Leaven Pictures Sin

Thank you, Mrs. McKinney and Mrs. Warren. Nice to have the beautiful music. And I'll thank you on behalf of Jesus Christ and the Father for that offering. I'm sure it was given from the heart and will be well used. Many years ago, I didn't count out the number of years, but I think I was like 19 years old at the time, I listened to a recorded seminar by some Protestant minister, not a part of our church, but it was someone had given me a set of cassette tapes that tells you a little bit of how old it was, because I don't know if an MP3 had been invented yet, but those were the set of cassettes on the evils of rock and roll music.

And he talked about which bands were into devil worship and played some of the back masking. I don't know if some of you younger folks might not know, if you have a vinyl record, if you disengage a clutch, you could turn it backwards and there are some songs where you'd hear certain words come out. I remember experimenting. And by the way, I'm not at all... my subject today has nothing to do with rock and roll music. This is just the introduction. Because at some point along the way, he had some occasion to mention some of the religious customs of the Jews.

And I remember him referencing, and I don't know how he got into it, but I still remember very clearly, he said, you know how the Jews, during the spring cleaning for their festival, they had to get feather dusters, and they had to clean every speck of dirt out of their home.

And I said, huh, even at 19 that caught my ear. What do you mean every speck of dirt? Either he hadn't read, or he just plain didn't understand the commandments on how to keep the days of unleavened bread. You know, this fellow who was a minister didn't know what this was about. Which is a shame, because that meant he totally missed the rich symbolism that God has built into these days. You know, these aren't the days of unleavened dirt. Now, I've said that as a joke many times, because we can focus so much on the cleaning.

And believe me, I focus on the cleaning. They could also be the days of unleavened dog hair, because it's amazing, especially if you've got a short-haired terrier, how those hairs get in and they stay. So along with cleaning crumbs, I've cleaned a lot of dirt and dog hairs these days.

But if you were to focus on just that, you know, just cleaning anything that's there, or if you just did the cleaning without putting your mind to it, you would maybe just do a spring cleaning. But that's not what we want to do. It's nice to get the spring cleaning done. There's no harm with combining tasks. But it's good for us to think about what we're doing. When we remove that leaven, when we throw out the loaves of bread, the yeast packets, when we go after those crumbs in our homes, cars, offices, and so on, it's good for us to think about what we're doing and why and what it represents.

God commanded his people to have no leaven in their places during a seven-day festival, because it's during that time leaven pictures sin. Now, I think we know that, but let's turn to 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 8. 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 8, let's see, the Apostle Paul references both the leaven and what it represents. And he goes, we're to do both. We're to get rid of the literal leaven and what it represents symbolically.

1 Corinthians 5, 8, Paul says, therefore, let us keep the feast. He could have been referencing the sermon that we just heard that, you know, these are commanded, let's keep the feast, as we're told, not with the old leaven. So we keep the feast without leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness. So there's that symbolic leaven, malice, wickedness, sin, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Now, my purpose won't be to examine every way that sin or that leaven can represent sin. I'm going to leave that for other messages that you might have heard before, and we will in the future.

Suffice now to say that leaven does represent sin, and for a week we go without leaven, with the idea being that for our whole lives we'll go without sin. So today I want to focus on the fact that, of course, for us to keep the seven days without leaven, we have to make the effort of getting the leaven out. Before the seven days started, in other words, before the sun went down last night, we had to make the effort to remove the leaven in the first place.

Now, I don't always stress that so much, but I think it does fit. Just think, you know, you have to repent before you're forgiven. So before the Passover, when Christ's blood covers our sins, we repent. And naturally, for most people, as I said, it was last night at sundown that we had to have the leaven out. But I'll bet if I did a survey how many people had it out by sundown the night before, it would probably be the large majority of us. You just want to have it done. Matter of fact, at one point, you know, Sue's back was hurting and I was getting tired.

She said, oh, we can just finish it tomorrow. I'm this close. I'm going to get it done. Just have it out of the house. So now, for these seven days of unleavened bread, we have to focus on keeping it out, making sure the leaven doesn't creep back in in some way. Now, of course, it can't creep back in on its own, but it's amazing the different ways that it can get into our homes. Just as in our lives, once we've repented, we've been baptized and devoted our lives, we have to work hard to keep sin out of our lives. So, as we've cleaned the leaven out, and hopefully we spent some time thinking about our progress in living a life without sin, I think it's good for us to focus on how that process of putting leaven out is a good symbol of repentance.

Repentance is a vital, important thing in a Christian's life. It's so fundamental, to be honest, I often don't take it for granted, but I usually mention it in passing on the way to something else. But it deserves attention and some explanation of its own. It's so important that if you turn to Hebrews 6, beginning in the first verse, we'll see that the Apostle Paul considered it to be one of the fundamental elementary principles of Christ, as he calls it. Hebrews 6, we'll read the first couple of verses. Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of the laying on of hands, of the resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.

So as we just read, repentance from dead works is a foundation. It goes along with faith, of eternal judgment, of baptism. Now, I thought I'd start off with some of the academics. This will be a review for most of us, but it's worth realizing the Greek word for repentance is metaneo.

Metaneo, if you want an English spelling, I've got it as M-E-T-A-N-O-E-O. O-E-O, isn't it? I know I've heard that. I think it's in the Wizard of Oz. But anyways, metaneo, it means literally to think differently. To think differently. It could be translated as reconsider. Some variations of the word mean to feel regret. Feel regret. So in a sense, that form of repentance does mean to feel sorry.

I'm sorry for that. But it's so much more. Real repentance also means change the way you think. And of course, if you change the way you think, you change what you do, and you change what you are. I'll just cite Proverbs 23.7 tells us, as a man thinks in his heart, so he is. Well, then if we change the way we think, we change the way we is, the way we are.

Let me discuss the Hebrew. I found something interesting. I wanted to see what Hebrew words are translated as repent. And there are two primary Hebrew words. One is nacham, n-a-c-h-a-m. Its primary meaning is to be sorry. It emphasizes the regret. Or, like my lexicon said, to be rueful. Rueful is easier to spell than it is to say.

We use the term, you'll rue the day. That sounds like something a villain would say. You'll rue the day when you cross me. I don't know anybody that uses rue as a verb these days. Although, I think in French, rue means road, doesn't it? French students, though? I'm getting sidetracked. Let's focus on this. The other Hebrew word, shub, s-h-u-w-b, does mean to turn. It means to withdraw or to turn back. Either of these, and both of them, are often translated in the Old Testament as repent. But what struck me as I looked to see what words were used in the Old Testament, more often the one that means to regret or to rue was used. That appeared much more often in the Old Testament than the changing, the shub. But then it made sense. I thought, well, we learned, reading in the New Testament, that the Holy Spirit was not widely available before Christ's sacrifice. Very few people had it. And without the Holy Spirit, that genuine real transformation just isn't possible. So real repentance comes with the Holy Spirit. And of course, I'm not telling you new information here. I realize this is a reminder for most of us. But it's good for us to remember repentance is regret and also changing. Making a change. Changing our thinking. Changing our actions.

And the Apostle Paul again put the two together very well in 2 Corinthians chapter 7. 2 Corinthians 7 verse 10. Of course, most of you are familiar with the fact that the first epistle to the Corinthians was very corrective. The Corinthian church was full of very dynamic people with a lot of spiritual gifts who did a lot of good, but also people who got their priorities out of whack and they had some problems.

So the Apostle Paul kind of came down on them pretty hard in his first letter. And then he was very pleased with how much they took that to heart and did change. And he mentions that here. 2 Corinthians 7 and verse 10. He says, Godly sorrow produces repentance, leading to salvation. So that regret leads to actual changing. And that's not to be regretted. But the sorrow of the world produces death. The sorrow of the world means you just feel bad, but you don't literally change.

And that's what leads you to death because you're still living a life of sin. He says, For observe this very thing, you sorrowed in a godly manner. What diligence it produced in you. What clearing of yourselves. The clearing of themselves means they made those changes. What indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication. I don't know if he put the exclamation marks in there when he wrote the original, but you can feel that they should be there. He was, Wow, that's impressive. You felt that sorrow, but then you got busy and you made those big changes.

Okay, let's add something else. Of course, it's important for us to make sure that we know what it is we repent of. It's, it's repent by itself just means to turn or to change. Well, you have to change from one thing to another. In Hebrews 6.1, Paul said, We repent from dead works. Now that's interesting, because you usually think of repenting from sin. Well, I just remember, of course, the wages of sin is death. So I think Paul was just using colorful language. You know, when you sin, you bring death. So any sin is a dead work. So you repent of the dead works.

You repent of your sins that are leading you to death. To make it more clear, Matthew 9, verse 13, look in the words of Jesus Christ Himself on who needs to repent and of what? Matthew 9 and verse 13. Of course, this is continuing. I'm breaking in mid thought. He says, Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. And then He says, I did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. Jesus Christ wants sinners to repent. This shows pretty clearly, sin is what we repent of. That's what we change from. And then I like, well, I found it interesting.

The words in both Greek and Hebrew that are translated as sin most often literally mean to miss. They mean to miss the mark or to fall short. This is worth noting because it means that a lot of times sinning might not be maliciously evil. And you always think of, you know, a person, a bad guy from a movie, he goes, Whoa! And he's just so evil. You know, everything he wants, he plans and thinks of is evil. But he's saying, no, just missing the mark is sin and you need to repent. So missing the mark, I've been thinking of archery lately.

Mr. Call has been helping me. I've been getting on a website and ordering some arrows and I ordered a small bow. I was thinking I'd be able to teach Connor archery. I was thinking, you know, when you're doing archery, you've got the target out there and you line up and sometimes you miss, especially if you haven't done it in a while. And then what do you do? Well, you might adjust your stance.

You might change your grip. Just aim. But what you're doing when you're making those changes is repenting. You missed the target. Now you repent or make a change to try to hit the target. Let's consider Ezekiel 18 verse 30. Ezekiel 18 verse 30. I was thinking, we often think of Psalm 51 as the repentance chapter or the repentance psalm.

But I think if we wanted to give a title of repentance chapter, we could call Ezekiel 18 that because it covers repentance quite a bit. Ezekiel 18 and verse 30. Therefore, I will judge you, O house of Israel. Everyone, according to his way, says the Lord God, repent! Turn from your transgressions! So that iniquity will not be your ruin. Now some people might say, he says, repent and turn. But I think what he was doing was emphasis by repetition. Repent! Turn! They mean the same thing. Repent! Turn! From all your transgressions! There he didn't use the word sin, but the Hebrew word for transgression, pasha, which the Greek is very equivalent, parabasis, means to go contrary, to break away, or to be in rebellion.

And that makes sense. Sin is rebelling or going contrary to God's law. Of course, we remember 1 John 3-4, sin is the transgression of God's law. So this is introducing anything new to the thought we had, but to repent of transgression is to stop going outside the law, stop being in rebellion against God. Here in this verse, it's tied to iniquity. Repent! Turn! From your transgressions so that iniquity will not be your ruin. The word there in Hebrew is avon, which means perverse, faulty, even depraved. If you're that, if you're perverse, faulty, or depraved, and you don't turn, it'll ruin you.

It'll be your ruin. It'll lead to the end of your life for eternity. But it doesn't just stop there, because you say, well, if I had to repent, how do I do it? Look in verse 31. Cast away from you all the transgressions which you've committed. Get them far away from you, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.

For why should you die, O house of Israel? There's a lot in that verse. Cast away from you all your transgressions which you've committed. Get yourself a new heart, a new spirit.

Don't see how close you can keep the iniquity to you, or how close you can get to it. I remember as a teenager, so many times hearing Bible studies and sermons about, don't see how close you can get to sin. You hear about that slippery slope. You get too close, pretty soon you're on a shoot down. Don't see how close you can get. Get it far away from you.

If you're repenting of a sin, don't see how little of a change you can make. Make as big a change as possible if it's getting you away from sin. I thought of that when it comes to getting leaven out of our houses, we don't just set it just outside the door. We get it all the way out. Usually we try to make sure it's off of our property.

I've had this discussion lately with people about, okay, when it says get it out of your quarters, does that mean totally off your property or just outside, out of doors of anything you own? And I've heard discussions both ways, and I'm not enough of a Hebrew scholar to know.

But, you know, I always figure better safe than sorry. It's funny, actually, our trash day is tomorrow morning, so I've got all of our stuff in a trash can that's literally sitting just across the property line on my neighbor's yard. Now, I don't know. I wouldn't say that's required. You know, if your trash can is sitting on your property, I don't think you're sinning, but I like, you know, keep it as far away as possible. I'm going to haul it down to the road sometime tonight, and trash can take it far away from me after that. But, you know, we don't set it outside where we can just pick it up again later.

You know, when you get rid of your love and you throw it out, you don't move it out to the garage and then bring it back in after seven days are over. And, of course, then there's the whole other issue or not a whole other issue, but the continuation of where it says, get yourselves a new heart. How do we get a new heart? I think we know that. It comes through God's Spirit. The other repentance chapter, Psalm 51, is where David said, create in me a clean heart.

Now, we could do entire sermons on that, and that's, as I said, the other half of the equation that I'm not planning to address so much today. I do want to look at a couple of other while we're in this chapter. Let's look at verse 21 to remind us again of what repentance really consists of. If a wicked man turns from his sins, which he's committed, and keeps my statutes, and does what is lawful and right, he'll surely live. He'll not die.

Now, this shows that repentance is turning. As a matter of fact, I wanted to make the point where it says that the wicked man turns. That Hebrew word is that shub I talked about, which could also be translated as repent. It could just as well say if a wicked man repents from his sins, turns, and stops doing them and does what is right. Now, I wanted to make the point there because the word repent literally means to turn, to change, to change your way of thinking.

I wanted to emphasize what you're changing from because you could repent from something good towards something bad. Look down to verse 24. But when a righteous man turns or repents from his righteousness and commits iniquity and does according to all the abomination that the wicked man does, shall he live? The answer to that is no. I mean, it's a rhetorical question, but it says all the righteousness which he's done shall not be remembered because of the unfaithfulness of which he's guilty and the sin which he's committed of them because of them he'll die. So there I wanted to make the point.

We repent. Repenting, it's not just turning for the sake of turning. When you're young, I just had an analogy pop into my head. I don't know if it makes good sense now because when I first learned to drive, I got a car where the engine was in the front and the pack drivetrain went to the back and the rear wheels spun around and sometimes we'd go out either on mud or an icy road and do what we called making donuts.

You know, you put your foot down, the wheels are spinning, the car is turning and it's turning just for the sake of turning. That's not what repentance is. We want to turn away from something bad and towards something good, but not turn away from the good towards the bad. This is not an aside, but I don't want to get into any too much deeper of a discussion, but it's worth noting some other things we want to keep in mind as far as what is sin. James 4, 17 reminds us that to him that knows to do good and does not do it, to him it's a sin. So there's the sin of committing a sin, but there's also the sins of omission.

Once you know what's good and right, if you're not doing it, that's sinning. In the book of Samuel, I think, as a matter of fact, I noted, 1 Samuel 12, Samuel's having a discussion with the leaders of Israel and he points out, he says, "...far be it from me that I would sin in ceasing to pray for you." He knew it was his duty to pray for the people of Israel and that it would be sinning for him to stop praying for them. So, as I said, sometimes a sin is not doing what you know you should.

Romans 14, 23 tells us that whatever is not a faith is sin. Violating your conscious could be sinning. I shouldn't say, well, I should say, I was going to say, I shouldn't say could be. Now, if the Bible specifically tells you to do something and you've got qualms about it, you obey the Bible. Here's what I'm going to say. Our conscious needs to be educated by God's Word. It's not a conscious that just comes up with its own standards. But when our conscious, educated by God's Word, tells us we'd better not do something, but if we do it anyways, we're sinning in our hearts.

Or vice versa, if we're not doing something we should. So, in some cases we need to repent for a lack of action. Other cases we repent because we are doing something we shouldn't have. In either case, repentance for sin is what we need to do. Sin is dead works. Sin are dead works. Yeah, sins would be... I'm getting caught up in grammar up here. That's why you write the notes ahead of time. Before we leave that off, though, I want to point out one more thing.

If you'll turn with me to Job 42. This is another classic scripture on repentance, Job 42 and verse 5. Because Job, I think, raises the idea of repentance to a whole new level, and one that we want to attain to, I think, eventually if we're not already there. Of course, you know the book of Job describes the fact that Job was a good and a righteous man.

So good that God himself pointed out to the angels, hey, look what a good guy this is. But of course, Satan was there. He said, he's only good because you're protecting him and giving him all these blessings. If you take him away and strike him, he'll curse you to your face.

And then God gave Satan free reign, and he did take away all that he had. He put boils all over his body. And then Job's closest friend supposedly came to comfort him, and instead of comforting, they said, you must have done some awful sin to have all this bad stuff. Job said, I didn't sin. And his problem was, as he started explaining that he didn't sin, he started thinking, God's not treating me right. I'm being treated unjustly. He didn't see himself in a proper relationship to God.

And after a while, he started accusing God of doing wrong because of his suffering. And I don't want to give the whole story, but I wanted to lead up to the fact that eventually, after Job had come out with this thought, God arrived on the scene and corrected him. God came and said, who do you think you are, accusing me, basically explained that he didn't deserve anything. None of us deserve anything but what God gives us.

And in Job 42, verse 5, Job comes to a level of repentance. He says, I've heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. So, Job's talking to God, says, I've heard of you, but now I see, now I've got it in my head. Therefore, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. Job said, I repent in dust and ashes.

Now, he just made a good explanation that he hadn't been sinning, he hadn't been doing wrong, so what was he repenting of? I would say he was repenting of not being God.

He realized, this is God, and I'm just me, this blob of dust and ashes, and I'm sorry I fall short. He fell far short of being what God is. The standard we want to reach to is what Jesus said in Matthew 5, 48, Be you perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.

That was a command to all of us, an admonition. And until we are perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, then we need to be repenting, meaning changing so that we get to be more like Him. It's an ongoing process. Change from what you are, which is not God, until you are God. And of course, we can't possibly do that without God's Spirit. God will change us and work in us, and we need to submit to that and allow Him to work in us. But Job saw that. He realized that I need to repent because I'm not God and I want to be.

So I hope I've been spending some time dwelling on what repentance is, and what we repent from, and what we're trying to accomplish. Now we're at the days of Unleavened Bread.

Leavening pictures sin. So the process of putting the leaven out hopefully will give us some insight into that process of repentance, which of course, as I said, to some degree at least symbolizes repentance, putting sin out of our lives. Now, of course, we came together on Passover and we partook of the symbols of Christ's sacrifice, and we know we can't pay for our own sins and live. So if Christ did that for us, what's left for us to do?

Well, plenty, as it turns out. God introduced the days of Unleavened Bread to Moses and the children of Israel at pretty much the same time as the days of Unleavened Bread. And they do go together. Obviously they go together. But some people in the world tend to get them confused. And the language that's in the Old Testament can help some of that or can bring on some of that confusion. Let's go back to Leviticus 23. I'm going to repeat a couple of the scriptures that Mr. Call read. But if you can't repeat scriptures that are about the Holy Days on the Holy Days, then when can you?

We'll start in Leviticus 23, verse 5. As I said, I want to make it clear and distinct that Passover and the days of Unleavened Bread are closely related. Boy, words aren't coming out. Closely related, but not the same thing. Leviticus 23.5, on the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the Lord's Passover.

And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Eternal. Seven days you must eat Unleavened Bread. So we see them here presented as two separate things. And I find it interesting, you know how we've cited the scripture in Isaiah that says, here a little, there a little, line upon line, precept upon precept, you have to put different things together. If we read only this, we'd say, okay, seven days you have to eat Unleavened Bread.

Well, I'll get me some matzos, I'll eat some of those for seven days, and I'm good. Well, no, there's a little more to it. Here's where we'll go to Exodus 12. It's not just eating Unleavened Bread. We see this, we'll notice that you're eating Unleavened Bread because that's the only bread you have available.

All the Unleavened Bread has already been removed. Exodus 12 and verse 18, in the first day, on the fourteenth day, or I said that this morning, in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat Unleavened Bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, since whoever eats what's leavened, that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether a stranger or native of the land.

You shall eat nothing leaven in all your dwellings. You shall eat Unleavened Bread. Now, this is one of the places where some people get confused because it says, start eating Unleavened Bread on the fourteenth day at evening. Well, we just read in Leviticus that the fifteenth day was the first day of Unleavened Bread. Well, the easy explanation for this, of course, is the day starts at sundown.

Now, the fourteenth day at evening could refer to one of two sundowns. It could be the sundown that started the fourteenth day or the sundown that ended the fourteenth day and started the fifteenth. We believe that this scripture is referring to the sundown that ended the fourteenth day and started the fifteenth, partly because we know the days of Unleavened Bread are seven days long. If the first day of Unleavened Bread were the fourteenth day, the last one would be the twentieth.

But this says the twenty-first day is the seventh. So, and I think I did this this morning. Everybody started looking at me like, you're making this more confusing. I thought it was clear beforehand. But I want to show you, you can see in scriptures that they definitely are two separate things, though closely related. And of course, another source of the confusion comes with some people because of the command that God gave for Passover to be eaten with Unleavened Bread.

Even when they were slaughtering the land, they would have it with Unleavened Bread and bitter herbs. Today we take Unleavened Bread broken to represent Christ's body, and we take the wine to represent his blood. Okay, the Unleavened Bread on the Passover represents Christ's body. Today, it represents a life without sin. Now, Christ did live a life without sin, and He took on our sins, and that's why He died.

But it's worth us noting that that's the reason, yesterday morning, you could have had a donut and not been sinning. You took Unleavened Bread with the Passover, but Unleavened Bread or Leavened Bread did not yet represent sin. It started representing sin as sundown last night. Okay, I'm going to stop talking about that. As I said, I wanted to address that, and of course we look at the command to not only eat Unleavened Bread, but to not eat anything with leaven in it.

And don't even have it in your house or quarters or anywhere. Let's go to the next chapter, 13, Exodus 13, verse 6. 7 days you shall eat Unleavened Bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a feast to the eternal. Unleavened Bread shall be eaten 7 days. No Unleavened Bread shall be seen among you, nor shall leaven be seen among you in all your quarters.

So, however you define your quarters, I say at any place you control. So, it's your house. If you work in an office, you've got to clean the office. You drive a car, clean the car. All of those places. As we as Christians obey God's law, we do this on the appointed time of year, and we can find several commands in Scripture to do this. The Feast of Unleavened Bread is associated with God bringing Israel out of slavery in Egypt. Of course He did.

They left at the beginning of the days of Unleavened Bread at sundown. That's why it was a night to be much observed and much celebrated. Now, yesterday evening, we gathered and celebrated, but our celebration was touching on something even more important than some people leaving Egypt and leaving slavery. It celebrates us leaving the slavery of sin. If you'll turn to John 8, 34, we'll be reminded of this. We needed to be freed.

And, of course, our liberation is an ongoing thing. John 8, 34, Jesus answered them, Most assuredly I say to you, Whoever commits sin is a slave to sin. That's very succinct. You commit sin, you're a slave to sin. It's controlling your life. It's controlling your destiny because sin leads to death. The Apostle Paul elaborated on it a bit more if you'll turn to Romans 6 and verse 16.

Romans 6, 16. Of course, we're not beating ourselves up because we've sinned. We're celebrating the fact that Christ's sacrifice pays for our sins and we're liberated. Of course, we're reconciled by His death. We're saved by His life. When He comes into us and dwells in us, then we can overcome sin by the power of God in us.

Romans 6, 16. Do you not know that to whom you present yourself slaves to obey? You are that one's slaves whom you obey? Whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness? God, be thanked. Though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. Now, in our culture, we tend to think being a slave to anything is terrible and evil, but Paul is looking at you're a slave to righteousness.

That means you're being given life. Following God's law is true freedom. I'm going to come back to that again in another sermon. He says, I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented yourself members, presented your members as slaves of uncleanness and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for holiness.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Hey, you were totally apart from righteousness. What fruit did you have in those things of which you are now ashamed? In other words, when you were living in sin and didn't have anything to do with righteousness, what was the result? The end of those things is death.

But now, having been set free from sin, the children of Israel were set free from working the, you know, the, I didn't say brick factories. I don't know if they had factories, but they were making brick and building things. They were freed from that and they rejoiced. But we're set free from sin and become slaves of God, having your fruit to holiness and the end everlasting life.

Sometimes I got to slow down to make sure I don't overrun something. We're free from sin. We're living in God's way of life and it brings everlasting life. Because of the one Scripture in this, we usually have memorized. The wages of sin, death, gift of God, eternal life in Christ Jesus.

That's something to think about while we're doing that work of cleaning the leaven out of our houses.

And hopefully most of us do. You know, the process of cleaning the leaven out is symbolic of us leaving sin, leaving a life of sin, or removing sin from our lives. And that's how God brings us to eternal life. Of course, He gives it to us. We can't do that on our own. Now, I say the process of putting leaven out... How many of you use the term de-leavening? I use it all the time. I don't know if it's in the dictionary. Not as many of you as I thought. But we say de-leavening. We could say that symbolizes repentance. De-leavening symbolizes repenting. Now, eating the unleavened bread also has very important symbolism. I'm going to leave that discussion for another time. For right now, I want to think about that process of de-leavening. Some of the things that can teach us about repentance.

Now, before I go on, I want to draw some of the analogies or draw some lessons out. But there's one point I want to make sure that I point out there's a practice many of us have developed as far as getting leaven out. That's not a good symbol for repentance. That's because leaven starts representing sin at a very specific time. As I said, when the sun set last night, leaven equals sin.

24 hours ago, leaven didn't represent sin. So what we tend to do is, knowing that the days are coming and being well practiced, don't just start looking at your cupboard and say, how much of this stuff do I have? Do I need another loaf of bread? Two loaves? You know, Sue and I, about a week and a half ago, were debating, should we buy one more loaf? And how much of it will we have to throw away? So, you know, what we do is we gradually wear the stuff down and try to run out of leaven just before it becomes sin. You know, because we don't want to buy food and then throw it all away. And we gradually use it up. But we should not repent gradually a little at a time. That's the point I want to make.

Repentance isn't, well, I'll wean myself off. I'll gradually stop sinning. As soon as you know something's a sin, you need to stop it. So, as I said, our practice of gradually getting rid of the leaven in our house is in advance. It doesn't fit so much this analogy. The only way I would say that it would is for a person who God is just beginning to call and open their mind.

They're... I hate it when we use plural, when it should be his or her. But when God begins to call someone and they start understanding what sin is, that person will tend to change as they understand things. And it might be a gradual learning process. In that case, a person can repent a little at a time and gain understanding until his or her whole life is changed, you know, usually culminating at baptism. But for generally all of us, repentance involves a more sudden realization of sin.

I'm doing something wrong. I need to change right now. And so we make that change.

And we should never plan, oh, I'm doing something that's sinful. I'll start gradually changing that.

Now, so let's think of delavening our houses as though, like the ancient Israelites, we suddenly learned of it all at once, that this was going to happen. If we didn't never heard of the days of unleavened bread and Moses showed up and said, hey, starting on, you know, the 15th day of the first month, leaven equals sin, so you got to get it out, we would run in and start, you know, we'd get, look for the yeast packets, the baking soda, throw it in the trash, grab the loaves of bread, the hostess twinkies, any cookies. It's funny, when I said twinkies this morning, I got a lot of chuckles. I don't know, maybe in Eastern Kentucky they eat a lot of twinkies. But, you know, prior to the festival, we do those big obvious things first. That's what repentance is like. Generally, someone comes to an understanding of God's way of life, he makes the big changes immediately. Oh, I can't go to work on the Sabbath anymore. I better tell my boss I'm not going to be there next Saturday. Oh, or my buddies, I can't go to the football game with them. You know, I'm not going to go hunting on Saturday. Time to start being honest on my tax returns. You know, I've been fudging the numbers because I knew I could get away with it. Oh, I'm supposed to honor my father and my mother? Maybe I need to make a phone call, start mending some fences, you know, treating someone right. Now, for some people, the initial big repentance could be ending a harmful drug use, stopping a sinful sexual practice. And it'll be different things for different people, but you make those big changes right away and they can be noticeable. Your whole lifestyle seems to change.

As I said, when you're getting all the leaven out of your house at once, you've got a trash can full of stuff. But then there's more to do. You look around, if you're like me and you like to snack while you're watching TV, then you realize you look down at the couch and go, oh, this needed cleaned anyways, but now it'll be a sin if I don't. So I've got to clean that. And then you realize, oh, I probably walked back and forth eating cookies while I was going from different parts of the house. I've got to clean all the floors. And then I think of the car. Boy, I'm saying that you guys didn't see my car, or you didn't see the inside of it. You thought the outside was dirty. It's funny, actually, I think I spent about two, two and a half hours on my car and about 40 minutes on Sue's car. What's interesting is the things you find. For one, I found this comb that I'd been missing for two or three months. It was in her car. I'm not sure how it got there. I'm pretty sure it wasn't her fault. It was my fault. But I'm saying you go, you start digging into things to get that sin out. Repentance is like this, too. After you end the big, easy to recognize sin, you start going to look more closely in your life for, you know, smaller, more subtle sin and the effects of them that aren't noticeable so much at first. You think about the Ten Commandments. Some of those are big, noticeable changes. The Seventh-day Sabbath. Don't worship foreign gods. Don't have any idols. I thought, well, there's that one and not taking God's name in vain. That can be a little more subtle, maybe more for some people than others. If I've been walking around using that OMG phrase all the time, oh, I'm going to have to catch myself and change that.

Then I learn about euphemisms. I'm not supposed to say, Gauche Durn, you know, Jiminy Cricket. Those things are actually euphemisms for God's name, and he doesn't appreciate me doing that. Well, then I'm going to make those changes.

You know, doing that might be kind of like, as I said, putting attachment on the vacuum cleaner and getting down in between the cushions. And I go on from there to, I've got to change some of the impure, profane language I've been using. It's not honoring God or my fellow man.

That's one example. Another one of the Ten Commandments that's a little harder to spot might be, Thou shalt not covet. It's not as easy to recognize as stealing and murdering.

You know, if I steal from somebody, I pretty much know I'm doing it. And he might know it eventually. The same goes for murdering. That's even more apparent. Coveting might not be anybody notice it but me. That wasn't good grammar.

Could be that nobody would notice it but me. And God. And he might notice it long before I do.

So, as I've got to go looking for hidden leavening, I might have to go looking for those hidden thoughts and sins of my mind. And as I said, that's sort of like getting the different nifty gadgets on the vacuum cleaner. I guess I'm focusing on that because I've been using them. We've got one that attaches and it's got a beater bar that spins around. It's good, better for getting dog hair up than any of the others.

Now, how many of you have thought I did it? I've got all that leaven out. And then someone comes up and says, oh, you've been eating wheat bins? Don't you know those have leaven in them? And you go, what? They're flat! Now, I'm not... I know a few years ago that happened. I think Nabisco changed their recipe. Somebody can correct me. I don't know if they've changed it back, but I remember being at services wanting people to say, oh yeah, wheat bins have baking soda or whatever it was. And we're like, no. We're going home and looked at the ingredients. Oh, yes it does! Out in the trash with these. And of course, that you start reading ingredients. And at some point, you start realizing that there are some things that are leavening that you wouldn't have known. I remember...

well, I don't remember, but at some point I remember knowing that... or learning that bicarbonate of soda is another way of saying baking soda. Oh, because there are a lot of those polysyllabic words that who knows what they mean. And then you throw some things out because they look like they might be and they're not. Like, um, brewer's yeast extract isn't leaven. It's a flavoring agent. But I've thrown a lot of stuff away that had that in it. And we've made the point... I think in many years ago in the church, all the men... well, I shouldn't say all the men. Men and women had... they dumped out their beer because they said, well, there's yeast to make it. And then at one point somebody said, no, it's the feast of unleavened bread. Not the feast of unleavened beer.

You know, we're supposed to get rid of that which puffs up. So, you know, we learn and we grow as time goes by. So, of course, early on you spend a lot of time reading ingredients.

And that's a pretty good level to get to when it comes to repentance. You want to get in depth. You want to start examining your life and looking... once you've got the big things, start looking for the little things. Start examining God's law to make sure you're living with it. Here's where I wanted to turn to Psalm 119. I'm going to read a section of Scripture so well known. If you want to follow along with me, it's okay. Psalm 119 verse 97. I thought about just singing it, but that's better done with a crowd. Psalm 119.97 says, Oh, how I love your law! It's my meditation all the day. That's like reading all those ingredients, eliminating the sin and getting good ingredients.

For you through your commandments make me wiser than my enemies. They're ever with me, not the enemies, the commandments. I have more understanding than all my teachers for your testimonies or my meditation. Take that meditation and think, add the other spiritual tools. Prayer, fasting, Bible study. That reflects an attitude of not just doing what you have to do because God will punish you if you don't, but an attitude of wanting to be as much like God as possible. And as I said, that's getting back to the way Job was thinking. He wanted to repent of not being God and change to being as much like God as he could. And that's doing it because you want to be that way.

So when we do that type of thing, looking in all of our lives, looking for every detail to try to make ourselves as much like God as possible, that's when we start getting more proactive. You tend to start thinking less of what not to do and more of what you should do. James 1, 27 talks about pure and undefiled religion, being to visit the widows and orphans in their affliction and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. We tend to think of keeping unspotted first. You know, don't break the Sabbath, don't eat pork, things like that. But then the proactive part is to go serve our fellow Christians, reach out and do things for people, showing love. And as we do that, you know, that parallels that. Getting leaven out of our lives goes along with putting sin, or I said that backwards, getting leaven out of our homes, parallels getting leaven, I did it again.

Leaven out of our homes pictures sin out of our lives. It's these late nights, I'll tell you.

I was sort of getting down about that, oh, you got to stay up late for Passover, then you stay up late for the night to be. And I thought, you know, on the first Passover, they stayed up all night. And then they had to pack up all they owned and march out of the country. I said, Frank, what are you complaining about? You get to drive in a nice car.

I still felt a little fuzzy-headed this morning, but that's nobody's fault but mine.

But we go through all that, and what a great feeling it is to come to services on the first day of Unleavened Bread. We rejoice with our brethren. I think it's often one of the happiest days of the year, or one of the happiest feast days, partly because we had a big job to do.

You know, as I said, I looked at my car, I looked at my office, and I said, ugh! But now it's done. And we've been to the Passover. We've acknowledged Christ's sacrifice. We've examined ourselves. We are new creations in Christ. And besides, that spring is finally here.

I couldn't help laughing this morning. I had that written in my notes, and I looked out as the snow falling. But normally, on the first day of Unleavened Bread, the sun is shining. And as I said, we're new creations. We've accomplished this big task. And boy, it feels great.

I'm not going to feel this relieved again until after summer camp's over.

But how many of us have had that experience? We go from this, and at some point during the week, you're looking for something in the freezer, and you push a box aside, and there is a box of ice cream sandwiches. Now, ice cream is okay to have, but those cookie part that makes it a sandwich. And I say that because we actually had that happen, I think, early on in Su and I's marriage, ice cream sandwiches became a joke in our family.

Others might have, well, that's funny, Mr. Call mentioned a similar analogy. Going through a file drawer, hanging files, and you look, and there's half of a sandwich. What's half a sandwich doing in my file drawers? And it's not like you pick it up and bite. I mean, it's fossilized. It's been there a long time. It's hard. I didn't come looking in there when I was cleaning the 11 out.

As a matter of fact, I'm trying to remember. I've got this vivid image of this happening. It might have been in my office of the Humanities Council because things got put away in funny places. I used to work really hard of getting all the 11. I told people I had to take all the buttons off of my computer keyboard because they didn't go all the way down, and I would eat lunch while I was there typing on the computer. So I'd take them off and line them up on my desk, you know, and then sweep out. And my co-workers would come by and go, like, what in the world is that guy doing? He's taking his computer apart.

I'm glad my computer at home has a different style of keyboard that doesn't happen to.

But, you know, think of this finding that stale, you know, fossilized sandwich in a drawer, like the ice cream sandwiches in the freezer. That's relating to a sin that you had no idea was there. Maybe you've been sinning and you didn't know it was a sin. And you might think, well, if I didn't know it was a sin, I wasn't violating my conscience. Is it really a sin?

There's an answer to that in Leviticus chapter 5. Leviticus 5 and verse 17.

And I'm not saying this because when we do discover a sin, we take care of it. We don't have to always beat ourselves up and make yourself feel so terrible, but you repent, which means change. And I find it interesting that God included this in the sacrificial law. Leviticus 5 and verse 17.

Now, it's funny, I thought of this. I had the good scripture. I thought, boy, it's hard to think of or was hard for me to find a good example, but I thought of one that I could see easily happening. A person could come into the church in this modern society and learn all kinds of things, be baptized, and happily go along living a good Christian life, and every summer plant a garden. You know, when you plant and you raise some tomatoes and cucumbers, and you know, I've done that for many years, and maybe you've been doing that a dozen years or so, and then at some point read the Leviticus 25. And you say, hmm, land Sabbath. I'm supposed to give my land a year off every seventh year? I had no idea. Well, you can do something that's, you know, a sin without realizing it. When you do, don't get emotionally worked up and flagellate yourself. Just make the change. That's what repentance is. Make a change.

Just like, you know, when you find the old stale sandwich, get rid of it.

There's another way that we sometimes mess up during Unleavened Bread that might... Why shouldn't they might? I think it is more serious. And the parallel to sin and repentance is especially so for us. Now, many of us have kept the days of Unleavened Bread for many years. We've gotten used to it, and hopefully we're pretty good at it. You know, we plan, we gradually...

What's the word I'm looking for? Reduce how much leaven we're buying. We use it up. You know, we get it out of the house. You know, we clean all the cracks and crevices, and even the hanging file drawers. And we get used to making our lunch using matzos or something like that. You know, we don't even have a second thought. But then sometimes you get caught off guard. And most of us have stories like that. Say you work in an office, and one day you come in, and somebody brought in donuts. Oh, wow! Must be a special occasion. Oh, great! My favorite! You're going down the hall, munching away, and about halfway down you think, something's not right about this. Yeah, oh, it's the days of my loving bread. You know, you've committed sin, in a sense, before you even realized it. I've known of families who something comes up with the kids. You've got to take them somewhere right after school. You didn't have time to make dinner. And you think, well, we've been pretty good, so, you know, as far as our eating habits, so we can go through the drive-through at McDonald's. And you say, well, I don't want to be too bad, so I won't order water instead of a coke. You know, so you think about how good you're being as you're eating that hamburger bun. And I've done stuff like that. You know, as I said, I focus on trying to do what's good. I don't get the milkshake, but I'm eating that soft, fluffy bun.

It can be easy to do this with subtle sins. You might have a good routine, living God's way of life, but then a temptation might pop up in a time or a place that you didn't expect it, and you just go along and maybe not even thinking you're doing anything wrong.

I thought of it once again. I wanted to come up with real world examples, and a lot of my real real world examples are kind of out of date. I was thinking of back when I was single, and the guys would get together to watch football sometimes. And going even further back, I can imagine your buddy comes over, you watch the game. Later the game's ending, he says, oh, let me show you this neat trick I learned. Look here. If you turn your cable box, you open the back here, you do a couple flips, switch, hey, we can watch your pay-per-view for free. I said, wow, that's great. Raiders of the Lost Ark is on. You know, and I said it had to be a long time ago. Or did I say that? Anyways, you go on, you watch the movie, the next day, oh, another thing is on, and you go several days, you're watching pirated cable, and it takes a while before you realize, oh, that's kind of against the law. Technically, that's stealing. I think there is a command about that. And, you know, as I said, you slipped right into it without even realizing it because you were caught off guard. In the same way you were eating that donut walking down the hall. I shouldn't be saying you, I should say me. That's the kind of thing I end up doing. Or it happens sometimes most easily with the sins of our thoughts. Someone at work or one of your neighbors does something wrong. They slight you, or they mess up your property. They do something that's just plain wrong, and you start thinking of ways to get him back. I'm going to teach that guy, and you might even start carrying it out.

And usually at some point, God's Spirit will prick your conscience, and you'll say, wait a minute, what are you thinking? You're supposed to be the Christian, even if he's not.

And that's a lot like when we somehow inadvertently eat something with leaven in it during the days of unleavened bread. It can happen. It can happen pretty easily. And as I said, I think it's more serious when we let our guard down, because we weren't proactively trying to think and act like God. But it happens to all of us at some point. And hopefully the eating the donut happens more easily than stealing or plotting revenge on your neighbor. But when we discover that we've fallen into something, or we're sliding towards something, what do we do? Metineo. We change our way of thinking. We repent. Now, I'm presenting an incomplete picture here. I'm only really addressing one side of the issue. I've often said, well, I haven't often said, I've often heard and sometimes said, you know, how do you get the water or the air out of a glass? You know, you can work on an elaborate vacuum pump, or you can just pour in some water and push the air right out. If we want to get sin out of our lives, put righteous living in. Get close to God. Live this way of life. Be proactive. Whole sermons could be written on that. And I'm not going to start at this point addressing that whole new subject. That'll be for another time. And my point today is, God gave us the command to remove leaven from our homes and our lives during the days of unleavened bread, providing a very good symbol for repentance. We're to put sin out of our lives, not for a week, but forever. We're to change. And looking back to where I started, if someone thinks that what we do after Passover, actually leading up to Passover and continuing afterwards, is just a really good spring cleaning. You know, they're thinking of the days of unleavened dirt. They're missing that great symbolism that God built into these days. The most fundamental symbolism, of course, is the broken bread and wine that pictures Christ's sacrifice. That's where it all starts. But these days of unleavened bread picture us putting out sin, malice, and wickedness, and putting in sincerity and truth, God's way of life. Getting rid of one and switching to the other is repenting. Very simply, repentance is straightforward. Stop sinning. Start doing what's right. We've seen, as we've gone through the work of getting all the leaven out of our houses, though, that it can be more complex. It can, you know, it can take a little more effort than at first it seems. And so, likewise, the same as getting all the leaven out is tough. Repending from all of our sin might be tougher than we thought at first. And, of course, we realize it's not a one-time thing. Just like we can get all the leaven out and then realize that we brought some in or we picked some up, we can get all of our sin out and then accidentally fall into another sin. But whenever that happens, you know what we can do?

We can repent. We can repent because Christ's sacrifice makes it possible for our sins to be covered. You know, He paid that price one time, one sacrifice for all time, making it possible for us to be forgiven and for us to take His life into our lives. So we can repent and, brethren, let's do it as often... well, not as often as possible, as often as necessary, we'll repent and live God's way.