The Positive Aspects of Examining Ourselves

Every year, at this time of year, as we come up to the Passover, I have people tell me that it seems like life gets so busy before the Passover. And there's so many things going on, and so many distractions, that they don't spiritually prepare. They feel like they're going into the Passover spiritually unprepared. People talk about how six weeks, eight weeks before the Passover seems to be a time of so many trials and difficulties and problems in their lives, and they're so distracted.

Now, it's interesting, this year I have not had anybody say, you know, I was so busy, life was so filled with activities that I didn't prepare for the Passover. Although I've had people talk about how just the anxiety of this virus crisis that we're going through, the worry, you know, watching the news, trying to keep up with what's going on, at times has created enough anxiety that they didn't feel like they prepared for the Passover.

Well, we try to prepare for the Passover every year, and every year at this time you'll have a sermon or a sermonette where you'll turn to 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 11, and you have the speaker read this and talking about preparing for the Passover. Because the Apostle Paul here gives a warning to the Corinthian church, and it's a stern warning, but I want to take this in a little different direction today.

I gave a sermon like this in the last couple years in Nashville. I didn't give it to Murfreesboro, but I wanted to sort of bring that idea back up and present it in a little different way. But the Apostle Paul writes in verse 27 of 1 Corinthians 11, "'Therefore whoever eats this bread and drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.

But let a man examine himself, so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup." So he says, examine yourself and then go ahead and do this. "'For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner, eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.'" Sometimes people will read this, and I've heard it just scores of times over the years.

And the person will say, I examined myself, and I'm really not worthy to keep the Passover. Well, when we truly examine ourselves, we realize that of ourselves, we are not worthy to keep the Passover. He talks about it in an unworthy manner. We are to look at ourselves this time of year and what Mr. Frankie brought out in the sermonette, which remember where we came from.

But if we only remember where we came from, that leaves us feeling like, well, I shouldn't even do this. Now we have to remember where we're going. He gave the perfect lead-in to what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about the positive aspect of this time of year that centers us back on what's really important in life. Throughout the year, we can have negative distractions, but we have some positive distractions that happen in our lives, right?

Maybe an advancement in your job, maybe a new house, maybe a new toy, like a new boat or something. But there's things that come along that we get so involved in and we get so wrapped up in. And just living lifestyle sometimes in our society where we have so much. We get so wrapped up in the lifestyles that they become a spiritual distraction. And because it's not something negative, sometimes we don't even realize what's happening. We don't even realize that we're distracted until the Passover comes. It's like, wow, I wish I would have taken more time to study and pray and fast.

It's always a good idea to fast and humble yourself before God as you approach the Passover. But sometimes the good times keep us distracted and the bad times keep us distracted. And right now, as I said, some of you are saying, wow, I actually had more time available in the last couple of weeks, but have I really prepared for the Passover? Well, let's go back and rehearse the Passover in ancient Egypt.

And then we're going to talk about application for you today, and for me today. Let's go to Exodus 12. Exodus 12. Because I want you to really zero in on the reaction that God expected from them as He told them to keep the Passover. Okay, what was God expecting from them? I mean, they had to examine themselves, you know, what it meant to be an Israelite, what it meant to be a follower of Yahweh.

What does this mean? And they're slaves, remember. They are still slaves at this point. And something important is happening to them. They're about to be freed from slavery. And so in Exodus 12, verse 21, it says, Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said to them, Pick out and take lambs for yourselves, according to your families, and kill the Passover lamb.

And you shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lentils in the two-door posts from the blood that is in the basin. And none of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning. There is an act, a supernatural act, of God's intervention of salvation here.

They were about to do some things, but the things they did could not save them from the Israelites, I mean, the Egyptians. It could not save the Israelites from the Egyptians. The things they were about to do was an acknowledgement of what God was going to do and their submission to God. That's very important to understand. You know, God didn't say, Moses, go build an army and organize all the Israelites, and we'll go overthrow Egypt. That's not what happened. They could not get out of the situation they were in. They were helpless.

For the Lord will pass through, this is verse 23, For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two-door post, the Lord will pass over the door and not allow the destroyer to come into your house to strike you. And you shall observe this thing as an ordinance for you and your sons forever. And it will come to pass when you come into the land, so He's freeing them to take them someplace. This is very important to understand what the Passover means to Christians. He is freeing them to take them someplace. He's performing an enormous victory here to free them from slavery. But it's not the completion of His plan for them.

The plan is completed. The final victory comes when they go into and take the Promised Land.

So when they get into the Promised Land, your children will say to you, What do you mean by this service? That you shall say, and you shall say, It is the Passover sacrifice of the Lord who passed over the houses of the children of Israel and Egypt when He struck the Egyptians and delivered our households. Now notice, what were they to remember? The sacrifice that freed them. A victory. An emancipation that happened in the lives of their forefathers that led them then eventually into this Promised Land. It was a celebration of… it was a sober celebration in one way because they remembered the Egyptians who died.

But it also was a celebration of what God did to get them out of a state they could not free themselves from. So now let's go to Exodus 13, just over to the next chapter here, and we'll continue the story. Exodus 13. And let's go to verse 3.

And Moses said to the people, Remember this day in which you went out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. For by strength and the hand of the Lord brought you out of this place, no leaven shall be eaten. So now he's going to give him instructions about the days of unleavened bread. And he says, When you look back on this, you are to always remember. When you keep the days of unleavened bread, you are to always remember what? It was by the strength of the Lord that you came out of slavery. That the chains that bound you were broken, not by what you did, but something he did. Let's go to verse 6.

Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a feast to the Lord. Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days, and no leaven shall be seen among you, nor shall leaven be among you in all your quarters. And you shall tell your Son in that day, saying, This is done because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.

This is done because of what God did for me. When we are to examine ourselves in preparation for the Passover, it is not to look at ourselves and say, Look what I have done. It is to look at where you were and what God is doing. In one of the two songs we sang at the beginning of the service, the words were from Exodus 15. Exodus 15 is a song, the Song of Moses, in which they sing about the victory. You know, if you look at the song as we sang it, it talks about how God destroyed the chariots, how God took care of them, how God led them out. I mean, they didn't destroy the chariots. They didn't destroy the Egyptian army. They didn't overthrow the greatest superpower of the day. They remembered it was God who did it. In this time of the Passover days in love and bread, and over the next couple of days, we're going to be preparing for the Passover, but then we're going to be throwing out our leavening. We're going to be getting rid of leavening. That is not about saying, Oh, look what I'm doing. I'm getting sin out of my life. This is about zeroing in on what God did and for us, what God is doing through Jesus Christ. It is Him and Christ that are the center of what we're doing. Our sin is what we look at, but our sin is not the center of the time. You know, if we just zero in on our sin, we're defeated. And this isn't about being defeated. This time of year is about God winning. And it's about God winning in our lives if we will simply participate in what He's doing.

It's about His victory in your life if you will follow where He's going.

So the center of it must be on God and it must be on Jesus Christ. You know, when we look at the story of the ancient Israelites, it's always a little amazing to us.

It's not long after they get out into the wilderness and they're complaining because they don't have any water. So God gives them water. Then they start complaining because they don't have enough food. You know, we're going to slaughter all of our flocks and then we're going to die out here in the desert. So God says, okay, I'm going to give you supernatural food and it's going to just show up every morning and you're going to go out and you're going to get to gather this stuff up. You can cook it different ways. You can eat it raw. You can eat in it. It's going to taste really good. And in this food, you can gather as much as you want. You know, if you're a big eater, gather a lot. If you're a little eater, gather a little bit. You're going to enjoy it and it's going to give you all the nourishment you need. In fact, this was the healthiest food ever given to any human being. And they were going to get this food every day, six days a week.

And then they were to gather twice as much on the sixth day because they wouldn't have to work on the Sabbath. What a blessing! You don't even have to go out on the Sabbath day. Just get enough. Now, he told them, though, the other days—to show you this is a miracle—the other days, if you keep it overnight, it's going to go bad. It's going to spoil. Well, the first day that they go out and they have this, what is it? This man all over the place. And they gather and gather. And, of course, human beings being human beings, I better take some extra for tomorrow just in case this stuff doesn't show up. So the next day, you know, this stuff is rotten. It's filled with worms. It stinks. Everybody knows the tent next to you. If they kept some from the day before, they know it. It just stinks. Okay? So the simple instructions by God—this miracle takes place—and they still don't trust God. And, of course, on the sixth day, some people don't gather twice as much. And Sabbath morning comes and it's like, well, you're fasting today. Or you're going to have to eat some other food you might have because God's not going to give you that man of this day. And we look at situations like that and we say, what's wrong with these people, right?

They just saw God destroy Egypt with 10 plagues. They watched their firstborn be saved. They watched the Red Sea open. They walked through it and they watched it close back on the Egyptians. They watched water come out of a rock. They saw this food appear and they all went out. And they gathered it up. Men, women, children, everybody's gathering up and putting it in little pots and taking it back to their tents. And this is so exciting. And yet, they still don't trust God. They still don't believe that God is going to take them where He said He's going to take them. They don't even know what that means. What is a Promised Land? I don't know. We're out in the desert and we want some food. And that's all the farther they could see. And when you read through, of course, their journeys, there are times during this year that it took them to get to the Promised Land that they said, why don't we just go back to Egypt? You know, it wasn't so bad. I mean, being a slave is tough. Being free is harder. You know, it's better to be a slave. And remember how good it was, the onions and the leeks and all we have is the same food day in, day out. It may taste good. And you may be able to make it a few different ways. But the bottom line is, it's the same thing. You know, eat your favorite food every day, three times a day, and after a while, it's like, well, it's not my favorite food anymore. And we think, how could they do this? How could they become so distracted when God had overthrown Pharaoh and overthrown their slavery?

When you and I observe the Passover days of the London Bread, we are commemorating, we are celebrating the fact that God has overthrown Satan in our lives, He has overthrown sin in our lives, and He's overthrown death. Now, we haven't reached the final victory yet. We're not in the promised land. But we've already, God has already won the battle if we just go there. And if we're not careful, we become just like the Israelites. You know, it wasn't so bad being in spiritual Egypt because we didn't have all these other problems being in spiritual Egypt. It was an easier life, you know? We just lived day by day, we enjoyed ourselves, and now we have all these what we consider problems because we're Christians. I gave a whole sermon two years ago on how this pictures the overthrow of Satan, sin, and death, these three themes, these three bondage, or ways that we are in bondage. Now, I'm going to look at something else here. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 10. So, we're going to go to the New Testament now. 1 Corinthians chapter 10.

And Paul here is making a point to the Church of Corinth, and I'm going to look at this and then draw a little different point than what he's making, but you'll see where it comes from.

Verse 1, Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all of our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea. Now, I find this interesting because Corinth is predominantly a Gentile church, and yet Paul calls the ancient Israelites their fathers. Now, when they came into the church, these Greeks, they entered a new culture that traced itself back to Moses and Abraham and Noah and Adam and Eve. They had a whole new way of looking at history. He says, And all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. Now, in chapter 11, he's going to talk about the Passover and taking the bread and the wine. So, I think there's a connection here between the two.

He's saying, you know, they actually had a Passover in which this Passover lamb was killed.

They had a baptism they went through. They had a spiritual drink when water came out of the rock. They had manna. They had the spiritual food from God. And he's comparing that, then, to Christians, and that what they went through is a type of what we experience. We all were called by God, and we all went through a baptism. We went through our Red Sea. We all had a Passover applied to us. Jesus Christ's sacrifice as Passover, when you became a participant in the New Covenant, was applied to you. The victory was won. Now, that doesn't mean you can't turn back to Egypt. You can. But understand what's already happened in your life. When you were baptized, you went through the Red Sea, and it closed behind you, and God said, don't go back, because I'm going to take you here. You have the pillar of fire, which is Jesus Christ. And you will take a symbol of a spiritual drink and spiritual food during the Passover, which symbolizes the rock. It symbolizes Jesus Christ. They celebrated the ancient Israelites and the Jews to this day, celebrate the Passover in the days of un-nubbin bread as a victory when God saved Israel.

You and I are looking at the sin in our lives. We're trying to remove leavening. We're examining ourselves. That's part of this, and we should do that. I mean, we can't ignore that important part of looking at some of the ugliness and sin that's still in our lives. But understand the focal point of the Passover and days of un-nubbin bread is you stayed in the house, and the Lord passed over you because you did the Passover. You are celebrating and commemorating the fact that you went through the Red Sea when you were baptized, and that you're eating the un-nubbin bread of truth and sincerity. And of course, that's an important part of the days of un-nubbin bread. We realize that what Christ is in us, the Rock is in us, and here we are now partaking of this un-nubbin bread.

This has already happened. That part of the war has already been won. Now, when Israel left, the pillar fire and pillar that was a cloud during the day was going to take them there.

That was going to the Promised Land. All they had to do was follow it. And you know what? The story of that year is them not following it. You know, many of them died. God brought plagues upon them. They had to fight wars. Some people headed back. It just was a whole year of, but I just won the war, okay? You just have to go to the other end. The final victory is in the future, but I've already won, and some of them didn't make it. And that is the great lesson for us.

We are to celebrate the victory God has done in your life. I mean, Christ died for you.

You walked through your Red Sea. It's all personal between you and God and between you and Jesus Christ. And now we just have to follow. We have to follow until the final victory is achieved. The final victory. Let's go to Romans chapter 6. I'm going to read this from the new international version. Romans chapter 6. And let's start at verse 16. I just used the new international version just because it's a little easier to read here. It has the same message as the King James. Let's start in, as I said, verse 16. Let me find verse 16 here. Now, he's writing to the church. Paul's writing to the church. Don't you know that when you offer yourselves as someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey? I mean, if you go sell yourself into indentured servitude, you're a slave. That's the person you've sold yourself to.

Whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness. So the questions he's asking here is, are you still in bondage in Egypt? Are you out of bondage headed towards the promised land? I mean, if you want to use the two events and put them together, that's what he's asking them. Are you still a slave, or are you now a slave of God? A slave of God is a good thing. Do you know what slaves to God become? Children of God. They become part of the family. The whole relationship changes. So are we slaves to his righteousness? Because everybody serves somebody, right? We're either serving Satan or we're serving God.

But thanks be to God, this is verse 17, that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and become slaves to righteousness. So the bondage we are in has been set free, but it doesn't feel that way. We still feel like we are carrying around, and we are sometimes, the chains of our slavery. We still feel like we're carrying around the chains of our slavery. You know, we're still shackled. But why are we? Because he says, I put this in human terms, because you're weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things that you're now ashamed of? Those things result in death. But now that you've been set free from sin, you've become slaves to God. And benefit you reap leads to holiness. And the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. You and I have been called out of that slavery, that bondage that we were in. The problem is, is that God comes into our lives and He takes the locks. Think of a person that just covered with chains, heavy chains, feet shackled, hand shackled together, and so chained up they can just barely move and shuffle. That's us. That's what sin had us, just wrapped in chains. And God comes along and through Christ, He takes a key and He opens the locks and He says, you are free. And what we have to realize when He opens the locks and your hands are free, you and I have to pull the chains off. We're free. Just pull the chains off. How much of our lives are because we're still carrying the chains of our past sins, our past lives, our past values. We're still chained up in them and we're shuffling along through the desert towards the Promised Land not keeping up and we can't figure out why. I used to be a slave. I'd rather go back and be a slave. It was easier to be a slave. No, you're carrying your chains with you because you don't recognize the victory that happened when you went through the Passover and went through the Red Sea and now where God is taking you. You don't recognize who you are. You're a free person, free to keep the law, free from the breaking of the law because the chains are coming off. This is part of our lives as we head towards the Promised Land because you could take the Israelite out of Egyptian slavery.

You couldn't take the slave out of the Israelite. In their minds, they were still slaves. Slaves of their own desires, slaves of their own way of thinking and feeling, and they couldn't break out of being this slave. You and I have been set free.

The chains that are on us are simply because we haven't taken them off. And part of it is we become comfortable. Part of us likes being a slave. Somebody else takes care of us, right? Somebody else does things for us. We don't have to make decisions. We don't have to struggle and do the hard stuff for ourselves because the site master tells us what to do. And the Israelites couldn't get the slave out of them. They struggled on what it was to be a free people moving towards the Promised Land, obeying the laws of God because they were good for them instead of being forced into the slavery. It's time as we approach the Passover to look at our lives and not say, oh, I'm not worthy of the Passover. It's to look at our lives and say, what chains am I still carrying that are keeping me from being totally honest, that are keeping me from having total faith, that are keeping me from loving my husband or wife the way I should, that are keeping me from, and just fill in the blank, that are keeping me being locked in on material things instead of spiritual things, that are keeping me from loving my neighbor, that are keeping me from practicing true religion and taking care of the widow and the fatherless. What is keeping me back? What sin do I have? What lust, what hatred, what jealousy that I'm holding on to? What chains am I wrapped in? And God already took the lock off. The lock is already gone. And we have to go to God and have Him help unwrap us from the chains.

But how many chains are we holding on to? Hebrews 2. Hebrews 2.

I did read this last year when I gave a sermon, basically, on this same subject. 2. Inasmuch then as children, that's us, have foretaken of flesh and blood, he himself, that's Christ, likewise shared in the same, that through death he might destroy him who had power of death, that is the devil, and release those through fear of death were all their lifetimes subject to bondage. 3. Sin, which causes death, Satan, who is the taskmaster and death itself. The three things that we are slaves to. Well, Satan's not our taskmaster anymore. Only if we let him be.

4. Sin is something God's removing from us. And death? Well, we can look ahead and say, well, there is a life that God is preparing for us ahead of time in the promised land. 5. The victory of Christ must be center of our lives.

Because it's not a victory we did, it's what He did. And that we must participate to make it to the promised land. Just like we had to put the blood on our doorposts, right? You had to accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. You had to accept Him as the Passover. And we just did that baptism. It was sort of a funny situation. Miss Neely was being baptized by John Paul Jones. Both of them have been basically isolated. Mr. Fred Keller stood off about eight feet in one direction, and I was off at eight feet in another direction. And he read some scriptures. I gave a prayer, and Mr. Jones baptized her. A little different than we normally do a baptism. But she had reached the point where she needed to go through her Red Sea. She had accepted her Passover land. She had put the—she wanted that blood put on her doorpost. She wanted forgiveness from God, and she wanted Him to free her from Egypt. And that's what she went through. She just went through it. You went through it. I went through it. And now we're on that journey. So how do we keep that victory in sight? And that's what I want to do here with the time I have left. How do we keep the victory in sight? Because we can forget about that we're living in a time where we're winning because we forget the past victory. We forget the slavery and how terrible it is. And somehow we're still attracted to it. We're still attracted to the world. We're still attracted to Egypt. So we forget, no, we've left that behind. You can't get back across the Red Sea. That's why if you and I go back, we can end up committing the unpardonable sin. Are you going to swim the Red Sea? You end up back in slavery at best. You end up in death is what you end up in. So we've got to move forward. How do we keep the past victory and the future final victory? How do we keep these things center in our lives as we move from one to the other? Because that's what your life is. It's a journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. This is what we're going through. This is what these days are all about. Well, first of all, you have to believe in God's victory in your life. You really have to believe in the Passover who is Jesus Christ. You have to believe that that sacrifice was for you. It was applied to you and that God looks at you and says, you accept that sacrifice, and now you repent. You have faith, and that means you put the blood on your door post. And God says, you are forgiven. And because you are forgiven, even though you're carrying some chains with you, God's going to keep taking those chains off. He's going to help you take those chains off. We still have some sin. That's why we have to do the Passover every year. It reminds us. We still carry some sin. But little by little, that sin is being removed from us. And as it's being removed, we're getting stronger as we move towards the Promised Land, not weaker. We're getting physically weaker because you get older and older as you get towards the Promised Land.

But that spiritual manna we take is giving us everything we need. That blood we drink, these symbols of what we do, the bread and the wine, is ingesting into our minds everything we need to get across the desert. There's nothing else we need. The water, the manna, you can see where these analogies all fit together. The blood and the wine and the bread, the water, the manna, they all fit together to show what God's doing in our lives. Now, to really keep this victory in mind, there's a number of things we have to do. First, we have to, and this is this point one, believe in God's victory in your life now. That there's already a victory that's taken place and you're moving towards the final victory. And there's sort of some sub-points under that. And one is, refuse to pick up the old chains. Don't go back to the past. You know, some sins, some problems are so obvious. And, you know, I've talked to somebody that's maybe an alcoholic or we're a drug addict and they'll say, I wanted to drink today. I had some troubles. I couldn't stand what was going on, but I didn't. And now it's 30 years. You know, the chains, you know, it's like we keep wanting to pick up the chains and carry them a little bit. That's all we're trying to do. Let me put some chains on me today. And every once in a while we do, but we need to learn to refuse to wrap ourselves in chains again, to keep close to our God, to look at that pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud and stay focused on God, not focused on everything else. And remember, as I said at the beginning, it's not just the negatives of life. Sometimes it's the positive life, positives of life that we can focus in so much. Successes, wealth, good things, we focus in on that so much that God isn't the center. You know, we're wandering around in the desert having a good time and then realize, where is that pillar of cloud I used to follow?

What happened to it? Where's the rest of the Israelites? I've wandered away. I don't even know where I am. And it wasn't because of bad things. Sometimes it's because of good things. We have to stay focused. Also, refuse the subtle beckoning of Pharaoh to come back. Come back. Come back. Remember when you come back? You're not living in a tent. You're living in a stone house. I mean, it wasn't a great stone house, but it was at least it didn't leak when it rained. And remember how it was nice you could go down to the Nile River and get some fish every once in a while? I mean, all you've eaten is manna for six weeks. You could have a nice big chunk of roasted fish for lunch. You know, remember that? Remember the beer? The Egyptians made beer.

In fact, one of the things you paid slaves in was beer. So remember the beer? What do you got out here? You know, there's not even you get to make anything out here. You're out in the desert. Just putting a nice glass of beer be good right now. And there's this whispering from Pharaoh. We got to realize some Satan's whispering to us all the time. Come on back. It's really better back here. It's not. You know it's not. As soon as you put your focus on that cloud, on that pillar, you realize, I don't want to go back there. I'm going here. But there's always this beckoning. We have to refuse that. And that means that we have to keep focus so that we follow the pillar of fire. We're following Christ as He's leading us to His Father's kingdom. We have to stay focused.

The second point. So we have to really believe in that victory as we have to prepare for the final victory. It's not just going to happen. We got to get there. There's preparation. There's work involved. Just like they had to walk. You and I are walking towards the Kingdom of God. And that final victory takes work and preparation. Go to Ezra 6. This is a very interesting story in the book of Ezra. It's the Jews who had gone into captivity, Babylonian captivity, and they were coming back. They were coming back to Judea. And when they did, they began to obey God more. They began to keep the Holy Days. In verse 19 of Ezra 6, "...and the descendants of the captivity kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month. For the priests and the Levites had purified themselves, all of them were richly clean. And they slaughtered the Passover." If you notice, the word lambs is in italics because Passover just meant the lamb. Just like Passover means Jesus Christ. It's an event, yes. It's a ceremony, yes. It's a lamb, yes. But all those things picture a person, the Son of God. "...and they slaughtered the Passover for all the descendants of the captivity, for their brother and the priests and for themselves. Then the children of Israel, who had returned from captivity, ate together with all who had separated themselves from the filth of the nations of the land in order to seek the God of Israel. And they kept the feasts of unleavened bread seven days with joy." With joy! What were they doing during those Passover and seven days?

Well, their children were saying, why do we do this? And they were saying, because we remember when years and centuries before, God, our God, brought your forefathers out of Egypt, and through the Red Sea, through the Passover, the slaying of the Passover, and the eating of the Passover. And so here we are, slaying the Passover, eating the Passover, taking leavening out, keeping these seven days, because we're remembering... Remember what he told them in Exodus? So you will remember the strength of the Lord. When you and I try to create our own salvation, we can't. Because you can't open the Red Sea. You can't do it. And you don't even know the direction of the Promised Land.

I don't either. I can't open the Red Sea. I can't get out of slavery on my own. I can't overthrow Pharaoh. I can't build an army and overthrow Egypt. I don't know how to get across the Sinai. I don't know what direction to go in. I don't know where the water is. I can't produce the spiritual food that I need. Because if I don't have that spiritual food, I won't make it.

Where's that all come from? In your life, that's happening right now. Today on the Sabbath day, you're receiving manna from God. Every time you open your Bible, you're receiving manna from God.

Every time you're getting this water and the spiritual food, the spiritual drink, it's a miracle what he's doing in your life. Because he's taking you someplace. You know, I can't live a half-hearted, tepid Christian life. You can't just sort of wander around the desert. I'm free now. I'm just going to wander around the desert. You'll be lost in the desert. We have to prepare ourselves daily, be involved in seeking God. Notice when it says it, they were going to seek God during the days of 11 bread. Seek God during the days of 11 bread. And some of you do have a little extra time because of the isolation of the coronavirus and the quarantine that we're trying to keep. Take that extra time and spend some extra time in the Bible. Spend some extra time in prayer. Reach out to seek God during this time period.

Now, the third point I want to make is don't allow unimportant distractions to keep you from the final victory. Unimportant distractions. You have to understand you can't go back and you can't wander around the desert. You have to keep moving. You have no choice! What choice do you really have? It's to die! You know, Winston Churchill, in the last few years I've become sort of interested in Winston Churchill. I never studied him much throughout my life, but he is a fascinating man. He's a very complex man, but he was a genius at using the English language. He was an amazing writer and amazing speech giver because of the way he used the language. You know, if you listen to his speeches, you think, well that's not a very dynamic speaker. And, you know, in many ways he wasn't. But when you listen to the words, you become mesmerized. He gave a speech towards the beginning of the Second World War. And I want to read just a little part of this speech here. He says, we have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before, as many, many have before us, many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. And you ask, what is our policy?

And I will say it is to wage war by sea, land, and air with all of our might and with all of the strength that God can give us, to wage war against a monster's tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalog of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I answer in one word, victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terror. Victory, however long and hard the road may be. For without victory, there is no survival. If you can imagine facing the total destruction of civilization, and one man stands up and galvanizes the Western world, with speeches like that. You know, that, when I read that, I thought, that's the Christian way of life. What is our policy? Our policy is to follow that pillar to the Promised Land. It's a simple policy.

Do what God says. Follow God. Seek God. Be close to God and follow it. That's our policy. What's our aim? Victory! Because God says you get there, He's going to do the victory. He did the first victory. He's doing a miracle every day in your life, and He's going to get there, and you have to believe in that so much. You don't get distracted by all the other things. We can't become distracted from the final victory.

It has to be real to us. We have to have faith in it. It is a victory.

Paul said it this way. Philippians 3.

Philippians 3. Paul could be an eloquent writer. I can't imagine what it must have been in Greek. It must have been very eloquent in Greek. But in Philippians 3 verse 12, he's talking about where God's taking him here. He's looking to that Promised Land.

He says, Interesting way of putting that. I'm going to lay hold of something because Christ has already laid hold of me. There's something out there I'm going to go grab hold of. Why? Because He's grabbed hold of me. He's pulling me there. He saw him as his pillar of fire. He saw him as the pillar of cloud. He's got a hold of me. He's pulling me. And I'm going there because I'm going to grab hold of what he has for me. He says, Brother, and I do not count myself to have apprehended. But one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.

This time of the year is for us to forget Egypt and forget our past sins because we've already had been passed over. We have already gone through the Red Sea. It's to let go of all that.

God doesn't care about your Egyptian past anymore. He took you out of it.

He's tired of us carrying our chains around. He wants us to let him go. We'll move a little quicker towards the promise land. And Paul finishes here in verse 14.

I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God, due Christ Jesus. That's an amazing couple of verses. I press. I force. I go.

Victory is all there is. Without victory, there's no survival.

As I said, that speech from Winston Churchill could very much be the speech for Christian soldiers, you know, the onward Christian soldiers. We're in a spiritual battle.

That could be our words on what God is doing with us. And then our last point, don't allow spiritual fatigue to overwhelm you. We can get, you know, just sort of tired of the daily struggle sometimes. I read a story once about a man who was suffering from exhaustion and hypertension. And his doctor said, you need to take a vacation, not a vacation to go have fun. You know, don't go to Disney World. What you need to do is take a vacation where you get away from it all. So he actually went to Alaska where he watched, he went out and hiked in the wilderness and camped in the wilderness. And he was watching the salmon try to go up river to spawn. And he noticed something. Now, you know, I don't know if this is scientifically correct, but this is the conclusion he came from. Certain of the salmon would just keep fighting to go up the the rapids and get up, you know, where they were going. Many, of course, salmon die along the way. They don't make it. They become so exhausted they die. Others would take areas and go over and rest, and then take the next rapid, and then rest, and then take the next rapid. And he said it changed his life. He realized that's what he was doing. Because he was going to have a physical, emotional breakdown. That's why the doctor said he had to go out for a while, because of the way he was living his life. Constantly working, constantly pushing forward, constantly pursuing his own goals.

And you know what? He realized, wait a minute, it's not always my goals. I need to rest. Spiritually, you and I have to rest more. We can't just keep pursuing our own goals, because they may be leading us out across the desert, away from the direction we're supposed to go in. We may not be headed towards, you know, when they left Egypt, they had to go due east to the Promised Land. We don't want to go north or south, because eventually you're not even, or you sure don't want to go back. We have to stay focused. You and I need time for spiritual rest.

That's why God gave us the Sabbath. The Sabbath makes us stop. And if you spend your time on the Sabbath, pursuing all your, you know, too much entertainment on the Sabbath, if you spend your Sabbath spending the whole time worrying about your business, worrying about what's happening in politics, you know, worrying about all these things we have no control over, you know, the Pharaoh controls the world politics. Pharaoh controls Egypt. We're leaving that. We're leaving Egypt. Now this time we're supposed to refocus in on, oh yes, I know where I'm going, and I know where I've been, which came out in the sermonette. I know where I've been, and I know where I'm going. Passover and Holy Days, spring Holy Days, are very important to doing that because it's the strength of the Lord that brought them out. And it's the strength of God that's brought you out of Egypt, your spiritual Egypt. So the four points we looked at. When we look at what we must do to keep this victory in mind, first of all, we believe in the victory.

You must believe in it. You believe the victory was taking place in your past. You now, having miracles in your life as God has taken you towards the future. The final victory, you believe in it.

Christ is returning. Secondly, you're preparing for that victory every day. You're taking those chains off. Every chain that comes off, the more free you become. And the more, the easier it is to move towards and follow that pillar of cloud and pillar of fire. Don't allow unimportant distractions to, you know, just let the victory slip away. This is a lifetime of commitment to final victory. It's a lifetime where you say, what is my, you know, what's my policy here? My policy is fighting till I get there. And what's my aim? I'm going to get there. Victory is nothing. Without victory, there is no survival. That's the Christian life. But God does the victory. We just follow.

And then set aside time for spiritual renewal. If you don't have that in your life, we all wear out. We will spiritually wear out. The Passover is a celebration. It's a very solemn time because we remember who the Passover is and what he went through for us. It's a solemn time.

But it's also a time of celebration. So when you go through those verses that we read at the beginning to examine yourself and you say, look at all these chains. I am not worthy to keep the Passover. I want you to remember something. The locks have already been taken off. You and I are carrying chains that we don't have to. God turned the key, took the lock off, and said, take your chains off. And we won't. Shed the chains. It is only by God's strength that we keep the Passover. It's only by God's strength that we understand and keep the days of Unleavened Bread. This year, even in this time of isolation, remember who does it. Remember why you're doing it. You're doing it because of our great God and because of our great brother, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.