Preparing for the Passover

The Apostle Paul, in writing 1 Corinthians, tells the Corinthian church, gives him instructions on how to keep the Feast of the Love and Bread in the Passover. He actually tells them, keep the Feast. And when you read through 1 Corinthians, you know exactly what he's talking about.

There have been many attempts to spiritualize that away, that he really didn't mean to keep the Feast, especially since he's writing to a church that is predominantly Gentile. But he meant exactly what he wrote. He told this Gentile church to keep the Feast. And there's a part of these instructions that have been of real stress for many people over the years. And I have discussions with this part of these instructions with people almost every year. 1 Corinthians 11. So let's go to 1 Corinthians 11. And let's start at verse 27.

He's talking here about the elements of the Passover. Verse 27, he says, What does it mean to examine ourselves before the Passover, so that we are not judged by God? What does it mean to partake of the Passover in an unworthy manner? So we're talking about keeping the Passover in an unworthy manner, and we're talking about examining ourselves so that we keep it in a worthy manner.

Now, the commander is to do it. People struggle many times. Someone will call me and say, you know, can we talk? We'll sit and talk. I don't think I'd keep the Passover this year. I've been thinking about my sins over the last year, and I'm just so devastated by it, and I just don't think I can keep it this year. Or I'll be keeping it in an unworthy manner. People struggle with this a lot. What does it mean to even examine ourselves? Does it mean that we are to find up, to come into the Passover with a feeling of unworthiness and hopelessness?

What does this mean? And what does removing leavening, the physical act of removing leavening, have to do with this whole process also? Well, today we're going to look at four spiritual concepts. We need, and I really want to stress this, we need to be meditating on these things. We need to be praying about these things. And we need to be focusing our Bible study over the next week on what we're going to talk about today.

You need to focus all your spiritual energies, and believe me, this happens before the Passover every year. People used to say this, and people said, well, that can't be true. It's true. It is amazing how many people, the month before the Passover, their lives get so complicated, start to unravel. They have more problems than any other time of the year.

And part of it is, Satan doesn't want you to do this. Satan does not want you to do this. Because the power of what's happening in your life, he can't fight. So he wants to keep you from receiving that power. He wants to keep you from getting the help that you can get from God.

So he doesn't want you to keep the Passover. So I encourage you to take these four points, write them down, and send to your energies every day, your prayer life, your study life, your meditation life. And meditation is something we don't do a lot because of our hectic schedules. We can't think about God and His way and His purpose and our lives, but our priorities are wrong.

There's something we have to remove from our lives. Now, the first one, actually, I'm really thankful for Mr. Corbin because this sermon started with like seven points, which always like seven points. It seems so perfect. But of course, almost no sermon can have seven points, you know, unless you're just zipping through this stuff.

So what I did was I kept cutting and cutting and cutting. I ended up with four points. And then the first point I said, wow, I really can't spend much time here. I'm so glad because what he did was cover what I wanted to cover.

He filled in all the gaps that I took out. But the first point, which, you know, we didn't plan this. I didn't know what he was speaking on. Our first point, and some of these are going to seem rather obvious, but that's the point of the Holy Days.

The refocus is right in on what God is doing. The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread reminds us of our sinful nature and our need for a life of continual, humble repentance before God. Let me say that again. The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread reminds us of our sinful nature and our need for a life of continual repentance before God. As Mr. Corman said, you don't repent once. The greatest danger sometimes we face as Christians is our own arrogance and our lack of humility before God.

What the Passover does is it brings us back into a humble repentance before God that is supposed to be part of our lives all the time. But this really reminds us of this. Because it reminds us...what's the old saying? You can't dance fast enough. The old saying was, if you can press a girl if you dance, well, you can't dance fast enough to do it.

We can't dance fast enough to get God to say, wow, I've been pressed with that. And this brings us back to that remembrance of what it is to be before a holy God. And one of the things we do that is so common at this time period, and what we're supposed to do, is we remove physical leavening from our homes.

Now, ancient Israel did this. Remember, last year I went through types. And I discussed the types of the Passover between the Old Covenant, New Covenant, and the types of the days of the bread between the Old Covenant, New Covenant. So let me talk about the types here. The Israelites removed leavening to symbolize they had to leave Egypt in haste. They had to relieve their bondage quickly. And it was a symbol of that. And in the Jewish community today, they will eat on leavened bread on the evening of the 15th or the first day of the Hebrew calendar as a symbol of relieving Egypt quickly.

We still commemorate that. But that isn't the center focus of our keeping of the Passover. Because remember, the Old Testament is the type of the greater reality. It is the type of the greater. So we honor that as what God did in that historical event. But the greater reality is what we're actually commemorating. We take that leavening out as a symbol of God's deliverance from sin. Let's go to 1 Corinthians here. Leave a marker in 1 Corinthians 11, because we'll come back. But let's go to 1 Corinthians 5.

Verse 6. He is chastising the Corinthian church. Someday I'd like to do a whole series of sermons on 1 Corinthians. It is the most chastising of all passages in the New Testament. The other thing stronger is when Jesus says, He'll say, But we did all these things in your name, and He'll say, I don't know you. That's a passage that scares me. But 1 Corinthians is the entire letter of, you people have really got this messed up.

And He just takes the church in Corinth and corrects them over and over again. But notice where 6, your glorying is not good. In other words, they had an arrogance to them, and they glorified in their knowledge. He talks in this same book about knowledge. You have such knowledge, but that knowledge isn't translating into lifestyle. And it isn't translating into relationship with God.

Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Now, since this is it, He's doing this, He's giving this letter at the days of unleavened bread time. You know, this would have had a powerful statement, because these were Gentiles keeping the days of the leavened bread. Therefore, purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump. Now, here He's comparing leavening to something that happens in our lives. Not just taking out pieces of bread from your house.

This is the purpose of the physical ritual, is to remind us of this reality. Therefore, purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. Now, that's interesting. Get rid of any sin you have, because you're already unleavened. We're going to talk about this in a minute. God's already removing sin from you. So, get rid of any sin that comes along. And here's why. For indeed, Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, those who, and these were people who had already come into the church, they had accepted Christ as their Savior.

They accepted God as the only God. Now, they were coming out of paganism. If you read 1 Corinthians, they had all kinds of pagan problems. They were bringing pagan celebrations with Him, and He would say, Get rid of all this pagan stuff. Let's center right in on what God is doing. And He's teaching them. One way He's teaching this is through the days of 11 bread.

He says, Therefore, let us keep the feast. So He tells them to keep this feast, Passover, days of 11 bread. Not with the old 11, nor with the 11 of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Now, there's a whole sermon in that verse 8 right there. The old 11, He talks about in this unleavened state that we're supposed to be, which is sincerity and truth.

Maybe next year I'll have time to go through that. But here we see that spiritually something has to happen. As we prepare for the days of 11 bread, we should remove physical leavening. Yes, we should do that. My wife and I were just talking this morning about... She said, Well, I'm going to have to do this because I know there's leavening in this cabinet and there's leavening in the pantry. And I'm going to have to do this, that, and the other. And I said, Yeah, you know the thing I hate, the worst? We eat in the car. I find crackers in the strange...

Especially when we used to have kids. It was amazing where I could find crackers in that car. I would... I literally... I remember having a van. I had to take the seats out because, you know, where the van seats connect down in, there would be like an inch layer of cracker crumbs in the van. And then you can't suck them out, so then you try to scrape them out. They'd never make the mistake of putting water in there because then all those puff up.

And now you have giant crumbs, they're all puffed up and mushy, and then you can't get them out. Have you ever done that? It's just horrible. Anyways, enough of that. So we are to remove this leavening. But listen, though, I'm about to say, because we are commanded to do that, and we should do it. And I want you women to especially listen to this. To remove the physical leavening from your homes and not remove the spiritual leavening is a meaningless ritual.

I'm not saying we're not do the other. But you have to be careful, you know, as my wife and I were talking about this, she used to do the cleaning for the Days of Love and Bread was her spring cleaning. So what happened is she'd be exhausted going into the Days of Love and Bread because she had spent hours, you know, she'd go to work during the day, come home and spend hours every night. It'd be like, Kim, there's no leavening in the garage, but it does not matter. Spring cleaning. Okay, spring cleaning is good, but understand, removing leavening and spring cleaning are two different things.

Removing leavening is removing leavening. Now, you know, yes, you've got a vacuum, yes, you've got to do certain things. You know, I'll try to help her. You know, I clean out my office. She usually helps them. But think about it, ladies. Understand the difference. Search and clean for leavening. Scrubbing the outside window seals is not searching for leavening. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't do that. I'm just saying that's not part of what our command is. Now, I've said that to the ladies. Now, let me say something to the men. Unless your wife is the only one with sin, you better be helping out.

If she's the only one who delevins, I get an email from someone recently about getting together, and he wrote back, and said, I can't get together with you this week because my wife is deleavening my life. And it was a joke, but I understood what he was saying. She's spending the week deleavening the house. Now, we should deleaven. Please understand. I'm not saying we should not. What I'm saying is we must understand the spiritual importance. And if you do not get your time in spiritually preparing for the days of 11 bread, if this week is spent, like I said, you work all day and you come home, you spend three hours a night every day cleaning your house, but you have no time before God. You have no time going through what we're going to talk about today. You have no time in prayer and Bible study and meditation and maybe a day of fasting, which is really good before the days of 11 bread. If you have no time for that, you've done a ritual, but you know rituals without spiritual purpose is rather meaningless. You have a nice clean house, but you're not going into the Passover in a worthy manner. We have to be spiritually prepared for this. And over the years, I've seen so many people physically prepared and not spiritually prepared at all. Your children should be involved in the 11-ing. What do they do in the Jewish world? It's sort of interesting. They hide 11-ing on the day before the first day of 11-bread. And then the children have to go to the house and fight it so they can throw away 11-ing. Now that I say we should do that, I'm just saying, but the idea is everybody's involved with this 11-ing process. Everybody's involved. So remember, this is a spiritual reason. And we have to zero in on that spiritual reason. Because if we don't, let's go back to 1 Corinthians 11. Verse 31, we read this. So this is the context of examining yourself to take the bread of the wine. If we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. That when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord that we may not be condemned with the world. He says, if we examine ourselves and we go through this process of, yes, repentance, humble repentance, looking at our lives, looking at where we're not complete yet, asking God's forgiveness, then where God doesn't have to judge us, we judge ourselves. But the interesting thing is, if we don't do this, he says God has to chasten us so that we won't be judged with the world. So if we don't do this, God is going to bring some kind of correction into our lives. We're told he will. So once again, spring cleaning isn't what's important this week. Removing leavening is what's important. And spiritually then, applying that to your life is what's important. So that we are not condemned with the world. So that first point is that the Passover in the Feast of Unleavened Bread reminds us of our sinful nature and our need of a life of continual, humble repentance before God.

I almost started to do a whole sermon on that, but I said, no, I want to... This is an overview sermon where we're going to look at a bigger concept and then you have to break it down into the finer details in your life. The second point is that the Passover in the Feast of Unleavened Bread helps us focus on God's forgiveness and salvation.

This isn't a time of hopelessness. It's the opposite. So many times if we examine ourselves and we say, oh, I'm not worthy to do this, none of us are worthy of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. There hasn't been one human being in the history of humanity worthy. That includes the Apostle Paul, Moses, Mary, the mother of Jesus. Nobody was worthy of his sacrifice. So that's not the point here. It's coming in with that humble, repentant attitude so that we don't do it in an unworthy manner. Here in 1 Corinthians, let's look at verse 23. This is very interesting because these are the only instructions we have concerning this ceremony outside of the Gospels in the New Testament. Paul says, for I receive from the Lord. So he says, I was taught this personally, because remember he wasn't at that Passover instituted by Jesus. He wasn't there. But he was taught personally by Jesus later in his life. For I received from the Lord, that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the same night, he brings us into a focus here, for the same night, in which he was betrayed, took bread. When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, Take eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. A quote from the Gospels. In the same manner, he also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. Or as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes. What's very interesting about this passage is, if you look at when Paul wrote and when the Gospels were probably written and published, he wrote this before any of the Gospel accounts were written.

So, in other words, he knew exactly what was said that night. He was told exactly what was said.

So, he focuses this in on that night, and he says that we're to do this in remembrance of him when he took this cup after supper, and we're to proclaim the Lord's death. At the Passover ceremony, of course, we'll talk about how Jesus, without his sacrifice for our sins, were lost. There's no way out of this mess. This is how we are reconciled to God. So, when we look at and we do the self-examination, it leads us back to this. When we take that bread, we take that wine, we are remembering his death so that we can live, so that we can be forgiven. There should be, through the Passover, the Days of Love and Bread, a great joy because we realize we are forgiven. We're not perfect yet, but we are forgiven. That's why we do it. To not take the Passover is a serious issue. It is a serious issue. Because this reminds us, no, you are forgiven.

As we always talk about during the Days of Love and Bread, we rehearse these things. We have been freed from Egypt. Remember when I went through the types last year, and we've gone through the Red Sea, which is a type of baptism. We're in the wilderness headed towards the Promised Land. But we've already, you know, the bonds of Egypt have already been broken.

We're already out of Egypt. It's just getting Egypt out of us. That's the problem. That's the difficulty of getting Egypt out of us. But we're already out of Egypt, for God is taking us.

So the idea, the understanding that we need to focus on God's forgiveness and salvation. The Day of Passover and the Feast of Love and Bread is a great release of our bondage. You notice how many times, and people talk about this, there's this stress before Passover. And then after Passover, sometimes it's just all gone. What happens here? In this examination and this realization of our sinful nature. And now we have to be humbled. This is a humbling process. That's why it's so dangerous just to rush into the Passover. Have you ever rushed into the Passover season? I've done this a couple times in my life. It's like, whoa, Passover's in two days and I haven't even thought about it. It's hard to do down as a minister, but before I came into ministry, right? Oh, no! I've been so busy, I didn't even thought Passover was coming up.

So you go into the Passover not truly prepared, and you know you're not truly prepared.

We have to have that humble, repentant attitude. And what we do these days shows us God is with us. God is giving us salvation.

God is freeing us from the bondage of sin.

So I want to stress that there is supposed to be great joy in these days, including the Passover itself. I don't know about you, but there's times after the Passover, I just feel so relieved. I almost feel exhausted. I just feel so relieved.

Because, yes, God is taking care of me in spite of myself.

Which brings us to our third point, and this is something that many times we actually miss in the last two points. Sometimes aren't as obvious, maybe, as the first two.

The Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread remind Christians of the covenant God has made with us.

This is all about the covenant. That's why I really believe to truly understand the depth of the new covenant. The Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, while all the Holy Days, are such important tools in understanding it.

By not doing these things, we don't fully understand the new covenant. I mean, look at what we just read here. Let's go back up to verse 25, where Paul says, In this same manner he took the cup Jesus did, after supper sang, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, this do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

Why are we so particular about how we keep the Passover? And we're pretty particular about it. People come early. People are there early, and they're very quiet. And there's not a lot of talking. I mean, there's some talking, but there's not a lot of talking. And we have this very serious service. Well, first of all, look what it says here in verse 26, remember? For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death. We are there to commemorate His death as our substitute. So we're very serious about this.

The Old Testament prophesied over and over again that there would be a new covenant. Jesus on that night said, this is it, folks. This is it. This is the new covenant. This is the next step in God's plan of salvation.

And so now there can be forgiveness of sin. That's prophesied in Deuteronomy, it's prophesied in Ezekiel, it's prophesied in Jeremiah, it's prophesied in Isaiah. A new covenant, a new agreement, not just with Israel, but this covenant would be for all humanity. This is for everybody. All humanity.

When we keep the Passover, why do we do it when we do it? You know, I know of a church. I was in email with the pastor of a church recently because of some hall issues. And on Palm Sunday, after their services in the morning, they have a seder, a seder meal. And so he, you know, he wrote back, it's wonderful that you keep the Passover. It's wonderful that you keep the Passover. On Sunday morning, we'll do our services, then we'll have a seder meal. That night, we will do our Passover services, because it just happens this year that Passover falls on Palm Sunday.

I get right back and explain it. I just said, great, wonderful, you know.

But why is it we're so particular about what we do?

Why is it that we don't do it the next night, when the Jews are keeping the Passover? You know, that can be a very complicated subject. People go through the Old Testament and try to figure out the chronology of it. But there's only two things you have to remember. This is it. To me, these things are so simple. I don't understand the arguments. But then I'm a simple person, as you know. One, the fourteenth of the first day of the Hebrew calendar is the Passover. That means from sundown to sundown is the Passover. In the Old Testament, it's a day, and it's a sacrifice, and it's a ceremony. It's all those things. In the New Testament, the Passover is Jesus Christ. We just read Paul say, Christ our Passover. So the whole Passover day in the Old Testament was a type of this person. And this person came and said, take, eat this. On, go read Matthew, Mark, Luke. He said, go prepare the Passover so we may keep the Passover. And he says, I'm really excited to keep this Passover with you. If Jesus Christ said, this is the Passover, that's good enough for me because He is the Passover. So I have no problem with it. And that's why we do it when we do it. I don't think you need any other reason.

We keep the Passover when we did it because He said, this is the Passover and I am the Passover, and this is how my followers will do it. And that's why we do what we do. And that's why we're so particular about doing the way we do it. It's because we want to follow as much as we can. We can't do it exactly like He did. There's been arguments. People get caught up in the sermon. How much alcohol should be in the wine?

We had no idea what percentage of alcohol was in the wine in the first century. I could almost guarantee you, though, from some research I've done, it was a whole lot less alcohol content than we have in our wine today. Our wine content today could be almost brandy.

I don't know. But people argue about that. It has to be so much alcohol to be legitimate.

Now, it doesn't. It just has to be wine. It can't be grape juice. It has to be wine.

And how much alcohol is in it is not the issue.

I remember a minister years ago saying, it has to be burgundy. Burgundy comes from France. He does realize in the first century there was no France. But I don't know.

So we meet on that night.

And on that night, we take the bread and the wine.

We go through all the Scriptures that set up why he did it that way. And we go through an awful lot of the section of the end of John there, where he spoke. There's about five chapters where he talked to his disciples on that night. I encourage all of you to read John 13 through 17. To read all of that in preparation for the Passover.

Whatever we do on the night of the 15th, it is basically our tradition. What we do on the night of the 14th is because it's what Jesus did. There's a big difference. There's a big difference between tradition and following the example of Jesus Christ.

Now, we're commemorating the New Covenant.

How do we know a person has become a participant in the New Covenant?

Well, obviously, they've repented, right? They've accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior. They accepted God as their Father, as their God. There's a whole set of things they've had to go through. But a covenant in the Old Testament—one of these days, whenever I get through all the sermons I want to give, I want to give a whole series of sermons on the covenants. How a covenant was even ratified in the Old Testament is fascinating. You had to split a lamb. I mean, in fact, the killing of the lamb for the Passover is very interesting, because it's not done exactly like a sacrifice in the temple. It's done more like the sacrifice for a covenant.

So a covenant was made in the Old Testament through blood and through some ceremony, an outward expression of this covenant. You know, today, if you make a deal with somebody at work, don't you shake hands? Or, like, I heard somebody this week to come over, I have some old dead trees, and I've gotten wise at age 60. I looked up there and said, I can cut those. I get my son-in-law out there, we'll cut all those dead limbs down. And I stood there and I looked at it and said, that's going to be 25 feet in the air. And when I was 30, I would do it. And I'm wise now. Besides, my knees hurt all the time and I'm not sure I want to go up there. So I heard some guy come up and cut down all the dead limbs. But afterwards, he quoted a price, we went out, he marked the trees out, he cut down, we went there and he said, okay, this is what it will cost, and I signed it. When I signed that, I made a covenant. Because the next day, another tree-trimmer called me, which was the tree-trimmer I really wanted. And he said, but they said, hey, we can't get there for weeks. He said, hey, things have changed, we can get there. And I said, I'm sorry, I already agreed with somebody else. He says, I understand, no problem. Why? I made a covenant. This guy might have been cheaper, but it did not matter now. I made a covenant, I signed it. There has to be a value in a covenant. Right? Because you put your name on the line. All covenants, our covenants with God have signs.

Now, in the Old Testament, no one could take the Passover unless they were circumcised. No male could take it.

Even if you were a non-Israelite, you had to become circumcised to take the Passover. And then your family could... because that meant you weren't a Gentile anymore. You were now part of the covenant. God's covenant with Israel. Let's go to Colossians 2.

I have sometimes teenagers, especially... I believe in God, I'm here, I'm trying to obey God, why can't I do the Passover? Why can't I come and do the Passover? Why can't I come and do the Passover? It is not because you are not in a relationship with God. That's not why you can't come and do the Passover. You can watch it. But to participate in it, you had to have done something. Remember, this is the new covenant.

Just like you couldn't unless... you know, if you're a female, you had a real problem if your husband refused circumcision. You had to have a new circumcision.

Because you had now... you actually had to go out of the family structure and you had to go there by yourself. He couldn't go to the Passover because he was a circumstance.

So look at Colossians 2.9. He says, beware, Paul writes, Thus anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world.

For in him, speaking of Christ, dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are completed him, who is the head of all principality and power. In him, this statement... this statement is enormous because it fulfills a prophecy in Deuteronomy... well, and you find all throughout the prophets. But it starts in Deuteronomy where God tells ancient Israel, There will come a time, I will not circumcise you in the flesh, I will circumcise you in the heart. Now, what does that mean? Well, he says, in him, in Christ, you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of sins in the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, in which you also were raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. The circumcision of the heart is a spiritual reality. The physical manifestation of that, the physical part that says, I have made a covenant with God, is baptism, laying on of hands, and receiving God's Spirit, because there's two steps to that. So this is why it's not that we don't believe that teenagers are not valuable to God, and that they do have a relationship with God. We teach them that all the time.

But they haven't yet made this step.

And because they have not made this step, they are not full participants in the new covenant. I'm not saying you're not partial participants, but you're not full participants in the new covenant. In other words, it's not a statement of, hey, you're bad. Well, you're unworthy, just like the rest of us. I hate to tell you that, but everybody's so worthy for this, and we'll never get there until we accept that. But this is why we are so strict on this. There's a reason. There are reasons. And part of it has to do with that baptism isn't just for forgiveness of sin. It is the outward sign of the covenant. And you have to receive God's Spirit for even the next point we're going to talk about to take place. See how all this fits together through the days of Passover and the days of the love of bread.

And so what we have here is the realization that you may be under the umbrella of the new covenant, and you may be a full participant, then you have to have had... you've had to agree to the covenant. You've had to actually agree to the covenant. That's why sometimes some will say, Well, I was baptized once. I've had this happen a couple of times over the years. I haven't had it for many years like this. So I say, well, I was at a tent meeting, and they called and someone said, hey, you need to come down to be baptized. I went down and they sprinkled some water on me. Isn't that baptism? Did you repent? I think. Did you agree to your covenant with God? I don't even know what that means. Okay, let's talk about it.

Did you agree to your covenant with God?

So we're really looking at a New Testament Passover, and let's face it, this is dramatically different than what they did in the Old Testament. It was instituted by Jesus Christ that night. This is why the Passover is still commanded. The days of the Lumberbred are still commanded, but they are demonstrated by the New High Priest.

The Book of Hebrews tells us that. When we look at the Old Testament administration of these days, it was demonstrated through the Levitical priesthood.

These things still exist. They're simply demonstrated by a New High Priest, and this High Priest says, this is what they were really all about. So to do away with them is a dangerous thing.

To do away with them is a dangerous thing. Some people say, well, Jesus ate a meal that night, why don't we also eat a meal? Let's go back to 1 Corinthians 11, see what Paul has to say about this. They were having trouble with Corinth over the meal, as they were doing a sort of a common meal on the night that they were breaking the bread. So far, what we've looked at in this passage is a very focused on what he's talking about. The night Jesus was betrayed, the taking of the bread and the wine, commemorating his death. You have a commemoration or a memorial on the date, right? In some cultures, they commemorate someone's death. It's not like, well, he died, you know, it would have been two months from now, but we'll do it now.

Right? I mean, I have to admit, as a child, when my parents, I was six years old, and they said, we're not going to be keeping Christmas. I might have been seven. We're not going to be keeping Christmas anymore.

Old? You know, I really like the toys. It's great. Because all the family came over, and everybody gave me a toy.

And now I remember the Christmas tree and, you know, everything. And they said, well, we found out that Jesus wasn't born on that day.

And I still remember. I don't remember exactly what I said. I remember how I felt. What they said I said was, well, if he wasn't born on that day, why would everybody celebrate his birthday? And giving him a Christmas was easy. It seemed so stupid. If he wasn't born on that day, it's stupid to commemorate that, it's his birthday.

Now, giving up doubled ham, as I've mentioned before, what kind of church won't let you eat doubled ham? Okay, that just didn't make sense. But giving up Christmas was actually easy because I believed in Jesus and he wasn't born in. I was like, well, that was a big lie.

And I remember my parents later saying, we were so afraid. You know, my sisters were young enough, it wouldn't matter. But they said, we thought you would be so upset. And I was like, yeah. And you never said anything ever again. I didn't. Because it made no sense to my little brain.

So here we are. On the night, Paul says, he was betrayed. On the night that he did this Passover, so that's when we do it. And they took the bread and the wine. That's what we do. Why don't we take the meal? Because of these instructions here. Verse 17. Paul says, now, in giving these instructions, I do not praise you. It's very interesting. In Corinth, he had to... There's some churches he would implore them.

He said, why don't you do this? In Corinth, he had to hit them right in the nose. He had to say, look, this is what you're going to do. And if you don't do it, I'm going to show up. And I'm going to make sure you do it. And then you've got to put some people out of the church. He actually told them to put some people out of the church. Because it was such a mess, the Corinth church. He said, since you come together for the better, but not for the worse.

So when you come together, this isn't for the good of God. You come together for something that's very bad. For first of all, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And in part I believe it. For there must be factions among you that those who are approved may be recognized among you. Therefore, when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper.

For in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others. One is hungry and another is drunk. What? Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God with shame, those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise you! That's a strong statement. And then the next verse is, For I receive from the Lord, thou which I delivered also to you, that the Lord Jesus on the same night which he was betrayed took bread. You see what I mean? This is all part of that discussion. Look, your meals become nothing but a detriment to the whole spiritual part of this.

So don't come together for the meal. Come together for what Christ instituted. You know, the meal that Christ did that night would have included lamb, unleavened bread. Now, it's interesting, there was no wine commanded, by the way, in the Old Testament on that night. That's the Jewish tradition.

There was no wine commanded that night. Not me, sir. It's not wrong to have wine with a meal, but you understand what I'm saying. But what they were commanded to do, we are not commanded to eat a lamb anymore. We are commanded to eat the lamb. And the symbol of the lamb is unleavened bread and wine. It's the lamb we're talking about. The person of the Passover. So that's why we don't eat a meal. Because Paul said, come together on this night that he was betrayed and do this. Take the bread, take the wine, which we do.

We also know that in the Gospel of John, they were told to do a foot washing ceremony, which we do. And that's a whole other sermon in itself. Maybe next year I'll do a sermon on foot washing.

There's so much to cover just in the Passover, Days of Love and Bread. Like what I covered last week. What I covered last week is the core issue of the Passover. Jesus as the second Adam. That's the core thing of the Passover. So what I covered last week was just so important to understand as we approach these days. If you missed last week's sermon, is it online yet? Catch that sermon, because that information is so important. But there's so much to cover.

I don't know how many years it would take just to cover every detail. Let alone remind us of the things we should know. They're continuing in these holy days. The fourth point. Now, what do you think about this? We take the unleavened bread, right? We take the unleavened bread as a symbol at the Passover of Christ's broken body. Versus, He's instituting this new covenant. It's interesting, and that would take two sermons, just to go through the difference between the bread and the wine.

Why is it bread, or why is it wine? He could use one symbol, but He didn't. That's real important. He used two. Like I said, I'm already... I have one. I have some time. A sermon is going to go a little longer than normal, but it's still in before 12. We almost always end early, but we'll end early today, too. So there are two symbols.

But the bread is His broken body. Then we take seven days, and we eat unleavened bread. During the middle, or after the first few days of unleavened bread, Jesus is resurrected. So why would we continue to eat His broken body, celebrate His broken body? In fact, Paul said, we eat the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

So is there something important about unleavened bread during the days of unleavened bread that may be a little different than why we eat the unleavened bread of Passover? Let's go to Romans 5.

Romans 5. And verse 8. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. Now, when we talk about blood, the saving of wrath from wrath is such meaning there are purposes for the blood. But verse 10. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more. Now, being reconciled, remember, is brought back into a relationship. So we are separated from God, and God does not accept us because we are sinners. Jesus dies for us. The law now is completed, and that it's satisfied. The justice of God is satisfied. The love of God is satisfied, and we're brought into a relationship. So we're now reconciled. We can't reconcile ourselves without one or the other. You can't do this. This is why, by the way, you can come to church. You can keep the Ten Commandments. You can try to live this way of life. But if you have not repented, been baptized, and hands laid on you, if you have not received the Holy Spirit, you're not reconciled to God. And there's no salvation. Understand that. There is no salvation until this is completed through the blood of Christ.

God established a series of things we do in this. That's why this idea that the little tract says, just believe in Jesus, He comes into your heart, say the sinner's prayer, and you now receive salvation, is wrong. That's not what this is about. This is about a relationship with God. And it starts with, you and I can't have it unless He institutes it, and He institutes it through the blood of Jesus Christ. There's no way for you and I to have an eternal relationship with God without that event, and our acceptance of that event. And once you accept that event, then you've got to repent. And if you repent, then, well, then I have to be baptized. Then, if I'm baptized, then I have to have hands laid on me, and then I have to receive God's Spirit. And then the rest of this takes place. But notice verse 10. Let me read it again, because I didn't read the last clause. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His... Look what the word says. His life. If, as Paul said, Christ was not resurrected, we are of all men most miserable. We are people, have no purpose. It is not just His resurrection or death, it's His resurrection. We should notice something that John said in John chapter 6. Well, actually Jesus said, I'm sorry, in John chapter 6.

I'm going to go through a few verses here. This will be our last scripture, John chapter 6. Because this brings us to our fourth point. And it ties together this humble repentance. It ties together to know that our sins are forgiven. It ties together that we are now participants in the new covenant. And it ties together what must happen now for the days of 11 bread to be completed. Actually, this takes us right into Pentecost. This takes us right into the next holy day.

John 6, 25. This is a fascinating story, or what Jesus says here. But what's really interesting is the time period. If you go back to verse 4, you find that this is just before the Passover. Just before the Passover, these people come to Him. Just before the Passover, Jesus does this miracle in which He feeds all these people with almost no food. So this is on people's minds. And this is what's interesting. This is either still just before or during the Passover season. This is all happening right around the days of 11 bread. Look at verse 4. Now the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near.

So this is when the feeding of these thousands of people happened. And this is all in the context of that. So these people come to Him in verse 25. And when they fell to Him on the other side, they said to Him, Rabbi, did you come here? In other words, He crossed the Sea of Galilee. And people said, wow! We didn't even know you were coming over here.

And Jesus answered them and said, most assuredly I say to you, you seek me. Not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. He said, you know why you're seeking me? You're open. I'll take some more bread and turn it supernaturally into a full belly.

You're coming to me for bread. He says, do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life because the Son of Man will give you... Well, I wish the Son of Man will give you because God the Father ascends His seal on Him. So they ask, well, what in the world should we do? We want this special bread. We like the first bread you gave us.

Give us this special bread that gives us eternal life. Verse 28. Therefore they said to you, let's sign what you performed then, that we may see it and believe you. What work will you do? And so here's a good example. You took a little bit of bread and fed thousands of people with that bread. Let's see you do this one. Our fathers ate the man in the desert and as it was written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. So this time, okay, you took some bread and you multiplied it. This time, do it without bread. Bring down some bread from heaven. Now we'll be impressed. You're talking about un-thankful.

Now we'll be impressed because God gave them bread from heaven. Let's make some manna for us. Then we'll know you're really from God. Jesus said to them, 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 his life to the world.

And they said, give us this bread. He said, you want to know what real bread is? It's me. Now, if you read through the rest of this, lots of people, including many of his followers, were so distraught over this. They left him. This makes no sense at all. I mean, I'm bread. I mean, this is an allegory. This guy must be insane. What does that even mean? So He declares that He is... Look, verse 35. So they said, give us this bread. And He says, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger. And He who believes in me shall never thirst.

It's a whole new concept. He's breaking the bonds of the concepts that they have. We want bread. You gave us bread, physical bread, from loaves. He said, yeah, well, what more signs do you want? Ah, manna. That will prove you're from God. He says, how about me? I'm the bread.

Of course, they're offended by this. Verse 41. And the Jews complained about Him because He said, I am the bread of life, which came down from heaven. Now, you've got all these hundreds, maybe thousands of people. Why in the world is He insane? He's drunk. I am the bread of life. He's the manna. And I was really looking forward to tasting manna. And He says, He's the manna. And they said, is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How is it that He says, I have come down from heaven? Jesus therefore answered and said to them, do not murmur among yourselves, for no one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws Him, and I will raise Him up at the last day.

As it is written in the prophets, and they shall be taught by God, therefore everyone who was heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.

He goes on and He says, in Matthew 48, I am the bread of life. He says, if you want to live, now remember, we commemorate His death, right? On Passover, by eating 11 bread. But remember what we also read, it is through His death and life that we receive salvation.

Because if it's a dead Christ that we're lost, there is no substitute for us. God did not bring Him, could not bring Him from the dead. He's not the firstborn among many brethren.

He says, I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the man in the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world. And so they argue in verse 50, too, about how can He give His flesh for the world? Now, it just is beyond even discussion. This guy is insane. He's crazy. He's babbling. It makes no sense. Then Jesus says in verse 53, Well, so surely I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. That's why we're so serious about keeping that passage.

We're commemorating that blood and that life, that body, because without that, we can't get there.

You and I can't make it without it. It's not possible. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. He promises the resurrection. For my flesh is food indeed and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. And this is what's real important here. He's not just talking about the symbols, as we know they would be treating them, the symbols we would take. Because the symbols that we take on Passover are what? The symbols of Christ dying. But in this sentence, he says, if you eat this, I will live in you and you will live in me. Let's think about that. You eat this and I will live in you and you will live in me.

As the living Father sent me, I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not as your fathers ate the manna and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever. We have the perfect symbols. We don't eat a lamb. We don't have to go slay a lamb. We're eating the symbols of the lamb on that night. And we wash each other's feet for the purpose of what we're supposed to do on that night.

We de-leaven our homes. The next day, we throw out the last of the leavening, no way. We take the Passover and on that Passover day, the last of the leavening goes. In fact, they're actually commanded to throw out the last of the leavening on the 14th in the Bible. We are now the 11th because Christ died for us. But during the days of 11 bread, we are not eating that other bread just as a symbol of the broken body of Jesus Christ. We're eating that symbol because it is the resurrected Jesus Christ who abides in us. We take Him in and He lives in us.

This is what the New Covenant is all about. It is about receiving God's Spirit so Christ lives in us. And we take that 11 bread. That's why we eat 11 bread during the days of 11 bread. We're not very serious about it. On a Passover verbal series, we forget the meaning of it. It is the work of the resurrected Jesus Christ that symbolizes. You know where I got that from? Herbert Armstrong.

Herbert Armstrong. He understood that. That the during the days of 11 bread, we're not commemorating a dead Christ, He said, but a resurrected Christ. And when we eat that 11 bread, we're symbolizing His work in us. He's abiding in us. He's abiding in us. See how it all ties together? We come into these days with this humble repentant attitude and we go out victorious. Because Christ is living in us. We come out victorious because Christ is living in us. That has to take us to the Pentecost where we have to understand the receiving of the Holy Spirit. That this is how this happens. We are commanded to examine ourselves before the Passover so that we can partake of it in a worthy manner. It doesn't say partake of it because you are somehow of yourself worthy. That's not what the Scripture says. Partake of it in a worthy manner. None of us are worthy of ourselves of the blood and body of Jesus Christ. It is God who makes us worthy through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It is God who says, come, come, receive what I want to give you. This is an invitation to receive from God what He wants to give us. But you and I can't take it in an unworthy manner. And it's what we see in 1 Corinthians. To partake of this in an unworthy manner is spiritually dangerous. Because then we end up being judged by God. That's what the apostle Paul said. Do this in an unworthy manner and you will be judged by God. So approach the Passover with a humble, repentant attitude and a grateful acceptance of this forgiveness. Celebrate the covenant that He has made with you, the New Covenant. A relationship with Him where Christ lives in us through the Holy Spirit. We have to have received the Holy Spirit to be a full member of a participant in the New Covenant. And remember, as you take the Unleavened Bread, we commemorate the Lord's death until He comes back. We also commemorate the fact that He is the living Bread of Life.