In the Likeness of His Resurrection

In Exodus 12, there was a statement made about this time of year as the Israelites went out of Egypt that has always struck me as an important one to note. As I raised my sons and as I've taught the church through the years, as Israel went out, they were instructed to keep the days of unleavened bread, to keep the Passover service.

In chapter 12 of Exodus, beginning in verse 39, it says that they baked unleavened bread cakes of the dough which they had brought out of Egypt, for it was not leavened because they were driven out and could not wait, nor had they prepared provisions for themselves. The reason they had unleavened bread was because they were in a rush to get out of Egypt.

That's how the unleavened phase and element came into the time. It was a 430-year sojourn for the children of Israel in Egypt, and they came out on the very same day. And as we read last night, it was a night of solemn observance, in verse 42, to the Lord for bringing them out of the land of Egypt. This is that night of the Lord, a solemn observance for the children of Israel throughout their generations.

Chapter 13, verse 3, Moses said to the people, Remember this day in which you went out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, for by strength of hand the Lord brought you out of this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten. It shall be when the Lord brings you to the land that he swore to his fathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, that you will keep this service in this month.

Seven days you will eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there will be a feast to the Lord. You will tell your son, or 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 of your quarters. Verse 7 is the basic command for this time, that unleavened bread will be eaten for seven days. No leavened bread should be found in our midst during that time.

But then in verse 8 Moses is instructed here, he said, You shall tell your son in that day, saying, This is done because of what the Lord did for me when I came up from Egypt. It's almost as if the question would come from a child.

Why do we do this? Dad? Mom? Why do we put out unleavened bread? Why do we put out the leavened bread? And why do we eat this flat stuff called unleavened bread? Why? What's the purpose in a modern world and in our time? It's a question that kind of echoes down through the ages, and I think we should always strive to understand even deeper. And that children will need to be told, others will need to be told, or even ourselves will need to be reminded as to why this is done.

And it was done because of what God did when they came up out of Egypt. He went on to say that it was assigned to you in your hand as a memorial between your eyes, that the Lord's law may be in your mouth, for with a strong hand the Lord has brought you out of Egypt. You shall therefore keep this ordinance in a season from year to year. Tell your son. Now, we don't keep the Passover in the way that they kept the Passover. We don't kill a lamb.

We don't smear blood on our doorposts. We're not today. We haven't come out of Egypt. We live in a modern culture, modern world. We are to come out of that culture, come out of that world, spiritually, culturally, in many ways, as we seek the new land, seek a new city whose foundations are made by God. The only thing that we do, similar to what they did, deals with this flat stuff called unleavened bread that we eat during this time, and putting the leaven out of our homes.

We even have, as we keep a Passover service, we do it with New Covenant symbols. But here we are now, after the Passover and after the night to be much observed, we're on this Holy Day. For seven days, we're going to keep the days of unleavened bread. We look at these scriptures from Exodus, and in one sense, that was then. This is now.

That was then. They were coming out of Egypt. We haven't been enslaved. We're free people. What's the meaning for us now? What is it that we should understand? Why do we do this? Why are we gathered on this day, this first day of unleavened bread, and it is the first day of unleavened bread? Don't worry that you're not here on the wrong day, because you aren't.

You're on the right day. Don't worry about that. We're not going there. But why do we do this? That was then. This is now. What do we learn from this today? The answer again is in the Bible. If we turn over to 1 Corinthians 5, we learn very basic truth that what we are doing is not an Old Testament experience. It is not an Old Covenant experience. What we're doing is very modern. It is a New Testament experience.

In 1 Corinthians 5, we see that the Apostle Paul gave instructions to a Gentile church, not a church whose roots were primarily although I'm sure there were Jews in the church there, but it was not a primarily Jewish church. It was composed of a multicultural, multilingual, multiethnic church that he was dealing with in Corinth at this time, in a very large Gentile, non-Israelite metropolis. In 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 7, he gives them instruction about the days of unleavened bread. This letter was even written during that time.

He said, therefore purge out the old leaven, just as Moses had written to put out the leaven. Paul says that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed, Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. The Passover service we had two nights ago was to commemorate the death of Christ, who is the Lamb of God. His death fulfilled all of that Old Testament type in every way, shape, and form. Which is why we don't kill a lamb to put the blood on our doorpost, or a lamb or any other animal for any other type of sacrifice.

Christ is our Passover. He was sacrificed for us. Paul said then in verse 8, therefore let us keep the feast. He was speaking about the feast of unleavened bread. Not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Here Paul gets to the spiritual heart and core of the meaning of the days of unleavened bread, as well as all of the festivals of God. That they are kept with a newness of spirit, a spiritual understanding and a spiritual intent, that it is completely transcends what the Israelites did and had and understood in their day, as they in their form kept it.

It was new for these Gentiles, and it was a new experience for the church to keep Pentecost, an unleavened bread, with different symbols and the Passover service, and to focus upon the spiritual. This is what we see Paul in his writings, taking off from even the teachings of Jesus himself about the elements of the days of unleavened bread, to show that the observance of this is something that deals with the heart and core of the very Gospel, and the message that Paul and the other apostles were taking to their world at that day, which was the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God.

From the very first day of Pentecost, in Acts 2, and the sermon that Peter gave there, Peter talked about the risen Christ, the fact that he had been resurrected, that his body was not left to decay in the ground, but God had raised him up, and that they, the church, were witnesses of that.

You read that in Acts 2. You read that throughout the book of Acts. In the sermons and in the messages that Peter and John and Paul gave as they preached the Gospel in their day, they preached Christ crucified and risen, and that God had raised him up, and that was the heart and core of their message. Paul had preached that in Corinth, and there had been people called into the church. He preached it up and down the peninsula there of Greece to the Thessalonian church. He said in Acts 17, verses 2 and 3, This Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ, that Jesus was the prophesied Messiah, that he had died and been resurrected, and that was the heart and core of his message.

In fact, throughout the New Testament, it is the resurrection of Jesus Christ that was taught along with the message of the kingdom of God, which is why we have as a mission statement in the United Church of God to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God, because that's what they preached in the New Testament, and it was central. It focused upon the life, the death, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that is what Paul is getting to here in 1 Corinthians when he's talking about the days of the love and bread.

And the focus upon the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, and putting out the leaven of malice and wickedness, of evil, and evil doings, and evil words, and evil actions, and wickedness, and the spiritual sin that does easily persuade us. He says, Christ was our Passover, killed for us. And as you know, from the sequencing of the week that Christ died, that He was crucified just before the first day of unleavened bread.

He was put into the ground before sundown that evening. They hurried to get it done, because the Sabbath was coming on, as the Gospel accounts tell us. So, that sundown, after Christ was sealed in that tomb, His body, with that sundown came the first day of unleavened bread, by our understanding of the Gospels. Three days and three nights later, He was resurrected, smack in the middle of the festival of unleavened bread.

And He appeared the next morning, then, the fourth day of unleavened bread, He appeared to His disciples. They went, they found the empty tomb. And if you remember, as the Gospel accounts tell us, Mary tried to touch Him. And He said, Don't touch Me, I have not yet ascended to My Father. In John 20, verse 17. Later that day, by another account, in Matthew 28, verse 9, they grabbed Him and hugged Him by His feet, on the same day, the same morning.

Somewhere in between the first occasion, where Mary had seen Him, and He said, Don't touch Me, and the next occasion, whatever period of time it elapsed, Jesus had been accepted by His Father. Or He could not have been touched. Something had happened. Christ, at that point, had been accepted by the Father in what is called a wave-sheaf offering. I don't have the time to go into all the account of that, but back in Leviticus 23, on the morning after the Sabbath that falls during the Days of Unleavened Bread, there was to be a wave-sheaf offering.

And it's from that point, after the priest had made this offering, that the account began for Pentecost. So literally, tomorrow morning, brethren, which will be the tomorrow after the Sabbath, during the Days of Unleavened Bread, tomorrow will begin the count, 50 days, toward Pentecost. I'm not going to go into all of that, but that's where it began. And it begins with the event of what is called the wave-sheaf offering, which Christ Himself fulfilled when He was accepted now as this offering by the Father. It's a very interesting verse. We read it on the Passover, but I want to read it again in Hebrews 9.

That really shows us the scene, if you will, if you want to kind of imagine that. There are several episodes in the Scripture where we get a glimpse of the throne of God. Revelation 4 gives us a chapter where John sees the image of the throne of God, Ezekiel, and Isaiah have visions as well, in ways that it's kind of like a cinematic, high-definition theater experience of trying to visualize that as we have it. But in Hebrews 9, there is a statement made about Christ entering into the holy place with His blood. Verse 11 says, Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood, He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

On that morning, after His resurrection, somewhere between the time that Mary first saw Him, and He said, Don't touch me, I have not yet ascended to My Father. And later, when the disciples did touch Him, somewhere in that interval, verse 12 is done, He entered into the Most Holy Place with His blood. Just like that, folks, less than that. He did it. He went and came back. I mean, you have to understand, you know, Christ was a spirit being, and He could appear as a physical being, as the Gospel account shows us, after His resurrection.

But He went to His Father, and He was accepted as that wave-sheaf offering. He entered, as verse 12 says, the Most Holy Place with His own blood. Now, this gets way off, this weight gets way beyond our pay grade to try to comprehend and understand. I can't fully grasp it. It says, once for all. I mean, that sacrifice, then, was made sealed, delivered.

Once for all time, eternal redemption for all people, prior to that moment and subsequent to that moment. To our day today and on into the future, for any human being who repents and accepts the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that blood is available to forgive their sins. And it began on that morning after His resurrection, when He was accepted as that point. All things had changed, all things had become different. Christ was resurrected during the days of Unleavened Bread, and He became our High Priest, as this scripture in Hebrews and many, many others show us.

It was a moment. Nothing else was the same for the disciples, for Mary, for Peter, for John, as they came face to face with the reality that He had indeed done as He said He would do, and He was risen. And all of this took place during the days of Unleavened Bread. And they had a lot to begin to deal with and to grapple and to understand. And from that point, as they began to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God throughout the remainder of their life, they pointed back to that event of the resurrection.

The fact that He fulfilled the Old Testament scriptures in every way, shape, and form to do that. They preached His life, His death, and His resurrection. They connected it with Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread festival. They never connected it with anything remotely connected with what we today know as the Easter festival. All of that came later and was adapted by others who had abandoned the faith, delivered, and brought in pagan ideas and rituals and myths and attached those to these truths of the Gospel and of Christ's death and resurrection. But the unadulterated, plain truth of the scripture is laid out here that we need to understand.

And it folds very beautifully into the meaning of these Days of Unleavened Bread that we are here to begin to walk through once again this year. And it comes back then to what are we doing? Why do we do this? Well, we do it because these days of Unleavened Bread show the life of the resurrected Christ and His power today available to you and to I. Because He was resurrected, we have the power to live a life of hope and of meaning with the power of God in us.

Which is why from that day it connects all the way to Pentecost and the giving of the Holy Spirit to the Church. But as we understand the holistic message of that, we recognize that it presents us as we keep these days, we understand what's available to us. And it is that life within us that fills the void of despair that so many sense in today's world. We live in a pretty crazy, mixed-up world today, in case you hadn't noticed.

And I'm 63, some of you have got a few years on me, and I have to shake my head at times to realize what it is that we're dealing with in our world today. You know, I just saw a few days ago, we lived 29 years in Indiana, and the Governor of Indiana signed something the other day that created a whole firestorm for the state and just put a bad name upon the whole state as everybody's piled onto Indiana the last few days. And I cringe, because the problem that is there, the handling of it, you could debate the political aspect of it to no end. The moral, spiritual side of what we're dealing with is very clear. But it represents the world we live in today. That we would be dealing with such an issue of that at that level and see the world turned upside down, not able to call evil what it is, but trying to call it good. And if you dare stand against that, then you are a hate monger and you are wrong. We live in a crazy world, and that's just one example of it. Craziness gets into our personal lives as well. But it's the power of God's Holy Spirit. It is the truth of God that the Bible shows us. God has opened our mind to understand that these holy days clarify for us, that gives us understanding and meaning in the midst of this crazy, confusing world that we are in today. And it is this festival that Paul taught the Gentile world, in Corinth and others, to observe. So what do we mean by this service when we go back to that question in Exodus 12, and why do we do this? Well, this festival that we observe of Unleavened Bread helps us to realize the full meaning of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Paul said to the Corinthians, keep the feast not with old leaven, not with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. During the days of Unleavened Bread, we focus on unleavened bread, not leavened bread. The leavening represents sin, and that's what is to have been put out prior to the sundown last night. And we do that in clear obedience to God's command in Exodus 12, as we just read. And Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5-7, where we just read, he said that you are truly unleavened. Go back and just look at that again. Sometimes we kind of glance over 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 7. But he says, you purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. You truly are unleavened. What does that mean? What does this mean? To again echo the question from Exodus 12, what's all this about, Dad? Well, let's go to God's word, and we understand that. Paul says, you are unleavened. Well, certainly it means that to be unleavened is that we have put the leaven from our homes, and that physical action. Gathered it up, moved it out, went on it all down, fed the last bit to the birds, or put it all in the trash, whatever you do. My bird's got a lot of leavening this year before. I didn't want to buy any. I ran out of bird feed. I didn't want to buy any bird feed before we left on this trip, so we were giving them bread and crackers. So I have sinful birds flying around my house. To be unleavened means we've put that out. But as Paul here says in verse 7, it also means that Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. The only way you and I can ever have a life without sin, or to be forgiven of that sin and have it removed from us, is through Christ, his life. Never forget that. We read the other night in 1 John 1, verse 7, that the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. The blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin.

Dirty little secret.

By your putting out all your leaven did not cleanse you from sin. I hope you know that. It didn't cleanse you from sin. Christ's blood cleanses us from sin.

Now we do that in a physical sense to learn a deeper spiritual lesson. Which is why, if you happen to find it to come about Wednesday afternoon of this week, that you didn't get a crumb that you missed from the carpet in your back bedroom. Or you find a packet of yeast stuck someplace in the back of the cabinet that you didn't get out. Or you're halfway through that second donut.

Like I was when I was 16, six years old, halfway through my second long John Jelly-filled donut when I realized, oh man, it's a day's on oven bread. I swallowed it, but I didn't need to rest of it.

You may find some, because you can't get it all out. And it's an object lesson. And it's impossible for us to do it ourselves. So if you find something, okay, go ahead and put it out, but don't panic. Just realize, hey, there's a spiritual lesson there that we can't get it all out. And if you happen to wheel through and you're chomping on a Big Mac or whatever it is, and you're all, oh, I forgot. Again, don't call me. Don't call Mr. Hofker. Just say, you know, God, I recognize you can even sin and not know it, which is a big lesson there. Then throw it out your window. Feed it to the birds. Whatever you want to do with it. It's Christ's blood that cleanses us from sin. That's how we become unleavened spiritually. It also means to be unleavened, truly. It means that we are justified by faith. In Romans 5.

Romans 5.

Verse 1. It means, as Paul writes here, we are justified by faith. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand. As the blood of Christ forgives us of sin, cleanses us from all sin, we then are justified, made right before God. We have peace with God through Christ. That veil is broken down for us. We have peace with God with access by that faith into a grace in which we stand. It's a relationship with God that can't be broken. God says, I won't break it. And grace is a very powerful matter for us. We stand in this grace, he says here in verse 2. We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand. Through Christ's blood, when we accept that in faith, we're baptized. We recommitted ourselves at Passover service to it. We stand in the grace of God, which is a relationship with our Father that cannot be broken by height nor depth, by no other man. God will not break it. And even when we sin, God doesn't just jerk us out of that relationship once we acknowledge and repent. Because we've all sinned since baptism, right?

Have you sinned since Thursday night, since you took the Passover? God didn't jerk you out of his relationship with you because you did. As we repent, and if you're like me, you've got to repent on a daily basis. That relationship doesn't get broken. We stand in a grace, it's a relationship of favor with our Father. Just like you don't kick your son or daughter out when they do something wrong, they break a house rule, they get you upset over something. You don't kick them out for seven days or ten days or whatever, as penance. There may be a punishment, there may be a consequence, but they're still your son, your daughter. You love them. That relationship hasn't been severed because of a problem. And there's tears and hugs. You make up. They say, I'm sorry, Mom, I'm sorry, Dad. That's the way a family works, and that's the way the relationship is with God. We stand in this grace, and it doesn't get broken by a sin that we might commit as long as we repent. That's the point. That's what it means to be unleavened. In Romans 6, beginning in verse 1, to be truly unleavened, it also means that we have died to sin. We're alive to God. Paul writes in Romans 6, verse 1, What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? No, certainly not, he says. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? To be truly unleavened means we have died to sin.

How shall we who have died to sin live any longer in it? It's not the direction we want to go. We have changed. In faith and through that process of justification. It means we're alive to God.

He goes on in verse 3 here in Romans 6, Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death, and just as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glory of the Father, even so, we also should walk in newness of life. As we were by baptism, buried with him, when we come up out of that watery grave, we should begin to walk in a newness of life. That's what it means to be unleavened as well. We're different people, and we begin a life that is completely different.

If we had been united together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. We have been extricated, brought forth, liberated from the bonds of slavery, of sin, which to us is being enslaved in a spiritual sense. We've not been in Egypt, slaves making bricks without straw, as the Israelites were. That story, and that true story, has deep meaning for us today. But we've been delivered from a spiritual slavery, that this world is cast upon us.

And we're no longer slaves to sin. It doesn't mean we will not be breaking... we can still sin, but we're not enslaved to it. We're not addicted to something that... to a life of sin, that's contrary to God's law.

It goes on in verse 7, Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we also will live with him. That's what it means to be truly unleavened as well. We live a different life today with him, with God. Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more, death no longer, has dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. The life that he lives, he lives to God. Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead and need to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. We're alive to God through that life that is within us. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you should obey it in its lust. And I hope that it doesn't reign in your life. It doesn't dominate and control your life. And you flee from it when you might find that you may be getting a little bit too close in temptation or otherwise to it. That you say, no, I don't need that. Turn that off.

I'll leave this situation, thank you. I'm not going to engage in this conversation. We're not going there. We don't do that as a family. I don't do that as an individual. It doesn't reign over us. It doesn't control us, the passions and the lusts. We think differently. We think beyond today, if I could bring that back into it. We think, hey, if I do this, it's going to have lasting consequences for me. So, I'm not going to do that today. Draw a line over that, walk away from it. It doesn't reign in our body. That's what it means to be truly unleavened, to answer what Paul says there in 1 Corinthians 5-7. Verse 12 here of Romans 6, he says, Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. We put it out. We do this in an annual seven-day festival to really help us sink in. Hey, we have to put forth an effort to overcome, to want to obey. And there are things that we can do and should do, and have to be reminded. We've got to walk the line. Johnny Cash had this song, it's a pretty good one. I walked the line, he said. We have to walk that line every day in our marriage, in our families, in our job, in our life.

And sometimes we'll get a little wobbly, and sometimes the line may get a little fuzzy for us. But again, we pray about it, or we come to church, we have someone kind of encourage us or bolster us. We study the Bible a little bit more, extra. We get back on track, we get clarification. It doesn't rain over us. Verse 13 says, we don't present our members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but we present ourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, you're not under law, but under grace. You're not under the penalty of the law, and we are not under any illusions that the law is bad or evil, or unholy or unjust or not right. We understand the tension and the relationship between law and grace. We know that we obey, but that obedience doesn't merit us salvation. Salvation is a gift of God, and it is by His grace. We are saved. That, not of ourselves. It is a gift of God.

And so, you eat unleavened bread every day for the next seven days. You don't find any leaven in your car, or inadvertently eat any leavening. And you faithfully eat a matzo, or whatever you have for your unleavened bread every day. And come next Friday at sundown, the days are over, and you've kept the days of unleavened bread. You know what you've earned in terms of merits and grace points with God? You know what you've earned? Zero.

We know that by whatever we do, on any point of God's law, it doesn't merit us salvation or brownie points, we should get puffed up. We've done what we are to do, and it has taught us a deep spiritual lesson.

You know, the days of unleavened bread, folks, and what we're doing this week, this is the symbol-rich period of the Church of God experience of the year.

We kept Passover. We had bread and wine. We washed each other's feet. Deep, important symbols. And I always tell people, in the Church of God, we don't have a lot of symbols. We don't see any icons on the wall. No statues, no crosses. When we were talking with this firm that's going to design a new logo for us, LPK, we said, look, we don't want any crosses. We don't want any doves. We don't want any flames of fire. Methodists already have that, thank you.

We don't want any of the traditional Christian imagery. That's not us. We don't want any of that. Think out of the box. We used to have the lion and lamb on the seal. You remember that years ago? Today we've got kind of a globe there. That has its importance, but I don't think we're not going to have a globe as part of it, probably, either. We're not going to have a lion and lamb. That served us well at one time. But we were saying, hey, we're not traditional in that sense. So we don't even think to come back with a design that's got doves and crosses on it. We don't want that. We don't have that in the Church. But we've got a little piece of matzo every year and a little symbol full of wine. We wash each other's feet. And then for seven days we eat this crazy stuff called matzo, unleavened bread. If you make your own, you've got to eat it real fast because it gets real hard.

My mother used to try to make unleavened bread. What she'd do is she'd just make corn bread without any baking soda in it. But you had to eat it real fast because if you let it sit, it was a hockey puck after that. It would break your teeth. The point I make is, this is the time of year we've got our symbols. We don't have a whole lot in the Church, but they're very important. God tells us to do what we do. They're very, very deep, meaningful, and very rich in spiritual symbolism. I am happy to do it. My wife has her. This is the time of year that I get certain recipes that I don't get the rest of the year. She brought a marbleicious last night, just a sinfully delicious chocolate and peanut butter and good stuff. She makes a little cracker. We call it Cheezies. It's full of butter, cheese, no leaven. She only makes it once a year. We eat these things, and maybe you have your recipes or whatever. They work, and they're good, and they add to the year. This is our time, in one sense. We have the Feast of Tabernacles and Pentecost and all of it. In terms of just the physical things that we do that are tangible, tactile, physical things that represent something to us, the Church of God is pretty thin on it, but we're right in the midst of it. That's why it's important to walk through it all and understand what it means. That bread that we eat, brethren, is a symbol of Jesus Christ's perfect life in us. That's why we eat it for seven days. In John 6, when Jesus said, beginning in verse 32, My Father gives you the true bread from heaven, for the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. And He said in verse 35, I am the bread of life. And again in verse 48 of John 6, He said, I am the bread of life. Verse 50, He said, This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it, not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world. Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. And in verse 58, He said, He who eats this bread will live forever. What bread does a Christian eat that fits what Christ is saying here? It's the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth that we eat on the Passover night and continue to eat during the seven-day festival. When Christ took the bread, blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to His disciples and said, Take, eat, this is my body. Do it in remembrance of me. The unleavened bread represents Christ's life in us.

Christ's life in us. As we eat it during these days, we're reminded that we don't live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Who is the Word of God? It's Jesus Christ. He is the Word of God. And we have the hope of salvation because Christ lives in us. We're saved by His life, Romans 5 and verse 10 tells us. We are saved by His life.

His resurrected life is in us, through the Holy Spirit. He lives in His life within us. His death forgives us of our sin. His death does not give us life. It's His life that does. Let's go back and read that since I've referred to it a couple of times here in Romans 5 beginning in verse 8.

Romans 5 and verse 8. God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Much more than having been justified by His blood.

We shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more having been reconciled we shall be saved by His life. His death justifies us. We're forgiven of our sins. But it is by His life that we are saved. And that life that has lived within us. Paul said in Galatians 2 and verse 20, The life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who is in me.

So as we keep these days, we focus upon the resurrected life of Christ in each of us. And it's by that life and the power of the Holy Spirit, God's Spirit, that we can overcome sin, and live a transformed life and walk in newness of life. That's how it's done. So this is a time to focus upon that as we put out the leaven, as we reflect on being unleavened. And when you truly understand that it is by that life within us that that unleavened state becomes, then we have the opportunity to focus on a power that each of us has that is able to transform our life. And to help us deal with the craziness of everyday life.

You know, people go for all kinds of solutions in the world today to make sense of this world.

That's why drugs are so popular, particularly illicit drugs, because they help people deal with their life. Alcohol does the same thing. They can't wait till the end of the day or the weekend to get that buzz. And if that doesn't do it, then they look for something else, which is the allure of drugs, a drug-crazy world. And even if that doesn't do it, ultimately, because we know that is a dead-end street. But even today, if people look around and they lose hope, you know what happens when people lose hope in our world today? Who don't turn to alcohol and maybe they don't turn to marijuana or some other more powerful drug? You know what they do today when they lose hope? It's called Prozac. It's called Prozac. Or by some other name. Because, again, sometimes through chemical imbalance, but sometimes also a combination of that and just other bad decisions or environment or other problems, they lose hope. Their life seems dark and empty, and a drug is what is needed. I'm not condemning that particular need because, frankly, rather than there are some situations that people get into in life, that's what they do need to get back to stability. So don't misread what I'm saying. I'm just saying that we live in a crazy, chaotic world that's turned upside down. People call evil good and good evil.

And the fact that you're even here today in some people's eyes is an evil. You hold certain views of morality about marriage based on God's Word. You're a hater in today's world. That's how things have turned around. All the more reason for you and I to keep these days focused upon the truths of God's Word and the power that is available to us through the Holy Spirit, Christ's life within us, to deal with the needs, to deal with what's in front of you and I. And we all will face our times and stresses and situations where we do must call out to God for help, for understanding, for power. And it's that He's there because we stand in this grace, because we have a relationship with our Father. And it is a very real one. And Christ is our High Priest and He is there to help us. Never underestimate that. That's why we do what we do. To go back to that question when you tell your son what this is all about, tell yourself what this is all about is what God is saying, what we should be doing. This is all about life. This is all about escaping and being liberated from a world caught in a web of deceit, of untruth, and of sin, and has no comprehension of which way to turn to find solutions and to find answers for peace and for happiness. Tranquility and hope for today, help for today, and even hope for tomorrow. God's grace has called us to that in the fullness of a revelation that these days picture and open to our minds and hearts, brethren. That is very, very important. And you and I are still here. Some of us is after all these years. There was another country song, Still Crazy After All These Years, somebody used to sing. I know some people look at us today and they say, oh, you're still crazy after all these years. Well, okay, that's what you want to call it? Yeah, I'm still crazy after all these years. I won't go there. I'll say that sort of thing for the last day. We're still here. You're still here. And that's important. And that's good. Because of God's Spirit and the calling God has given to us. You're not crazy, and I'm not crazy. But we live in a world that kind of shrinks the corners sometimes that we inhabit down to some very small areas that sometimes we have to realize what's really taking place. As our world spins itself into a position that is being set up for the conclusion of this age, I have no idea how much longer that will be. But I see a lot of craziness out there. And I see sanity when I turn and open this book, the Bible, and read God's Word and what it tells you and I to do. And so we've rehearsed this meaning here today. I hope that you have a very, very profitable period of time during the Days of Unleavened Bread. And that you hold fast and true to the meaning and reflect on these scriptures and many others and what it is that we are doing. So that God's rich grace and strength can be within us to help us have a clarity and a focus on our own lives and our place in God's plan and purpose that he is working out here. So as Paul said here in 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 7, let's go back and read that in conclusion. Verse 8, Therefore let us keep the feast, and enjoy this period of time, this period of the Days of Unleavened Bread.