okay? That's what we are. That's the new lump we are to be for the Feast of the Spring Festival. Since you truly are unleavened, they had unleavened their homes. They had unleavened their homes. For indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. He is the Lamb who spilled His blood for you and I. Therefore let us keep the feast. Not with the old leaven. Let's not drag our old sins back into Passover. Nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness. But with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. We don't bring leavening with us to the Passover. We don't bring physical or spiritual leavening to us at Passover. And we keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Not just the physical leaven that Paul is talking about here. Now there is in chapter 11, 1 Corinthians 11, a lot. So much information. And we always cover it in sermons, sermonettes. Two, three, four, five times. Probably five or six times before Passover gets here. In various messages. For I received, verse 23, from the Lord, Paul said, That which I also delivered to you, That the Lord Jesus on the same night that He was betrayed, took bread.

And we had given thanks, verse 24, When He had given thanks, He broke it and said, Take and eat. This is my body. That bread symbolizes the body of Christ, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same manner, He also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, You proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. Now, the word proclaim is much better than what the King James has. The King James has a great translation, a very good translation. But it says, You do show the Lord's death, but really it's a matter of proclaiming the Lord's death. We're not afraid to announce to the world that Christ Jesus died for us. We should not be ashamed to say to anybody, Who am I? Who am I? I'm a repentant sinner, forgiven by the shed blood of Jesus Christ. That's proclaiming the Lord's death until He comes. I'm a repentant sinner, forgiven by the shed blood of Christ. And that's the same thing that we read in 2 Corinthians 4.10. I can read it for you here. Paul said he was always caring about, in the body, the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of the Lord Jesus may be manifested in our body. He never forgot the death of Jesus Christ for Him, for Himself. He never forgot that. Always, bearing about in the body, the dying of the Lord Jesus. So, continuing on, Therefore, whoever eats this bread and drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, careless, lackadaisical, will be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. We have to be really humble, knowing that we are repentant sinners, knowing that God has forgiven us, and that we come in a worthy frame of mind, knowing that it is God who will make us worthy. We will never make ourselves worthy. It is God who makes us worthy. But let a man examine himself, and then let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. So, examine means we examine, we declare ourselves guilty of sin, we repent, and then we take the passover. And it just seemed like every year, somebody wants to say, I've had a bad year this year, I guess I'll just, okay, I'll take the second passover. Or, I don't want to take the passover. People battle with that, and that's not what they should do. That's the opposite of what they should do. Let a man examine himself, or let a lady examine herself, let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. So, we ask God, what kind of a person He wants us to be.

We're not too excited about what we want to be. We ask God, Father, what kind of a person do you want me to be? That's a part of examining ourselves. So, we again, examine, repent, and take the passover. Now, we've always said, and I don't know when I first heard this, it was probably 50 years ago, I shouldn't say that, but anyway, we've always said the church experiences lots of trials just before Passover. And that is so true. It's just so true. And it's been true to form, as to what's been happening this year already. What are some of the trials we're already facing? I've got one here. For some of us, Mr. Shaby, not being reaffirmed as president, I was saddened when I heard the news. In fact, I was shocked. You always know there's a possibility there'll be a three-year term, but it still came as a shock, and I was saddened. But here's a few points that I know will help us to understand. So let's turn to these points, and Mr. Gannon referred to this one, and I think he probably read it too, but I want to turn to it as well. Colossians 1, Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians 1, and I'm going to focus on the first few years, most of all. And he is the head of the body. Christ is the head. The body is us. We are the body of Christ. So he is the head of the body of the church. And who is the beginning? The first born from the dead, that in all things he may have the preeminence. The preeminence. So, step number one, God, or Jesus Christ, is the head of his church. Then Matthew 16, 18, and let me read this to you, Matthew 16, 18. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. Now, Hades can mean a lot of things, but talking here about the gates of the grave, you know, the gates of the grave will never prevail against the church. It won't die out, in other words, or it can mean death. God's church is not ever going to die out. So says Jesus Christ. So says Christ. It will not ever die out. So, Jesus Christ is the head of this church. What are we worried about? I've got to ask that question. Since he's the head of the church, what are we worried about? Was I saddened? Yes. But I'm not worried. I'm just not worried.

So, Christ is the head of the church, and his ministers are still living obedient lives. You know, they're still keeping the Council of Elders, the ministers at the Home Office, field ministers. We're still keeping the Sabbath. We're still keeping the Holy Days. Back in the 90s, the church was derailed because the leadership decided to stop keeping the Sabbath. And they decided to stop keeping the Holy Days. The church was derailed because of that. But God's ministers are marked by their willing obedience to the ways of God, their willing obedience to the Ten Commandments, including Sabbath and Holy Days. So, obviously, Christ and God have a plan, and they are working on that plan. And I truly believe, I firmly believe, that as Christ being the head of the church, he will continue to use Mr. Shabey mightily, mightily in God's work. You know, it takes a lot of godly courage for Mr. Shabey to call out the papacy, like he did, and we saw it here in the biblical worldview. We played a couple of those videos. And he called out the papacy as commandment breakers, as disobedient. That takes a lot of, you know, and they're going to find out about us. They're going to find out about us.

And it takes a lot of courage to do that. It also takes out, it takes a lot of courage to, as he did, as he did, call out the leading Protestant minister of the land. And he also said this Protestant minister is biblically wrong. That takes a lot of faith. That takes a lot of courage. He's going to continue with those beyond biblical worldviews. And I tell you, in ten minutes, can he ever pack a punch in ten minutes? He really can. So, whether we're puzzled or saddened, let's keep a good attitude toward the COE, the Council of Elders, and let's continue to pray for them and, of course, all of us ministers. And in this, God will be very pleased. I want to read a few excerpts from an email that came to me through one of our very own church members.

I'm using it anonymously and with his permission. So, I'll just read some excerpts. Got an email from Mr. Shabian. He's upbeat and looking forward to the future. May God be praised as we don't want any problems at the home office. When there's hurting, we hurt, too. Well, that's what 1 Corinthians 12 says. When one member suffers, we all suffer. When one member rejoices, we rejoice with him.

Anyway, more later, as we need it, coming from him to us, not me. Feeling better now. So, one of our very own wrote that.

So, for some positive reason, God is directing the Council in its recent decision. Now, let's go back to Psalm 139. Mr. Shabian often quotes this in his messages.

Psalm 139.

And verse 23.

This is kind of a tough scripture. Search me, O God, and know my heart. I think, oh, I don't want God to look into my heart, but we're supposed to pray. May God will look into our hearts. Try me and know my anxieties. Try me, and I think the King James, and know my thoughts. And see if there's any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Now, God already knows a lot of my sins and faults. I know them, too. Okay? But in each one of us, myself included, there's a deep, dark side that we don't want to go to in our heart. We don't want to look at that. We don't want God to look at that. But therein is where we can grow. If we can realize, hey, God's going to show this to me. He's going to reveal this to me. It's going to hurt, but I'm going to repent, and God will lead me in the way of everlasting life. So it's that part that's pretty tough to deal with, but it's something that we must do, that part that we would rather bury, ignore, next year, maybe, you know, so on. But although we can be embarrassed by it, even by ourself, between us and God, but David had hope and complete confidence in God's mercy. Let's go to Psalm 26. Same thing, basically. Psalm 26, verses 1, 2, and 3.

Indicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity. I have also trusted in the Lord. Brethren, trust in God at this time of the year. I shall not slip. Examine me, O Lord, and prove me. Test me. Prove me. Try me. Try my heart and my mind and my heart, for your loving kindness is before my eyes, and I have walked in your truth. Loving kindness is the Hebrew word, chesed, chesed, C-H-E-S-E-D.

We would spell it in English. It's used throughout the Psalm, throughout the Bible, and it just means God's limitless mercy, God's limitless love, God's limitless grace, God's limitless everything about Him. And that's what the word chesed does mean. So, we can look to God because we know He is full of loving kindness, mercy, favor, pity. Psalm 51. Here's where David had committed the twin sins of adultery and murder. Have mercy upon me, verse 1, O God, according to your loving kindness, according to your chesed, according to the multitude of your tender mercies.

Blot out my transgressions. Now, the Bible reading program says that David here, in the next few verses, is going to use all the Hebrew words for sin, all the basic, I should say, Hebrew words for sin. Blot out my transgressions. Watch me thoroughly from mine iniquity. That's another word for sin.

Cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. So, he used all the basic Hebrew words for sin. Now, let's take a look at some of the things that are in our hearts, some of our hearts, that God warned us about, that Christ warned us about. Let's go to Mark chapter 17. Pardon me, Mark chapter 7. And are we really this way? Well, Christ says we're this way.

And in the flesh, our thoughts can go here. So, the Pharisees were mad at him because they would not ceremonially wash their hands before eating, which was, I guess, a process of washing up to their elbows before they took a bite of bread. And then, going through a ritualistic experience with it. And so, he said in verse, Jesus said in verse 15, Look, there's nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him, but the things which come out of him, these are the things that defile a man.

Now, we eat something with some dirt in it. It may not taste too good, but, you know, the Bible will cleanse it and get rid of it. But what the real problem is, is what is inside of our heart. If anyone has ears, let them hear. When he entered a house away from the crowd, maybe the crowd was getting hostile, I don't know, but he got away from the crowd, his disciples said, well, you know, what about this parallel?

What do you mean? And Jesus said, well, are you also without understanding? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot spiritually defile him? Obviously, if you drink poison, you're going to die physically, but it won't spiritually defile you. That's not what Christ is talking about. He talked about picking up, you know, some germs or something, you know, the five-second rule, or ten-second. What is it? What is it?

Drop something on the floor and five-second, pick it up. You don't get, you know, I don't know. You don't know if that's an urban legend, but I read articles about it, and the conclusion was, generally speaking, you'd be fine. I'm not telling you to pick up food off the floor, but it's kind of crazy, the five-second rule. But anyway, but that's not the issue. The issue is the heart. Verse 19, because it does not enter his heart, but his stomach, and it's eliminated, thus purifying all foods, stomach has acid, and so on, taking care of things.

He said, what comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, and Satan gets ahold of us at an early age, and he wants to start working on us. For from within, out of the heart of men, the heart of men precedes evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness. Now those are the ten commandments that we're talking about here. Wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, again, sexual issues, and evil eye. And evil eye means, apparently it means envy. Somebody's squinting at you because he's kind of envious of you, you know, you've got more than he has.

So he gives you the evil eye. Blasphemy, pride, foolishness. I think there's something like 15 here, that sins that Christ is mentioning. All these evil things come from within and defile a man. Okay, so that's what Christ says we have really got to watch out for. And let's go now to Ephesians chapter 2. Chapter 2 and verse 2. We'll go to verse 1. You, he made a lie who were dead in trespasses and sins. And that's what happens, that's what we are remembered of every time we take the Passover.

We were dead in our own sins, our own trespasses. But God made us a lie. It went you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the course of the prince of the power of the air, the spirit at Satan, who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But let's not forget verse 4. God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, goes on and talks about saving us through Jesus Christ.

But getting back to the course of the prince of the power of the air, he gets to work at us very early. He gets to work at our children, our babies. And he wants to implant into them such things as, it's my toy and I'm not going to share it with you. And you take my toy, I will get mad and throw a fit. And the devil can work on us again and again and again when we're very, very young and very, very little.

And then if we proceed along those lines, those things Mark brought out, actually Jesus brought out in Mark, those are things we're going to have to really battle with. He is, he does implant his nature within us. James chapter 1 talks about sin and temptation. And there's a difference between temptation and sin. The temptation is not the sin. You know, the sin is the sin, but the temptation is not the sin.

But watch out, watch out. Because in a split second, the temptation can go right into sin. Blessed is the man, James 1.12, who endures temptation, who fights it off and beats it back. For when he has been proved and was tried and tested and wins, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord promised. It's not a guess, it's a promise to those who love him. Do we love God? We obey him. We obey him and have faith in him. He will give to us the crown of life. Let no one say, when he is tempted, I am tempted by God.

It's easy for us to say, oh God, why is this happening to me? Why are you letting me suffer like this? What's happening? Why are you God? But don't say I am tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anybody. He doesn't tempt anybody. He does not entice anybody. He'll try us, he'll test us to see what's in our heart, but he will not tempt anybody. So each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires, or lusts again, and enticed.

So here comes the temptation. What do we do with it? Well, verse 15, when the desire has conceived, like I said earlier, watch out. It gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death. Unless you repent of that sin, unless we repent of that sin, we will die. So, we, you know, in quite a passage here, we've been proved, or we have to be proved in verse 12, and we prove to God that we don't want Satan.

We don't want Satan in our life. We don't want Satan in our heart. We've had enough of that, and we want the way of God. We want to be clean, pure, wholesome, and righteous. We don't want to be evil, like is described there in Mark, chapter 7. Okay, so we've covered that. So, again, when a temptation comes to our mind, that's not the sin yet, but watch out. Because in a split second, it could turn into sin. So, we better act very fast to get rid of that sin, I mean, get rid of that temptation, lest it become sin.

We must hate even the temptation. Now, Jude puts it very well, Jude, chapter 1, in verse 23. Jude, chapter 1, Jude puts it very well. So, he's talking about trying to save some, verse 22, with compassion, making a distinction. But others save with fear. Save with fear. Pulling them out of the fire. Pulling them out of the lake of fire, before they get there.

Maybe they're heading into the lake of fire, and you grab ahold of them and pull them out. And then it says, hating even the garment, defiled by the flesh. Well, this is actually a proverb. You hate the garment defiled by the flesh. So, the flesh, by allegory, means the sin. And the garment is the clothing that's being worn by the sinner. And not only must we hate the sin, but let's hate the clothing that, you know, that that sin is wrapped around. Now, let me read it from a couple of other translations, very similar to the New King James.

Save others by snatching them from the fire. Have mercy on others, but with fear, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh. Another translation. Save some by snatching them from the fire, fearing God. Have mercy on some, hating either the clothing contaminated by their sinful urges. And they're apparently, as the J. Vincent Fawcett Brown brings out commentary, it apparently goes back to the book of Leviticus. There's a physical lesson there that God is saying, apparently anyway, applies in this case. And it's in Leviticus, I think it's 17, I may have the wrong chapter. But when someone had leprosy, they had to go through a period of isolation, a period of being left out of the camp of Israel.

They had to go through just certain steps until hopefully the garment, I should say, hopefully the man was healed of his leprosy. But what did they do with this clothing? They took it off and burned it. Because maybe some leprosy, some virus or whatever, bacteria, whatever it is, got into that clothing.

So the clothing wasn't the sin, the clothing wasn't the leprosy, but it may have some germs, leprosy germs in it. Burn it. And I think that's such a lesson. Don't get close to sin. Don't get close to sin. If somebody's trying to quit smoking, don't leave packs of cigarettes in your house. Get rid of the cigarettes. If someone has a problem with alcohol, get rid of the alcohol. Hate the garment, defiled by the flesh. So the King James says, I should say, the JFB says, it's a proverbial phrase, avoiding the most remote contact with sin. The most contact with sin.

I had a little story. I always seem to bump into people. Carol said, why do you always bump into these people? I don't know. So I'm pouring gas, trying to pour gas in my car, and there's this guy over here. I try to avoid him.

I have this big gallon, a huge red can of gasoline. He said, would you fill up my tank of gasoline? My gasoline can. I said, I can't fill it up, but I can give you some. So I start doing that. He said, I've been on a hard time. What do you do for work? I don't have a job. I'm moving in my car, and I'm going to the VA for help. I said, well, go get food stamps. I can't. I'm a felon. Then he said, I lost my temper in a bar. I ended up in jail. Now he's a felon. When you're a felon, you can't even get food stamps. That was a conversation. By the way, it went on a little longer. I ended up filling the tank anyway, or the can. I told him. He said, thank you very much. I said, stay out of bars. That was my hating the garment defiled by the flesh. If you're going to go to a bar and hurt somebody and become a felon, just stay out of the bar. Hating the garment defiled by the flesh. So is there something out there that tempts us so strongly that we'd be better just to throw it in the garbage can? Just throw it in the garbage can and stay away from it and hate even the garment defiled by the flesh. In other words, don't just hate the sin, but stay away from getting close to the sin. Stay away from getting close to the sin. Revelation 2, verse 10. Let's go to Revelation 2 and verse 10.

Do not fear any of these things which you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison that you may be tested. And you will have tribulation, trials and tribulation, 10 days. That was actually 10 years under one of the Roman emperors who persecuted the church for 10 years. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.

God's people are being tested. We are being tested. And we were tested to keep a good attitude, to have a good attitude about Mr. Shabe only doing one term. But he'll be okay. We'll be okay. Because Christ is the head of the body, and we are the body of Christ. Okay. One more scripture we'll call it today, and that would be Proverbs 28, 13. This is something we do towards God.

28, 13. He that covers his sins shall not prosper. Remember when I talked about that, there's a certain block or something in our heart that we don't want to deal with. We don't want to go there. We must go to God about it. He that covers his sins shall not prosper. But he who confesses them to God and forsakes them shall have mercy.

So we will call that the last scripture of the day. And so let's be busy. Passover will be here faster than we can possibly imagine. And let's be busy getting ready for it right now.