Preparing for Passover and Unleavened Bread

The Apostle Paul gave instructions to the Corinthian church on how to observe the Passover. And it's amazing to me how many people look at 1 Corinthians and miss the point that this letter was written around the Days of Unleavened Bread and contained instructions about the Days of Unleavened Bread. But let's go to 1 Corinthians 11, because I've talked to many people over the years who have struggled and have sometimes felt despondency over the instructions here.

In verse 27 of 1 Corinthians 11, because just before this he talks about the taking of the bread and the wine as symbols of the body of Jesus Christ. So verse 27 Paul writes, Therefore, whoever eats this bread or 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 and drink of the cup, for he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.

For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep, for many have died. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world. Now that's a pretty strong statement there, isn't it? Examine yourself so that you don't eat this Passover in an unworthy manner and end up being judged by God.

So he says, you judge yourself first. So over the years many people have asked me, what does this exactly mean? I mean, what does it mean to examine yourself so that you're not judged by God? Does it mean that we are to simply look at all of our sins and become hopeless? You know, sometimes it's easy. You start looking at yourself, examining yourself. Many people don't even look at this as that important.

They just rush towards the Passover without preparation. What we know by this passage is that preparing for the Passover in the days of love and bread is actually very, very important. That's what we're going to talk about today. What does it even mean to do self-examination? What does leavening have to do with all this? Removing leavening. Some people thought that the preparation for the Passover simply means getting the leavening out of your house. So the more exact you are at that, the better off it is.

So, you know, if you find you go through your attic, which nobody's eaten in 30 years, and just like you did last year, the year before, the year before, you tear your attic apart and you sweep every corner and everything to make sure there's no leavening up there, even though no one's been up there and you've cleaned it every year for year after year. Is that what it means? The more exact we do certain things, that's examining ourselves. Well, we're going to look at four spiritual concepts that I encourage all of you, and I really encourage you to do this.

We have about a little over a week before the Passover. To take the four concepts we're going to write down, and I'm not going to go through all the details of these four concepts, I'm just going to give you the concepts, but write them down. And that this be the focal point of your Bible study for the next week, every day. Then what we're going to talk about today be the focal point of your prayer every day. I mean the focal point of what you think about.

You're meditating. You take time throughout the next week to think about these things. It wouldn't even be a bad idea to fast. It's always a good idea to fast before the Passover. Fast and focus in on what we're going to talk about here today. We're going to talk about four important concepts contained in the Passover in Days of Unleavened Bread because they're tied together. And how these concepts are what we should be preparing for. This is the foundation of our preparation. So the first one, the Passover, I'm going to read it, then I'll read it again because you'll write this down.

The Passover in Feast of Unleavened Bread reminds us of our sinful nature and our need for a life of continual humble repentance before God. The Passover in Feast of Unleavened Bread reminds us of our sinful nature and our need for a life of continual humble repentance before God. Repentance isn't something you do once in your lifetime. In fact, one of the greatest lessons that we have to carry into the Passover in the Days of Unleavened Bread, and if we observe the Passover properly, it drives home the point of our need of humility before God and our need for constant repentance before God.

Now as we go through this, you're going to see that this doesn't mean constant despondency before God. Now God isn't saying, okay, I want you to keep the Passover so that you feel humiliated and beaten up, and that's what life is all about. That's not what this is all about. But it is living every day with a humble repentance before God because we understand our sinful nature. One of the things we do and we're all supposed to do before the Days of Unleavened Bread is we remove leavening from our houses or our cars or our place of business. We get out the leavening. And we know that for ancient Israel, leavening was a symbol about how they had to leave Egypt and haste.

Remember last year I gave two sermons, one on the Passover and one about the Days of Unleavened Bread where I talked about types. Well, when we look at these Old Testament activities, we're looking at types. They are simply showing us a greater reality, and you and I live in that greater reality. You and I aren't removing leavening as a reminder that we were brought out of physical Egypt. The church is made up of people that are all kinds of nationalities and ethnic groups.

But it is a reminder, and although we do celebrate the fact that God took Israel out of Egypt at this time, but that's not our main concentration. Our main focus is that God is taking us out of sin. Let's go to 1 Corinthians 5. So we're here in 1 Corinthians. We're going to stay in 1 Corinthians 11 quite a bit, but let's go to 1 Corinthians 5.

And verse 6.

Paul is writing to the church, and it's right at the feast of Unleavened Bread time, and he's telling them part of the problem they have is that they are a church filled with pride. There's a lot of pride in this church. And he says, verse 6, your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? You know, it doesn't take much of a wrong attitude, whether it's pride or hatred or envy or anything like that, until it just fills your whole mind and your whole being. He says, therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. Now this is very interesting. He says, let's get rid of this leavening, but he's not talking about physical leavening, even though we are supposed to take out physical leavening. But remember, physical leavening is a type that's a symbol of something else. He says, let's get rid of the real leavening, the spiritual leavening. But he says, you're already unleavened. He says, you've become unleavened, but you're sort of getting leavened back in. One of the things that we remember at this time of year is that we have been unleavened, but we've let leavening back in our lives. So we still should get physical leavening out. But just to do that, just to remove physical leavening from your house and not deal with the spiritual leavening is a meaningless ritual. Now, that's saying we shouldn't do it, because not to do it is a problem. But you understand, if that's all you do, if your only preparation for the Passover is, I threw out leavening, then you're not prepared for the Passover. Because the throwing out of leavening is a symbol of something else. So as we do the symbol, it is to lead us to a deeper understanding. He says, let me read this again, because I really want to... Look how he puts this argument together. Therefore, purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you are truly unleavened. So how am I unleavened? For indeed, Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us.

So because of Christ's sacrifice, and remember, these people are Christians. They're Gentile Christians, by the way. Mainly, the Corinth Church was made up of Gentiles. From what is said here, and the problems they were having with paganism, very few of them were Jews. The problem they have in this church is people are bringing paganism into it. And he's telling this primarily Gentile church, Jesus is your Passover, and since Christ is your Passover, you have become de-leavened. But you have to keep making sure the leavening is removed. This is what we talk about when we talk about this continual, humble state of repentance. That we realize we are unleavened, but we have to keep leavening out. Leavening keeps coming back in, and it has to be removed. It's because Christ is our Passover. Remember here, there's something real important about that statement. It'll become important in what we talk about in a minute. The Old Testament, the Passover was a ceremony, it was a day, and it was a limb. The Passover, all those things represented a person. Jesus is the Passover. He is the lamb. And we commemorate Him on the Passover day. He says, therefore, let us keep the feast. Here's the command from the Apostle Paul for a Gentile church to keep the feast. Let us keep the feast. But notice the spiritual meaning he gives to it. Not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. So he talks about you have to take something out, but you also have to put something in. So the days of the leavened, the Passover days of the leavened bread are about taking something out, and they are about putting something back in. So as you deal leaven and you take out, we have to be thinking in terms of, am I in a continual state of repentance? Because I am unleavened. But leavening keeps being introduced back into me. Now having said this, ladies, the leaven in your house is important. But be careful you don't confuse the leaven in your house with spring cleaning. I'm deleavening the house. I can remember my wife when we first got married. She'd work all day and come home, and the week before Passover, she'd be out scrubbing everything. It's like, how is that deleavening? We really never threw a pie against the wall. No bread got up against the wall. It's not. But this idea that I must scrub everything. So what happens is many women do that, and they just sort of stumble into the Passover service, exhausted, spiritually unprepared for the Passover. We are to deleaven, but the deleavening process is to teach us about spiritual deleavening. So don't confuse the two. You do not have to scrub your window seals to get leavening out of your house.

You find the leavening. You know, you vacuum. You pick things up. You find it. You get rid of it. Yes. I mean, I'll go out and clean out my car. You know what's amazing when you have kids? They get crumbs in places in your car you can't get to. And I can tell you this, you know, when I had little kids, I was always amazed because I'd have a van, and you take the seats out, right? You know those little wells that the seat connects in would be that thick with cracker crumbs. And you couldn't get the hose down there to suck them out. So you try to dig them out and scrape them out. And one day I decided to put water in there. Now all I had was giant mushy clove. I mean, they all blew up with water and they were mush. I couldn't get them out. I forget how long it took me to get that stuff out of there. They kept thinking, okay, God, what is the lesson here? Okay, what are you teaching me about leavening? But remember, this is not spring house cleaning. This is de-leavening your home, and those aren't the same thing. Now, another thing to remember about de-leavening, the physical de-leavening. Unless, gentlemen, unless your wife is the only one who was sinned, you better participate in it also.

I mean, there's nothing in the Scripture that says, wives, de-leaven your house, and that's good enough for your husband, too. He gets a ride on this. De-leavening is de-leavening. If we understand the spiritual intent of it, it's for every one of us. Even our children should be involved in it. I'm not saying we should do this, but in a lot of Jewish homes, on the day, on the 14th, the day before the first Holy Day, they hide leavening throughout the house. And the children have to go find it so they can put it in a bag and throw it out. They go find the leavening, and the kids are screwed around through the house. They find the leavening. The bread and so forth is scattered throughout the house, and they pick it up, they put it in a bag, and they throw it out, because they were told to throw out the leavening on the day before the 15th. So we have to be very careful here and understand this physical ritual teaches us a spiritual principle. We're still to do the ritual. Stop doing the ritual, and you're going to start missing the physical part of it. But only do the physical ritual, and you may be in danger of keeping the Passover in an unworthy manner, not prepared at all spiritually for what it's supposed to be. Remember, we judge ourselves here in this repented attitude, this humility before God, so that He doesn't have to punish us. Let's go back and reread what we read here in 1 Corinthians 11. We just read this, but let's look at verse 31 of 1 Corinthians 11. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. If we look at ourselves, so we say, well, we look at myself, and I've had people actually come up and say, well, I don't think I should take the Passover this year. I've looked at myself, and I have sins. Understand something. Paul, Peter, Mary, the mother of Jesus, nobody has ever been worthy of the Passover. Nobody. Unless God says you're worthy of the Passover. You can't bring a big enough gift to be worthy of the Passover.

I mean, how do you do that? Unless you've never sinned, and you're perfect as God, you have no value unless God gives it to you. I have no value unless God gives it to me. We come to keep the Passover, not because, oh, I've examined myself when I'm worthy. It's because through repentance and through this humility you come before God and say, God, you make me worthy because I cannot. Have the value to do this.

We are judged lest we judge ourselves. I mean, we judge ourselves lest we be judged. Verse 32 is very interesting because this is all in the context of taking this bread and this wine, but when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord that we may not be condemned with the world. In other words, if we don't do this, God is going to correct us so that we don't end up condemned with the world. That says, I don't want you to end up like the world. Therefore, if you will not judge yourself, I will correct you.

So the whole admonition here is, let's do it ourselves. So over the next week, we need to be pursuing humble repentance. Humble repentance before God. Now, as we seek this humble repentance before God, we are brought to, through the Passover, specifically, the realization, and this is our second point, the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread helps us focus on God's forgiveness and salvation. The Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, helps us focus on God's forgiveness and salvation. So here we are looking for and pursuing humble repentance. And as we pursue this humble repentance, we become focused on God's forgiveness. So let's go back to 1 Corinthians 11 now and look at verse 23. We're reading this passage. We're reading it a little bit out of the order in which Paul wrote it, because I want to make these points because each one leads into the next.

Paul says in verse 23, For I receive from the Lord that which I also deliver to you, that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which he was betrayed took bread. Now, this is very interesting because it is possible when you look at when the Gospels were written and when 1 Corinthians was written, it's possible the Gospels hadn't been written yet. Paul says, No, I got this. I didn't get this from the book of Matthew. I got this because Christ trained me personally. He talked about how Christ trained him personally, and he told me what was said. He told me what was done.

He says, He took bread, and 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. In the same manner, He also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes. During the Passover service, we'll talk about how without the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we're all still lost in our sins, which means that we are still under the curse of the law, and the only way to solve that is through our own deaths. It's the only thing God will accept. We can't live with this false idea that, well, God loves me, so He accepts me the way I am without the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. No, He doesn't. Without the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we have to pay the penalty for our sins.

So as we enter into the Passover to Days of Love and Bread, if we're in this state of humble repentance, we begin to focus on forgiveness, because if not, then you just come out of the other end of the Days of Love and Bread, depressed. I'm no better off than I was before I the Passover. We must work through and understand and receive from God forgiveness that He is giving us salvation.

And here we're told, as you prepare, remember, we do this in remembrance of His death. This is why at the Passover service, it's fairly quiet. It's fairly solemn. It is a memorial of a funeral, of a death. We come together to honor His death for us, and therefore forgiveness is now given to us by God.

This is why at the end of the Passover, during Passover season, and this year, just like every other year, I get phone calls where people want to talk to me, and the stress of life seems to be greater on many people at this time than any other time of the year. A spiritual crisis comes in people's lives. Just the pace of things. They seem to have lost control of life. Their burdens, their anxieties, it just gets a lot worse at this time of year. I have to tell you something. Satan doesn't want you to keep the Passover. He wants you to stay in your sins. He doesn't want you to feel forgiven. He doesn't want you to be forgiven. He doesn't want to happen in your life with the Days of 11 bread picture. He doesn't want that in your life, and He will try to get you from keeping it. He will try to keep you from following where God's leading you, and He will try to discourage you. He does it every year.

Because he doesn't want you to experience God's forgiveness.

How many times in the Passover, I've had this experience numerous times, it seems like the few weeks before, the stress gets so great, you don't even know why. And then after the Passover, it's like, oh, it's gone. There's some kind of release, there's this spiritual release that's happening. Because God's forgiveness has come into us.

If you rush into the Passover, you ever do this? You know, you rush into the Passover, and it's like two days before the Passover, and it's like, man, I've been so busy this week I hadn't even thought about the Passover. And you're not spiritually prepared for the Passover, so it's sort of uncomfortable, and it feels weird, and you just, you know, have a hard time working through it, you have a hard time concentrating. Yeah, you're not prepared for it.

You're not prepared to receive God's forgiveness.

You're not prepared to walk out of there with that, I'm free. I'm free. I am forgiven. So we look at this and we see, okay, we have to concentrate on humble repentance, that we concentrate on receiving God's forgiveness, what that really means to the death of Jesus Christ. And it's His death we are commemorating at that night.

So that brings us into another point, or a third point. And the third and fourth point are not necessarily as obvious as the first two. I mean, the first two are pretty obvious, but this third one is going to take a little time to think about here. The Passover and Feast of Love and Bread remind Christians of their covenant with God.

The Passover and Feast of Love and Bread remind Christians of their covenant with God. Now, you may not have thought about, wait a minute, my covenant with God. What's that have to do with the Passover? Let's go back to 1 Corinthians 11. This is exactly what is written in Matthew, in the Gospel. 1 Corinthians 11, 25. Paul says, In the same manner he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. The Old Testament prophesied over and over again, starting back in the book of Deuteronomy, about a new covenant. God would bring this new covenant in which He would write His laws in the hearts and minds of people. In which He tells them, I will no longer circumcise you in the flesh, I will circumcise you in the heart. And Jesus says, This is it, guys. You heard about it all your lives. He told them, those men would have known what the new covenant is. This is it. This is the beginning of the new covenant. There are many people who do a lot of things around the Passover time. Quite different than what we do. Of course, the Jews keep the Seder meal on the night of the 15th. There are many Sunday-keeping churches, by the way, that keep a Seder meal on Palm Sunday or on Easter to commemorate the Passover. But why do we do what we do? Why are we so strict about what we do? I have people say, Can I come to your Passover service? And I always tell them, Well, have you been baptized? Well, what's that have to do with it? I just want to come to your Passover service. Unless you've been baptized and had hands laid on you and received the God Spirit, you can come, but we ask you not to take the bread and the wine or wash the feet. You can observe, but don't participate. Oh boy, I've had people just get mad and say, Okay, I'll never come to your church. Why would I be that strict? When I say, Come on, everybody, come take it. Teenagers, why is it that many of you feel drawn to God and yet we won't let you take the Passover? You can watch it, but you can't take it. Well, there's a reason for this and it has to do with the covenant, the New Covenant. If you are not baptized but called by God, then you're under the umbrella of the New Covenant. Understand? But you are not a full participant in the New Covenant.

Well, that's a strange thing to say. Why would he say that? Let me backtrack a minute and work you through this. Why do we on the night that we do, do what we do? This is very simple, by the way. I'm a simple guy, so I have simple answers. If I can't find a simple answer to something, then I don't preach it.

Well, Jesus and everybody, well, almost everybody agrees to this. The first holy day is the fifteenth month of the Hebrew calendar. All the Jews teach that, all Jews believe that, all Christians believe that. Jesus was killed on the afternoon of the fourteenth. Okay. The fourteenth is called the Passover. It's the day of the Passover. Now, remember, the Passover is a 24-hour period from sundown to sundown. So that whole day is the Passover.

In the Jewish world, there's all kinds of activities that go on in that 24-hour period. We eat bread and take blood, or take wine as a symbol of blood, on the night of the fourteenth. Why? It's very, very simple. Jesus Christ said to His disciples, go prepare the Passover. And they went and prepared the Passover. Then Jesus said, I have desired to eat this Passover with you, and they ate the Passover. Jesus Christ is the Passover. So we do what He did when He did it. It is that simple. All other, you know, New Testament chronologies and trying to fit everything together, and when exactly things happen on the fourteenth and the fifteenth, people are shocked when I say, I really don't care. It's very simple to me. If Jesus is the Passover, Christ, our Passover, as Paul, we read Paul. What did He do and when did He do it? When He says, this is the Passover, that's good enough.

Take this bread, drink this wine, wash your feet, watch each other's feet, on this night. And so that's what we do. It is a very simple reason. Because we recognize who the Passover is. It's a person. And He has a day, and that day commemorates His death. He died on that day in the afternoon. It was still the 14th. And He said, this is how I wish to be remembered. Do this in remembrance of me. This is how I wish to be remembered. If we truly respect Him, are we not going to do it the way He said to us? That's why we do it. Now, He also said, this is the new covenant. Well, I know sometimes some will say, but I've grown up in the Church, and I believe this way, and I'm not baptized yet, but why can't I come participate? It has to do with the covenant and agreement. A covenant is a very important thing, and in the Bible, the whole rituals around covenants are very interesting.

Animals were killed. There were signs of the covenant. Today, what's the sign of a covenant? I made a covenant this week, and I had to sign it. I hired some people to come over and cut down some old trees, mainly because at 60, I'm wiser than I used to be. I looked at some of those limbs up 25 feet in the air and said, I'm going to pay somebody to do that. I used to think, how can I get that out of there? No, it's not. I'm going to pay somebody to do this. So they came over, they looked at it, they gave me an estimate. I signed it. Two days later, because there was another company I had wanted to come out, but they were too busy. And they were the company of my first choice. That company called me and said, hey, we can come out and do the work now. We want to come out and do an estimate. I said, sorry, I already hired somebody. They said, no problem, we understand. We'll get you next time. But understand, they understand why I said no. I don't know. They may have been cheaper. But I had signed a covenant for this much money for this job. And they had signed the covenant to show up on a certain day and do it. Now, we are to honor these covenants. Today, a sign of a covenant is sometimes a handshake, but it's the sign of a covenant. There is something that says we have made an agreement here. It's good, Colossians 2. The sign of the covenant, of the old covenant, was circumcision. If you were an Israelite male and you wanted to keep the Passover, you had to be circumcised. If you were a Gentile who had converted to the religion of Israel and he wanted to keep the Passover, you had to be circumcised.

And then your family could participate, too. It must have been really awkward for a woman whose husband refused to be circumcised because she had to try to keep the Passover without him.

The reason for that was circumcision was the sign of the covenant. You know, you were an Israelite because you were circumcised. No matter where you went in the world, you could pretend to be something else, but they could find out if you were or not. You understand? You bore a sign on you. There was a sign on you that you were gods and that you had a covenant with God. Look what Paul says here. Let's start in verse 8. We get the story flow here. Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him, so he's speaking of Christ here, for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in him, who is the head of all principality and power. Verse 11, in him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands. Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, they all predict a time under a new covenant when God was going to perform circumcision of the heart. All tied in with the new covenant. The new covenant sign would be circumcision of the heart.

Now, there was this physical sign that anybody could see. Now we're talking about something spiritual that happens. But notice this, he says, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, in which you were raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you being dead in your trespasses and the incircumcision of your flesh, he is made alive together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses. When you were baptized, you were now openly, publicly claiming a covenant with God. You have repented of your sins. God is washing away those sins. Now the water doesn't wash them away, right? It's a symbol of something, just like circumcision was a symbol of something. And now God is going to circumcise your heart and give you his Holy Spirit.

How can someone go participate in the initiation of the new covenant if they haven't become a participant in the new covenant? This is why we say the Passover's for people who have been baptized, have hands laid on them, and have received God's Spirit. It is because you have to become a participant in the covenant to renew the covenant, to go through a ceremony of renewal.

You know, we have to understand something. We can come to church. We can keep the Ten Commandments.

We can go to the Holy Days and still have not received the salvation promise to the new covenant. We can believe in God. We have to become participants. You know, when at baptism, it isn't just for the repentance of sins. It is the open sign that you've entered into the covenant. And if we don't enter into the covenant, we receive no salvation. That is important to understand. If God doesn't give you His Holy Spirit, you have no salvation.

So we must participate in this. This is the way He wants it done. Through baptism, receiving His Spirit. This is why in Hebrews 6, baptisms and laying on of hands are two of the basic, what He says, foundational doctrines of the church. Without those two, you don't have the church. So yeah, we're pretty, we're stickler. Now, I mean, we let people come, sometimes people come and keep the Passover with us. We don't know. Because whether the people do it or not do it, I mean, whether you keep the Passover worthy or an unworthy manner is between you and God. We can't always judge that. But you understand why we are so serious about this. People say, well, why don't you have a meal? Jesus had a meal with His disciples. That's true, too. Now let's go back to 1 Corinthians 11, because they ate a meal at Corinth. And Paul strips this down to what's really important here. 1 Corinthians 11 verse 17.

He says, now, in giving these instructions, I do not praise you, since you come together not for the better but for the worse.

Until the church of Corinth, you know, when you get together here in this service that they were having, he says, what you're doing is actually bad, not good. For first of all, when you come together as a church, so this is a common meeting, this is an assembly together, I hear that there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it. For there must also 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, and one is hungry and another is drunk. What? Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise you. These people are getting together to keep the Lord's supper, which we know from verse 23, he says, here's what I receive from the Lord, take the bread and the wine. He says, are you having a meal and it's turning into a giant social fiasco where people are even getting drunk? He says, this is totally unacceptable. So let's strip this down to the bread and the wine and do exactly what Jesus did when he said, this is the new covenant. You and I don't eat a lamb. People say, why don't we eat a lamb? We do.

Jesus Christ is the lamb. He's the only lamb that counts. The lambs they ate could not give them salvation. The lambs they ate could not give them eternal life. The lambs they ate could not free them of their sins. It could not happen. We eat the only lamb that counts. We eat Jesus Christ. We eat symbols of Him. And the bread and the wine are two sermons in themselves, by the way. The symbolism in the wine and the symbolism in the bread would take me two sermons just to go through that. We don't need the meal. We eat the meal. We're eating the meal that counts. So we're not supposed to eat a lamb anymore. What we do on the night of the 15th is tradition and custom, and we do all kinds of things on that night. But what we do on the night of the 14th is not tradition. It is not custom. I believe. I believe it is the command of Jesus Christ. That's what I believe. As we honor Him in the way that He said to be honored, that's what we do. So being part of this covenant is so important. It is the only means of getting out of this mess and having eternal life.

Which brings us now to the fourth point. On that night of the Passover, we take that unleavened bread as a symbol of the broken body of Jesus Christ. And, you know, it's sometimes hard to eat that when you think about what it really means. Of course, I always have this thought, yes, but this is the only way I get forgiveness, and I find myself eating it. This is the only way I can be forgiven. It's the only way that I can be changed. It's the only way that I can receive what God wants to give me. I can't get there any other way. But it is supposed to give us a moment of hesitation to realize the price that's paid. And then we start going through the days of unleavened bread. And we continue to eat unleavened bread. And I actually enjoy unleavened bread during the days of unleavened bread. My wife makes all kinds of stuff that she never makes otherwise. And, you know, she has all these different recipes. And, man, it's great. But why is it that we keep eating unleavened bread?

Especially when you think Jesus was resurrected, partway through the days of unleavened bread. Right? And remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians? We have to take something out and put something in. He ties that into leavened and unleavened bread. Right? Look at what it says in Romans 5. Romans 5.

This sermon is going to be just a little long. But before the days of unleavened bread, we have to go through this. This is too important not to. Romans 5, verse 8. But God demonstrates His own love toward us. Is it that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us? Much more than having been justified by His blood, His blood does this, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son. Now understand, what that means is you're the enemy of God. You do not have a relationship with God. God sees you as an enemy.

But through the death of Jesus Christ, our sins are wiped out and you are forgiven. At the end of the Passover service, we are supposed to feel forgiven.

Now that motivates us to do something. When you really feel forgiven, because you really understand the gravity of your sinful nature, you get a different motivation. A lot of times we just, in all honesty, don't understand the gravity of our sinful nature. Oh, well, I might do this sin or this sin or this sin, but compared to this person over here, I'm not such a bad guy.

Since we don't grasp the gravity of our sinful nature, we don't experience the forgiveness, and therefore the motivation now to move forward.

So when God does this, we are brought back into a relationship. That's what reconciliation means. You're brought back into a relationship. All reconciliation contains two things. Forgiveness on the part of the person who was sinned against and repentance on the part of the person who sinned. I talked about this when I talked about all the fruits of the Spirit, remember? So you have to forgive even if they don't repent, or you'll be all controlled by the negative emotions. God forgave us while we were yet sinners. Why, we're still enemies. God forgave us. Understand that. While you and I are His enemies, He forgave us. That's why He's not all out of control all the time or depressed or, you know, He just... But we must repent, and now we're brought into this reconciliation. And Christ died for us, and this reconciliation takes place. The rest of this verse is so important, and it's tied into the days of 11 bread. He says, let's go back to verse 10, sweet, for if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more haven't been reconciled, we shall be saved by His what? Life.

As Paul said, if Christ hasn't been resurrected, we are of most people miserable. We worship a dead Christ with no hope in any future. If He wasn't resurrected, this is all useless.

But He has been resurrected.

So we shall be saved by His life.

What does that mean? And how does that apply to the days of 11 bread? Let's go to John 6. This will be our last passage here.

I didn't fully understand this until a few years ago. I read something written by Herman Armstrong. And it just looks like, wow, that opens this up.

Verse 25. Well, before we read to verse 25, the context of this is very fascinating. Look at verse 4. Now, the Passover of the Feast of the Jews was near. All of what we read here in verse 6 happened either before or during or right after, but right during the time of the Passover of the Feast of the Loving Bread. Because when it was near is when Jesus did the miracle where He took a few loaves of bread and fed thousands of people. So this is on people's minds. Everybody's talking about this. People who were there excited, you can't believe it. The rabbi, they had just a few loaves of bread. He broke it up, he prayed about it, they kept passing it out, we kept getting this big loaf of bread. I ate this piece of bread, I was so full, I couldn't believe it. And the bread was so good. And there was more of it. There was more of it. It just kept multiplying. So this is the context in which the conversation takes place. People who either heard about or in some cases were actually there during this miracle.

Verse 25. So Jesus goes to the other side of the sea of Galilee here. And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, Rabbi, when did you come here? So in other words, He shows up and people were surprised. Oh, that's Jesus. And people come from all over. It's like, oh, when did you come here? We didn't expect you to come here. He was probably just trying to get away and get some rest. 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 that were filled. He says, you just want more bread. You've come to me for bread. Did not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you because God the Father has sent His seal on him. You're saying, well, what are we supposed to do? How do we want to do this? Christ will believe on him, believe that I'm giving you this message from God. Notice verse 30. Therefore they said to him, what sign, and I find this interesting, He'd already taken a few loaves of bread and fed thousands. Okay, okay. Wait a minute. You're saying you're someone special. Show it to us.

What sign will you perform them that we may see it and believe you? What work will you do? Our fathers ate the man in the desert. As is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat. Okay. You took a few loaves of bread, broke them up, and fed thousands. This time, we're not going to give you the bread.

We want some manna. We want some manna laying around, and we want to see you feed thousands out of nothing. Then we'll think you're someone special. What an arrogant group of people. Look how Jesus answers them.

And we'll take a little piece of it, and we'll put it in the next batch, and we'll keep growing. We'll live forever. It'll be great. Come on, give us this bread.

Now, they're just appalled at this.

That he would say that he was the bread of life. It doesn't even make sense. They have no reference point to go to. What's that mean? He's the bread of life. Okay, he must be giving us... Now, if he would have said, I'm giving you the bread of life, the words of life, but to say, I am the bread of life. I'm it. So you skipped out of verse 41, and the Jews then complained about him because he had said, I am the bread which comes out from heaven. And they said, is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he say, I've come down from heaven? Wait a minute. He says he's the bread of life, and he came from heaven. This is just... This is Joseph. We know him. I mean, this is Jesus, Joseph's son. Joseph was the carpenter. Remember? He probably died. He died. We know Mary, good woman. Yeah, but you know. Jesus came along pretty early in that marriage.

Jesus therefore answered and said, Do not murmur among yourselves, for no one can come to me unless the father who has sent me draws him, and I will raise him up with the last day. So he promises that there's going to be a resurrection for those who follow him as the bread of life. Verse 48. 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 will give for the life of the world. I wonder if the disciples got it when that night he said, This is the new covenant. This is bread. There, that's my flesh. I said you were going to have to eat it. I said you were going to have to drink my blood. Here, these are symbols. You're going to have to take my dying into you. My blood, my body. His physical dying has to be brought into us. It's not an external thing. It has to actually be brought into us, into our minds and hearts. He died for us because he gives us that much value. And we don't have any worth to come to the Passover. Any worth we have to come to the Passover is because God gives it to us. It's because we have taken into us that death. It's because we've told God, Please accept his death for me. If you've never done that, you need to do it.

You need to ask God to accept Christ's death for you. That's the level of repentance we have to come to. We can intellectually accept it, but have we actually ever gone and said to God, accept his death for me, knowing what you're actually saying? Because that is the new covenant, and there is no eternal life without it.

He says, verse 52, The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Verse 53, Then Jesus said to them, Most assuredly I say to you, Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. This is why. It's just wine and bread. There's no magic in the things we eat. It's the symbols of what we're doing. You can drink wine and eat unleavened bread every day of your life and say, Oh, wow, this makes me holy. No, it doesn't. It's what they symbolize that makes us holy.

It's the reality of these things so that God makes us holy.

So we literally have to understand we are taking his life, his death, into us. On that night we commemorate his death. He says, Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood is eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. Verse 55, For my flesh is food indeed, my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. I want to stop there for a minute because that's a remarkable statement. Jesus, when we eat that Passover bread, we are eating the death of Jesus Christ, that his body was destroyed for us. He died for us. But notice he says here, when you do this, I will live in you. Think about that statement. We are not... it says we are saved by his life. We are reconciled through his death and we are saved by his life.

During the days of 11 bread, when we take in, when we take in that 11 bread, you know what that's a symbol of? The work of Jesus Christ in your life.

To take in the bread, during the days of 11 bread, we're not celebrating the death of Christ anymore. We're celebrating that he's alive and abiding in us. And that's what I read from Herbert Armstrong that blew my mind. After years and years and years of being in the church, I realized, whoa! That's amazing. But it's right. He abides in us.

So during the days of 11 bread, when we eat that bread, we are to be not thinking about his death like we do that night. We're to be thinking about he lives in us. He's literally at the right hand of God.

Now, the pressures and the stresses of not wanting to do the Passover can be replaced with, wait a minute, he's here. He's with me. I am forgiven. I am a new lump. And I need to stay in a repentant, humble attitude before God every day of my life to keep the leavening, because the leavening keeps coming back every day, to keep the leavening out.

He finishes up here. He says, 57, as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on me will live forever 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. And throughout the rest of the chapter, it talks about how not only did many of the people turn against him because he said this, many if not most of his followers turned against him. This was it. They could not take this. This was so strange. This was so beyond anything they had ever heard before that this is what drove away many of Jesus' followers when he just said there. You and I have been called to live this reality. We live this reality.

You and I have to participate in this. We can't give up our salvation. We've talked about that. But you know what? Let's look at the other side of that coin. God does not wish for any of us to lose our salvation. It is God's will and desire that every one of us be in his resurrection. And he tells us how it's done.

If it's up to God, you and I make it. But he won't take away our free will. To understand, it's what he desires. It's what he wants. He hasn't been called to fail. He's been called to succeed. But we can only succeed because we stay in this humble, repented attitude. Once we get out of that, we get in trouble. We only can succeed when we understand or are brought towards the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for forgiveness. We only can succeed when we understand the covenant that we've made. And we have received God's Spirit in us to give us the power of obedience. And we are subject to that. And then we allow Jesus Christ to live his life in us. We do what he did. We live as he lived. We obey as he obeyed.

And that's the Days of Unleavened Bread. That's what it's all about. So approach this Passover with humble repentance. Approach it with a need and desire for God's and acceptance of God's forgiveness. You have to accept God's forgiveness. You can refuse God's forgiveness and actually put a barrier between you and God. It's like, you mean my son's death isn't enough for you? Think about that when you say, oh God can't forgive me. You're telling God the death of Jesus Christ is enough for me. Wow. Do you really want to say that? Now, let's be honest with what we're doing. Do you really want to say that to God?

Christ's sacrifice is enough for me. God has made a covenant with you, the new covenant, where a relationship where Jesus Christ lives in you through the Holy Spirit. You know, when we get to the end of the Days of Unleavened Bread, which Christ must live in us, you know the next step is what? Pentecost. What's Pentecost all about? God's Holy Spirit.

That's how Christ lives in me. All these Holy Days fit together. They show us what God is doing. The Passover sees it as a time of serious reflection and sometimes painful reflection. But it is also a time of joy. Joy because we commemorate Jesus Christ as the bread of life.