Nature Abhors a Vacuum

Well, thank you so much for all of you. The presenters of the music. It is so much appreciated and adds so much to the service. Odell very much appreciated the offertory as well as the vocal quartet. Beautiful song. Just an absolutely gorgeous song. It's certainly full of meaning and just imagining the evocative-ism of being in that place with him asking his disciples just to stay awake with him a little longer. It's an incredible, incredible concept. Well, brethren, in 1966, NASA engineer Jim LeBlanc became the first man to experience the effects of a loss of suit pressure in space. Well, sort of. He wasn't actually in space at the time of the experiment. Rather, he was in a very specially designed chamber at NASA headquarters, which was designed to mimic the harsh realities of space, the pressures of space, but the dangers were the same. You see the void of space. Those of you that may not remember back to your middle school science, you're probably already aware of this. But the void of space is a vacuum. And we talk about what that means, not like a Dyson or a rainbow vac or any of those things. But it's a vacuum in that there are very few molecules in that void. You have some parts throughout space that are certainly more clustered together. You have stars and galaxies and planets and things like that. But the places in between, all of that stuff that's out there, has very few molecules of any kind of matter, really, at all. We used to say there was no matter in between those things. We used to say nothing at all. But recent discoveries have shown that's not true. That there are some things out there. They're just very small, and they're very few, and they're very far between. Well, little to no molecules in a space means little to no pressure, which means, ta-da, you've got a vacuum. You want to create the next Dyson, figure out a way to make it easier to get the stuff inside that tube out of there so that things will go inside. Now, we can mimic these conditions on Earth by creating these really strong, super-airtight chambers. We use a powerful pump to pull all the air out of the inside of the chamber, and voila, as long as your chamber can withstand that pressure, you've created instant space. You now have space, quote-unquote. Or you might say at least it's good enough for government work, right? But it was in one of those chambers that astronaut Jim LeBlanc found himself on that day in 66. For those of you that were alive at that point, the U.S. hadn't been to the moon yet.

In fact, he was testing the suits that day that would be used on the Apollo 11 mission. You know, you go forward another three years, mankind would set foot on the lunar surface, but they first needed a spacesuit that could hold up to the rigors of space, that could hold up to the various challenges that they would face. Now, LeBlanc himself was not going to go to space. That was not in the cards for him, so to speak.

He was an essential part, however, of ensuring the safety of the Apollo 11 crew. So LeBlanc enters the chamber, they latch the door, they spin it, you know, one of those spinny doors that latches it down nice and tight, and they start pumping the air out of the room to create this incredible vacuum, while the hose is bringing air in and keeping a normal pressure inside of Mr.

LeBlanc's suit. So the testing of the suit began. He began putting it through its paces, started moving, started maneuvering stuff, trying to make sure the seams were going to hold, and that it was ultimately going to do what it needed to do in space. Now NASA, you know, within the last probably five to ten years, declassified a whole bunch of stuff, and the video of Jim LeBlanc's experiment is part of that declassification. So you can actually find video of this event online.

The test seems to be going fine. Jim's doing well, the vacuum's pulled, the suit's working brilliantly, he's talking to the engineers in charge of the test as he's going. All is going beautifully and according to plan. But then all of a sudden something went wrong. And the air that was being supplied in that supply hose to Jim's suit to keep the inside of the suit at a normal pressure began to leak. Well, there's a hole now in this vacuum and in this area. And so the high-pressure air that is in Jim's suit raced out of that hole to fill the vacuum of the tube around it.

Essentially, at that point, Jim found himself in space without a spacesuit. And so the air all went out of the suit, the air was depressurized, the molecules of his body tissue began to attempt to do the same, beginning to expand outward to fill the space, and Jim fell over backward in the video unresponsive. Now, as soon as it was obviously apparent to the engineers that something went wrong, usually when your astronaut passes out, it's a good sign something's gone wrong. They started the process to try to restore normal pressure to the chamber.

And normally, that's a 30-minute process to repressurize that chamber to normal atmospheric conditions. They did it in less than a minute. They did it in less than a minute. And during that time, they had no idea whether Jim LeBlanc was alive, whether he was dead. At that point, he was not communicative at all. But they did know one thing. They knew from prior animal testing. I won't share with you the grisly details of what that looked like, but they knew that more than one minute of full vacuum exposure was typically lethal.

That a person or an animal in their theory would not survive, should they be submitted to this for more than one minute's time. So the question really was, had they begun this repressurization in time? Like, had they gotten to the point where they got to this guy in time? So they get the chamber depressurized, they get in there, the doctor checks in, they did find that Jim had blacked out, but that he ultimately did regain consciousness by the time the doctor had arrived, and he ultimately made a full recovery. Now, in a later interview, and I find this piece fascinating personally, in a later interview, Jim LeBlanc said right before he lost consciousness, the last thing he could remember prior to blacking out was the saliva on his tongue begin to boil.

Because boiling is a function of pressure, not temperature. And so with that pressure and that situation, you do the same thing at room temperature based on pressure. So, ultimately, Jim viscerally experienced a statement that was termed by the Greek philosopher Aristotle 2300 years earlier, and that is, nature abhors a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. And for those of you that like titles, that is the title of the message today, nature abhors a vacuum. So, through several attempts at experimentation, Aristotle determined that nature didn't like the existence of a vacuum. That whenever one was created here on earth, using rudimentary pumps and things back during the time of Greece, that as soon as that barrier was broken, as soon as that was no longer a sealed situation, something rushed in to fill that previously empty space.

And so what that led Aristotle to conclude was that, well, a vacuum is an unnatural state here on this earth. And that everywhere on our planet, all empty space, all vacuums that had been created or existed, would eventually be filled with something. Whether it was a gas, a liquid, a solid, it really didn't matter. Eventually, that empty space would be filled by the higher pressure areas around it. Aristotle's assertion would be tested throughout time. It would be further shown that that does stand the test of time. It is the case. Today, we can essentially, unequivocally say that if we pull a vacuum in a container here on earth, if we take all the matter out of that container, and then we puncture it or rupture it in some way, the higher pressure air or water or material surrounding it will rush in to fill that vacuum.

It will fill that empty space and it will balance the pressure. Let's go to Exodus 12. You might be thinking to yourself, okay, what's that got to do with today? Exodus 12. We'll see a combination of commands that the Lord gave to Israel as they came out of Egypt. As he begins to outline Passover, outline the days of Unleavened Bread, Exodus 12.

And we'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 15, Exodus 12 and verse 15. I've got to not wobble up here. The stage is creaky. I'm a shifter too, so now you'll know that. I shift as the message goes.

It says, And see, it goes on. There's additional instructions that go along that process. But we see two very specific commands outlined in Exodus 12 and verse 15. He says, put the leaven out of your homes. Command number one. Make sure that the leaven is gone from the space that you occupy. But then number two, for the seven days of Unleavened Bread, you are to eat Unleavened Bread. The bread that you do eat must be unleavened, not leavened, during the time period of these days. Now, during the time of ancient Israel, and for many of the Jews today leading up to the Passover, the family removes the obvious sources of leaven from their homes during ancient Israel. That would have been kind of a sourdough start called Sior. It would have been kind of a little liquid start by and large. And then anything that had been produced that was leavened from that start, any of the little breadcrumbs and things like that, they'd use a feather to get it out of the cracks and ultimately would be collected and burned. You know, I'm very thankful for vacuums, because I can imagine running around trying to de-leaven with a feather. Sounds incredibly challenging. But in a final ceremony, traditionally, what the Jews will do is they search the home with candles looking for all the leftover leavens. So they'll open all the cupboards and they'll get the candle in there and they'll look for the cracks and everything else, and see, and then they'll swoop along with the feather to clear it out, making sure that the last little bits of leaven can be gathered and burned prior to the beginning of the Passover.

Now, what's interesting is parents, as part of this, hide leaven for their kids to find in these little bundles that the kids can find as part of that tradition. And as with most things, you know, you see modernization that takes place. I think the most creative and unique way that I've seen in recent years for people to remove leaven, and admittedly probably the laziest that I've seen, was a guy who taped a candle to the top of his Roomba. That was him seeking out the leaven with the candle as the Roomba went around the house vacuuming it up. I guess if you burn the house down, it's technically the leaven too, I guess, but... But the command that was provided was to put out the leaven from your homes and to consume unleavened bread for the days of the festival. And we see this same concept carried on in the New Testament. You know, just so there's no doubt that this is not just an Old Testament thing, we see it in the New Testament too. Let's go to 1 Corinthians 5. 1 Corinthians 5. We'll see this example in the New Testament as well, as we see the Apostle Paul's thoughts on the subject. 1 Corinthians 5. He's addressing the church in Corinth here with an issue that they were experiencing.

We'll pick it up in verse 6 as he kind of addresses that issue and looks at that issue, and ultimately the congregation's response to it. 1 Corinthians 5, and we'll pick it up in verse 6, says to the congregation, he says, You're glorying! It's not good! Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore, verse 7, purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened, for indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Verse 8, Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened, and you'll notice the word bread in italics, it was not in the original text, it's been added as context, but with the unleavened of sincerity and truth. The unleavened of sincerity and truth. And so, you know, we see this in place in the New Testament. So much so, to be honest, it was ingrained in their belief system. He didn't have to spell out the process. He was able to take and make some assumptions, even, as he was writing to them, because they knew, contextually, exactly what he was talking about. They understood fully. And this was Corinth! This was Corinth that he's writing to at this time. He could make the assumptions and still get the point across to this church. But what we see here is he adds a couple of comments as well. He gives some characteristics to the old leaven, to the new leaven. And it kind of tells us, just like Toto wasn't, they weren't in Kansas anymore. Realistically, we're not talking about breadcrumbs anymore. At this point, we're not talking about breadcrumbs. Yeah, that's the context. It's in there. But we are very much talking about, at this point, attitudes and the lives that we lead. And he's utilizing this concept of leaven to get that point across. Paul makes it clear to those in Corinth, and by implication to us as well, that the old leaven has to be put out. That it has to be purged. The word purge, here in Greek, I'm kind of a word nerd, and there's some word study in this, so I apologize for those of you that are not word nerds, but hang with me. I love etymology. I find it fascinating. But the word in Greek for purge is echithyro, which means to cleanse thoroughly. It means to cleanse thoroughly. But that root word comes from a different word called kithyro, which means to cleanse, but more specifically, it means to prune. It means to expiate, to remove something, to atone for something. So when we're being commanded here to purge out the old leaven, we're being told to cleanse ourselves thoroughly by pruning away the parts of our body and our mind that are not in line with God's way. That are not in line with the law and with the teachings of Christ. To get rid of the diseased branches, so to speak, or the branches that are not fruitful, in order to cleanse the whole and to make the whole more fruitful. You know, the root kithyro, from which the word purge is taken in 1 Corinthians 5-6, we can see it used in two other places in Scripture. The first is John 15. Let's go ahead and turn over there. John 15 is one of the places that we see this. You might recognize these words, words we read just recently at the Passover.

John 15, verse 1, says, It says, I am the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit he prunes, kithyro, that it may bear more fruit. So the word in this instance is used very specifically for the concept of pruning. Very specifically for the concept of pruning.

Now there's another spot, Hebrews 10, verse 2. We won't turn there, but you can jot it down if you'd like. And it clearly implies purging through the form of cleansing. Now I've served on a number of work parties with a number of you over the years as we go and we do yard cleanups and things for people. Often we'll go and visit one of the widows and one of our elderly members to help take care of the yard.

Whether it's a spring cleanup or whether it's putting things away for winter, sort of cleanup. We've done a number of those over the years. And often in those cleanups there are fruit trees that probably haven't been pruned for quite some time. Just because a person's unable to do so. They can't get out, they can't get it taken care of because they just physically can't do it.

Or maybe they don't have the knowledge ultimately to do it. I am so thankful that there are a couple of you in here that know how to prune a tree. Because I'll tell you what, I don't. I don't. And so you'll go in there and I'll see you kind of step back and you'll do a little circle around the tree and just... You know, there goes that one. And I'm looking at it, there's no rhyme or reason, like you're just randomly picking branches. But at the end of the day it was done right. And it was done well. And at the end of the day that tree is going to now flourish and be stronger and more fruitful as a result of that pruning.

I asked one time, I said, how do you choose what you take off? And they just said, well, you just get rid of the ones that don't look like they belong there. And I thought, well, they all look like they belong there! I mean, at the end of the day it all looks like it belongs there. I don't know how to do that, but...

Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes maybe it's not so obvious, sometimes the branch might be growing downward. You know, that's one that probably needs to go. You know, sometimes maybe it's growing clear out away from the plant in a weird way. That one needs to go. But by removing branches that are growing in the wrong location or that are growing in the wrong direction, the rest of the tree itself becomes stronger and becomes fruitful over time. Brethren, that's the idea behind removing the old leaven from our lives. We purge it.

We prune out the diseased parts. We prune out the parts of our lives that don't bear good fruit. And we allow the other parts of our lives to have the energy needed to be able to develop and to become strong. But purging the leaven from our lives isn't enough. It's not enough. Remember, nature abhors a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum.

If we simply purge out the old leaven and we leave those empty holes in place that used to be full of malice, used to be full of wickedness, used to be full of issues, that we've pruned out wonderful that it's out and that it's gone, it should be out and gone. But brethren, what do we put back in? What do we put back in? Because if we don't put something specific back in, anything, all kinds of things, can come back in to fill those holes. And as many of you may know well from experience, at times it's the same old issue that we purged the previous year. You know, those things come back and they fill that hole right back up.

So today, as we begin the Days of Unleavened Bread this year, the leaven is out of our homes. It is out of our lives. You know, we've taken care of that. We've gotten it out. You know, we're going to spend the rest of the week maintaining that. Everybody around you is going to do everything they can to... This is going to be the week everybody brings donuts to work. You know, this is going to be the week that somebody decides to give you a free sub sandwich.

You know, this is going to be... Inevitably, we're doing everything we can to maintain that this week, right? We know how that goes. But I'd like to spend the rest of the time today, as we go through this message, looking at what it is that we need to be focused on over the next seven days putting into our lives. Not just what we take out, but what do we put back in? How do we then turn around and fill those holes from the leaven that we have removed?

We're going to take a look at three primary points. We're going to use the information that we saw in 1 Corinthians 5 verse 8. We're going to recognize that we fill the holes with unleavened bread and italics, right? Unleavened sincerity and with truth. That is what we're going to fill these things with. That is what we're going to fill the places that we have now taken the leaven out of our lives. So firstly, as we take a look at this concept of unleavened, in this case unleavened bread, what we take into our bodies during the seven days of unleavened bread has to be unleavened by command of God.

Exodus 12. Want to turn over there? Exodus 12. Exodus 12 verse 19, we'll see that God set it up in such a way that He gave consequences to the people of Israel. Should they not take this into account? Exodus 12 verse 19. Exodus 12 verse 19, He says, For seven days no leavened shall be found in your houses, since whoever eats what is leavened, that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel.

Whether he is a stranger, note that, whether he's a stranger or whether he's a native of the land. So this law applied to both Israelites as well as the sojourners of the land. He says, You shall not eat, or you shall eat nothing leavened, in all your dwellings you shall eat, unleavened bread. So we see that eating unleavened bread during these seven days is a necessity.

We see that the bread that we take in must be unleavened. We also see that God set it up in such a way that those that did not, especially in ancient Israel, were to be cut off from the congregation. You know, that it was something important, it was something for them to keep track of, to ensure that they were remaining a part of the camp and of the congregation.

We see similar spiritual penalties put into place in the New Testament as well. Remember 1 Corinthians 5 talks about putting that fornicator out of the midst, the one who refused to be unleavened, who refused to change and shift in that sin. Verse 45 of Exodus 12 goes on to say that even though the sojourner was to eat of unleavened bread for seven days, they were not to take of the Passover.

So again, this was something that applied to the foreigner that was there in the camp as well, even though they were unable to take the Passover unless they became circumcised and became a part of the host of Israel. Now during these days, we know symbolically leaven represents sin. Essentially, it represents a life that is not in line with the laws of God. Physically removing that sin from our lives represents getting rid of it. Removing that leaven represents getting rid of that sin.

So when we talk of taking in unleavened bread post New Testament, it represents us filling our lives with Christ, who is the only unleavened man who has ever lived. It's absolutely essential that we do this daily, both physically with taking in unleavened bread each day, but also spiritually taking in and focusing on Christ's teachings each and every day. Now to understand why that is, we need a little bit of historical context. In ancient Israel, according to a number of sources, bread was a staple. It was actually estimated it made up between 50 to 70% of their diet at that point in time in ancient Israel. 50 to 70% of their diet. And they have estimated a total need of 330 to 440 pounds of wheat and barley per person per year.

330 to 440 pounds of wheat and barley per person per year. Meals in the Bible are described as breaking bread. The model prayer includes, give us this day our daily bread. In fact, the Hebrew word for bread, lehem, means primary food, main food. You know, we talk about going and having Hebrew food. It's bread. You know, ultimately, it's what at that time it was. And so this is something that was inherent in the social context of ancient Israel. Now, we in the United States, we're a bit removed from this in a post-Atkin's world.

You know, as a whole, Western society avoids carbs. It's rare for us in the West to have bread with every meal. And often when we do, it's an afterthought or it's an aside. It's something that we kind of have on the side of what it is that we might have as the main dish. So we don't fully see the social context.

But again, you know, we're also not ancient Israel in that sense. So we don't have that same social context. When God gave them instructions to eat unleavened bread, it implied that they would be eating it each and every day, because realistically, they were having it with each and every meal. It was the main portion of the meal. Let's go over to Deuteronomy 8. Deuteronomy 8, we'll see the passage that Christ quoted to Satan during his temptation in the wilderness in Matthew 4.

Deuteronomy 8.

Deuteronomy 8, and we'll go ahead and pick it up in verse 3. Well, actually, we'll grab it in verse 2.

Deuteronomy 8 and verse 2 says, "...you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness to humble you and test you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

So he humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and he fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you to know that man shall not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." We recognize God used the wilderness to prove Israel, to know what was in their hearts, to know whether they would keep his commands, to know whether they would do what he told them and asked them to do.

We know the wilderness humbled Israel. God allowed them to hunger while they were there. He miraculously fed them with manna, this bread that came from heaven.

For what reason? Why did he feed them with bread from heaven?

It's right there in the passage. "...so that they might know that man does not live by bread alone." Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, that they were reliant upon God for their survival.

Bread may have made up the majority of their diet, but without God, they would be dead. And that was the point that God was making to them. Christ amplifies this idea, if you want to turn over to the book of John. Christ amplifies this idea in the New Testament. The book of John, we'll pick it up in John 6.

John 6.

And we'll pick it up in verse 30. John 6 and verse 30.

We'll pick up a discussion between Christ and His disciples after the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. John 6 and verse 30. We'll read through verse 35.

John 6 and verse 30.

It says, Our fathers ate the manna in the desert, as it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat. And Jesus said to them in verse 32, Most assuredly I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but 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 they said to him, Lord, give us this bread always. Give us this bread. Please provide it for us. Give us this bread that gives life to the world. And Jesus said to them, verse 35, I am the bread of life.

He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.

The disciples recognized that this true bread from heaven was important. They, of course, thought it was something physical that he was talking about, some sort of maybe manna 2.0, you know, as they were trying to figure out the new generation of manna, what that looked like. But Christ made the point that he was and is the bread from heaven, the bread of life.

That if we abide in Christ, we will not hunger. We won't feel empty. We won't feel hungry. Christ fills the holes. He fills the vacancies. You know, we've removed sin from our life, and we've left an empty hole. Remember, nature abhors a vacuum. That feeling of emptiness, that hole, has to be filled. And the unleavened bread, this physical symbol of Christ, during these days fills that hole.

But what about after these days are over? What about coming out of these days? What prime directive doesn't stop? We're still being asked to go forth and to remove sin and prune these things from our lives and continue to move forward and take in Christ and continue to build that relationship with God.

And just because the days of Unleavened Bread are over doesn't mean the work stops. We continue, throughout those days, getting closer to God each and every day, actively seeking Him. In many ways, we look at it making Him the main course of our spiritual diet.

Making Him the focus, making Him the main course. Not an aside. Not something that we add when we think about it, like we do with bread today in the United States. But the main course, the primary food, as it says in the Hebrew. Man has to eat, and spiritually, just like our physical life, if we're not eating, we waste away. Just like physically, if we don't eat, we waste away spiritually.

If we don't eat, we wither away. We get malnourished spiritually, and we die. We have to be partaking of Christ daily. We have to be partaking through prayer and study, actively drawing near to God, drawing closer to Him, so that we can hope and pray to be in a better place next year at the same time. You know, with greater fruits, greater spiritual growth. If we only focus and do it for seven days, we just won't see the growth that God desires in us.

So once we've ensured that we're taking in unleavened bread each and every day, we make sure that those are the things that we're taking in, we need to work on putting on those unleavened attitudes now that are provided by the Apostle Paul here, and the first of those is the attitude of sincerity. The first of those is the attitude of sincerity. Again, I've mentioned I'm a word nerd, you know that.

I really enjoy word studies, because it makes the story and it makes the writing come to life, because it helps you to see in the original context what is really being said here. Now, I love this particular word. I love this particular word, and part of the reason I love it is because it's so disputed.

I love it because people argue about it a lot. And I find that really interesting, because they cannot settle the meaning and the background and the etymology of this word. The word in English of sincerity means to be genuine. It means to really mean it. That's what it means to be sincere. If I write a letter, and I write, sincerely, Ben, I mean that everything I just said I really meant. That's what it means in the English.

But the etymology is claimed two different camps. One camp claims that the English word sincere came to the English language through the French from the Latin, Sinceris, which means to have a clean, pure sound. Like if you were to ring a bell, for example, and it rang clean and clear, it would be Sinceris. It would have a good, clean, pure sound. But there's another camp that claims the word is combined from two Latin words. That it's a compound word, actually. Latin word sign, which means without, or sin, which means without. Sinceris, which means wax.

And so Sinceris, sincere, meant without wax. Without wax. Now, we consider how the word of God is divinely inspired. If we look at the word in the context of Scripture, my personal opinion, I think you can gather which word is more likely, based on what Paul is saying here. The word that's translated sincerity in 1 Corinthians 5, verse 8, in Greek, which is a precursor to Latin, is the word elecrenia. It's the Greek word elecrenia. And it derives from the root word elecrenes. Elecrenes. Now, elecrenes is a compound word made up of two different root words.

The two words are the Greek word for son, eleos, and the word for judgment, krenos. So, elecrenia means son judgment. Or, we might say, to judge something by the light of the sun. And as the story goes, one camp claims that in the old days of merchants and booths in markets across Greece and Middle East, pottery was an everyday need.

You needed pottery for everything. You needed pots for this and pots for that because you carried things in it. You had water pots, you had this, you had that, and all sorts of stuff in pots. And pots, you know, there were individuals that were very good at what they did, very good at throwing clay pots.

And then, of course, you had the Middle Eastern version of Dollar Tree, which means that they were maybe not thrown as well, but somebody's hawking their wares on the street and making a little dinero, so to speak. Good pottery was properly thrown.

It was fired. It had no cracks. It was the real deal. While cheaper pottery might have some cracks, might have some issues, it might have some structural problems. And according to the story, to make the pottery sellable, some of the sellers would fill the cracks with wax and then smooth it out so you wouldn't notice that there was a crack. It would be filled with wax. And you would kind of smooth it out and make it all nice, and so it would appear better than it really was and would ultimately cover up the mistake.

But if you held the pot up to the light, you could see the light come through those cracks. You could see where the wax was, because the wax was a little more translucent than the clay around it. And so if you held it up and you judged it with the light, then ultimately you could see where maybe some of those pots were not as quality or as genuine as they maybe were, you know, appeared to have been or to be sold as such.

So according to the camp that claims this, Sinceras became sincere, genuine, because the Romans, when they began to do this, began stamping Sinceras on their pottery, which meant when you looked at it, it meant this doesn't have any wax. That way you didn't have to hold it up to the light and look.

You could take the word for it. Of course, Rome also came up with caveat emptor, so, you know, who knows? But I'm sure, you know, it's possible that there was another method of testing these two that went along with the other word. Maybe if you knocked on the pot just right, it rang in a certain way if it was solid, and it didn't ring that way when it, you know, had the wax. And maybe that's the meaning here. But this is debated back and forth by etymologists. But there seems to be enough evidence to make the interpretation of Sinceras as being, without wax, plausible.

Is it 100%? It's plausible. There's other scriptures in the New Testament that tie together this concept of leaven and sincerity. This concept of sincerity than just 1 Corinthians 5, verse 8. Let's go over Luke 12. Luke 12. Mr. Hansen talked a bit about this today as he was giving a sermonette. Luke 12. We'll see Christ's own words as he warned his own disciples and followers of the danger of another variety of leaven.

Another issue that could crop up in their lives. Luke 12, verse 1, says, In the meantime, when an innumerable multitude of people had gathered together so that they trampled one another, He began to say to his disciples, first of all, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. So he goes on to tell his disciples the leaven of the Pharisees, very specifically identified as such, is hypocrisy.

What is hypocrisy at its core? What is hypocrisy? It is the antithesis to sincerity. It is the opposite of sincerity. He goes on in verse 2. He goes on and he says, For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known. Therefore, whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear and inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops.

Christ here is giving his disciples an object less than in sincerity, admonishing them to live in a way that's not hypocritical, to live a life that is genuine, to live a life that is sincere, that is without wax, that is sincere. He warns them that what they think may be hidden may not be hidden at all. In fact, that may be something that is then out and admonished and were ultimately shouted from the rooftops. But he's encouraging them to be genuine, to be sincere, to be without wax. So now comes the hard question. What would Christ see if he held us up to the light? What would Christ see if he held us up to the light?

Would there be light that shines through the cracks and the holes that we've patched with wax in order to make ourselves look better, in order to make ourselves, you know, be in appearance to what we should be, to make ourselves passable? What happens if we experience challenge and trials and hot liquids are poured onto that pot? What happens to the wax if there's wax in those places? Do the cracks and the holes become visible as that wax melts away?

And we just took the Passover, we just took, you know, the emblems of the bread and the wine after a period of self-examination and looking for the parts in our life that needed work. Were we sincere and genuine in taking of that Passover? Did we genuinely take those symbols, the bread and the wine, with thankfulness for Christ's sacrifice on our behalf, with full intent to grow closer to him and the Father this next year spiritually?

To maintain our focus, to study and to pray, to build that life that God has called us to build and to be. Will we fill those holes and those cracks in our life with the leaven that we've removed? Will we fill them with the unleavened? Will we fill them with Christ? Or will we fill them with the things of this world? God desires his children to be genuine. He desires his children to be sincere.

Go over to Revelation 3. Revelation 3. We've been going through the Bible studies here locally. We've been going through the churches of Revelation. We haven't gotten to this one yet. This is the next one on the list. But Revelation 3. We see a mention of hypocrisy. We see a mention of this concept of hypocrisy in the Greek word that is used here. Revelation 3, speaking to the church in Laodicea.

Verse 14, he says, The angel of the church of the Laodiceans writes, These things, says the Amen, the faithful and the true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. He says, I know your works, that you are neither hot nor cold. He says, I could wish that you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth.

He goes on down into verse 17, Because you say I am rich and become wealthy and have need of nothing, and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. It says, It counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich, white garments that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and anoint your eyes with eyesab that you may see.

He talks about this kind of life that they are leading, you know, that they are not really hot or cold, they are just kind of in between. He says, essentially in today's vernacular to those in Laodicea, He says, if you are in, be in. If you are out, be out. He says, get off the fence. He says, make the call, make the decision.

God requires in each and every one of us a commitment. God requires us to have such a commitment that we have put our hand to the plow, and there is no going back. There is no going back. We need to be sure to take this calling seriously to commit ourselves fully. We know this life is a one-way street, we all bear our cross. We need to ensure that we pray and we study and we commit ourselves to God's calling.

Additionally, we are told that we need to be putting on truth, which goes hand in hand with sincerity. The word truth in 1 Corinthians 5 verse 8, you can turn back there if you would like to see the passage, 1 Corinthians 5, 8.

The word truth there is the Greek word aletheia, which means truth. But the root of that word, aletheia, means to not conceal something. So rather than just simply true and false, it means to not conceal something. So we might even more accurately translate that concept of aletheia to more like full disclosure. It might be a great way to put it. So I'll give you an example. If I'm selling someone a car, like if I'm selling someone a vehicle, and I've done this work on this car, and I've, you know, got it ready to sell, and I know personally there's something wrong with this vehicle. Like, I know there's something wrong with it.

I know that there's a little piece that just doesn't quite work right. It's a little bit wonky, a little janky maybe is the right term in today's vernacular. But I'm going to sell this car to somebody, and I don't mention it up front. I just sit back very quietly. I let him do his inspection. I let him look, and then I see he misses it. And I... Whew! Oh! Whew! He didn't see it. Awesome. Awesome. He should have done his due diligence. That's his fault. He totally should have. Right? Have I been truthful if I sell that to him? Uh-uh. Not according to the Greek definition here.

I did not fully disclose something. I concealed it. That is not truthful. That's not truthful by the definition that the Apostle Paul uses here in 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 8. Did I lie? No. I didn't come out and say there's nothing wrong with the car. I said, well, what do you think? Take a look.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, everything's... Yeah. But I concealed something that I knew that should have been disclosed. By this definition in Greek, I was not truthful. And we're told, from a standpoint of being unleavened, that we have to be truthful. We have to be true. We have to put on truth. That's the kind of truth that this section is discussing. That's the truth here that we're talking about. Not concealing something. And it goes hand in hand with sincerity. It goes hand in hand with being genuine. So how can we fill the vacuum caused by purging out leaven with truth?

There's an old Hasidic Jewish story of a man who sought a rabbi. And in it, I think there's a lesson that we can learn from. There was a visitor from Hungary that came, stopped a passerby on the street in the town of Lesenque with the query of, Can you please direct me to the home of the great Rabbi Alemolek? The man raised his eyelids in astonishment and says, You mean to tell me you journeyed all the way from Hungary to see this Rabbi of Lesenque? Had the exaggerations and embellishments about this man traveled that far already? I know this man personally, and he is an absolute zero.

I'm afraid you've wasted your time and your money on these silly rumors. The visitor was outraged. He says, You lowly, despicable man. What do you know? You obviously have no understanding of anything holy and spiritual, and still fuming, the visitor stormed off. Later that day, when he entered Rabbi Alemolek's study for his appointed audience, he nearly fainted in shame and remorse.

The man that he derided on the street earlier was none other than Rabbi Alemolek himself. With tears in his eyes, he begged his forgiveness, and he says, Why are you so upset? said the Rabbi. There's no need to apologize. I told you the simple truth, and everything you said was also true. Sometimes when we look at ourselves and we look at our lives, we see the truth, and the truth hurts.

The truth is painful sometimes. In the example, in the story that we see, the Rabbi is being humble, probably self-deprecating, if we're going to be honest, and recognizing that he really was nothing in the overall scheme of things. That the understanding that he'd been given it came from God, it didn't come from him.

You know, he had nothing to glory about personally in himself. You know, as we enter the Passover season, we examine ourselves, we try to see ourselves as God sees us, and that truth can hurt.

No, that truth can hurt sometimes. When we realize how far we have to go, when we realize the sin in our own lives, the parts of our lives that need to be fixed, we can get discouraged. But ultimately, identifying the problem is the beginning of the process of fixing it. In business, it's called root cause analysis. It's called root cause analysis. You first define the problem, figure out what the issue is. You gather data around the problem, you figure out what the data shows. You identify what's causing the issue. You identify the overall cause. You identify that root cause, and then you recommend and you implement solutions. By way of example, football is one of the most popular sports in the United States. As a result of the hard hits in football, frequently players receive head injuries, which has led to the need for very good helmets. And a recent study showed that high school players on the whole are almost twice as likely as college players to receive a concussion. Now there's a couple ways that issue could be fixed. We could just treat the concussions and keep business as usual. So twice the number of kids get concussions. Well, just sit down, don't look at the internet, you know, don't watch TV for a while, it'll be fine. You'll come to eventually go back out, play again, get another one, and another one, and another one. And eventually you have major issues that come from that. Or you can do root cause analysis and figure out what's causing the difference between high school and college players getting a greater number of concussions in the high school players. Turns out when they did the data and they ran the numbers, the high school players were wearing older helmets that hadn't been reconditioned, and they were experiencing a greater impact from the hits on those. College programs get new helmets every year because there's money all over the place. High school players are playing with 10-year-old gear sometimes, 5-year-old gear sometimes, and the padding and things just aren't enough to hold up to the hit. When you do the root cause analysis, you can see what the cause is. So you have an option at that point. Treat the cause, or treat the symptom. You treat the symptom, the cause is always going to be there. You treat the cause, you fix both. You take care of both.

Alcoholics Anonymous uses root cause analysis as part of their 12-step program. Their first step is recognizing there's a problem. Hi, my name is Ben. I'm a sinner. We can't recognize the problems in our own lives without truth. Without truth. Because God is truth. Western thought, and we've talked about this before, is based on Greek philosophy, and it teaches that truth is in the eye of the beholder.

That truth can be anything you want it to be. Depending on whether you have empirical evidence to arrive at your conclusion, postmodern thought has really spurned the idea of there being anything that exists, such as absolute truth, and in postmodernism, truth is always colored by your bias. It's all biased. Left, right, it's all slanted.

Is somebody selling something? Is that absolute truth, then, if somebody's selling something? It's not. It's not. There's only one source for truth. There's only one source for truth. The word truth in Hebrew is the word imet. It's made up of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph. It's made up of the middle letter, mem, and it's made up of the last letter of the alphabet, tov. John 1717 tells us God's word is truth. From the beginning of the book to the end of the book, and everything in between is truth.

It's absolute truth. That's what the Hebrew word imet means. Start to finish, and everything in between is truth. Truth is defined by God, and only God. It's an interesting interaction in the book of John between Christ and Pilate that I think illustrates these two schools of thought. Turn over to John 18. John 18. We'll pick up the account between Christ and Pilate prior to his crucifixion. John 18 and verse 37 is what we're looking for, but we'll go back to 34 for context.

John 18 verse 34. John 18 verse 34 says, Jesus answered him, Are you speaking for yourself about this, or did others tell you this concerning me? So we're going to jump into the context here. Pilate says in 35, am I a Jew? Your own nation and chief priests have delivered you to me. What have you done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I would not be delivered to the Jews.

But now My kingdom is not from here. In verse 37, Pilate says then, therefore said to Him, Are you a king then? Jesus answered and said, You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth.

Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice. So Christ tells Pilate, His kingdom is not of this world, that He was born to be a king. He came into the world to bear witness to the truth, that truth being the gospel of the kingdom of God. And he goes on to say that all who were of the truth hear His voice. Now in this school of thought, the one that all of us subscribe to, God defines truth. God defines it. He says the kingdom will come to earth. That's truth. That is what we put our faith in.

We know that is true, because God said it was. Christ came to this earth, He was the ambassador, He was the witness of that truth. And that's kind of what He's saying here, ultimately in verse 37, saying, I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice. What does Pilate say in verse 38? Pilate says, what is truth? What is truth? And when He said this, He went out again to the Jews and said to them, I find no fault in Him at all.

Pilate's response is interesting. This idea of what is truth, it's very much rhetorical. You know, we kind of see it's very much a rhetorical question. Christ didn't respond to that. In fact, it almost reads a little like maybe He kind of muttered it under His breath as He left the room. You know, you can kind of maybe see it that way as you read it.

But it's possible that He's alluding to this Greco-Roman idea of truth, that absolute truth is unattainable. That truth is what you determine it to be. And it's almost as though He's asking Christ, are you willing to die for this truth? Are you willing to die for it? That you are a king of a kingdom that is not here. Are you willing to be put to death for it? I think it's a good possibility that what we see here is two very different schools of thought with regards to what truth is.

When we think about truth and we think about examining our lives, sometimes it's painful to examine our lives truthfully. To really take a look with the magnifying glass, so to speak, and to see where we fall short. To see the challenges that we face, the road that we have to walk.

But the only way that we get to the bottom of the issues in our life is to be honest with ourselves about where we fall short and what needs to be done to take care of it. To examine ourselves, to examine our lives in such a way that we find the root cause and of the kind of more obvious symptoms, I guess, that we see in our lives. And that process doesn't ultimately end with these days.

As we examine our lives during these days and ultimately beyond, we need to find the core of the issues that we face. We need to find what it is that's causing some of these symptoms that we see in our life that we identify. Can we work to solve those issues? Can we be daily taking in God's truth? Asking Him to help us to see ourselves as He sees us and comparing our truth and our life with the truth of the Word of God and find those deficiencies as the year goes on.

You know, as a church, we've done a great job over the years emphasizing the removal of leaven. You know, it's been drummed into our heads year after year after year. We have to get the leaven out. Leaven represents sin. Physically, the leavened house represents a life without sin. And that's ultimately the ideal. Brethren, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the physical leaven that we work so diligently to remove represents very real spiritual issues in our lives that we have to root out with the same level of diligence.

That we have to root out with the same level of diligence because, again, nature abhors a vacuum. If those holes are there, and by removing those things from our lives, and we leave those holes, you've got to fill it with something. Anything, anything, will come in and will fill those holes. We have to be actively filling those holes with something holy and something righteous. And again, if we're not taking in unleavened bread spiritually and physically during these days, we're missing out on a very critical aspect of the festival.

These days, days of unleavened bread, are a reminder that Christ led a sinless life, that He is truly unleavened. And we must, as Romans 13 tells us, put on Christ each and every day. Take of that unleavened bread each and every day. We take on the attitudes of sincerity and genuineness, walking the walk, taking on the truth, being willing to be honest with ourselves and others in love, being willing to be honest with ourselves so that true Godly growth can take place. You know, not hiding, not concealing our sins, openly confronting them in an effort to truly change. And it's only through the ongoing process of spiritual growth that these days represent that we can realize the calling of our God in His grace, ultimately bearing much fruit and becoming more like His Son, Jesus Christ. Hope you have a wonderful days of unleavened bread, a very meaningful and productive days of unleavened bread, and looking forward to the chance that we have to fellowship here today afterwards.